Offsite Comments

jwest: ...hang the vast majority of New York and DC republican writers from the lamp posts...

I seem to recall something about discussion of offing journalists being discouraged on here...?

Duke Lowell: *Shakes ipad*
WAKE UP, ACE!

Shaking just rocks him deeper to sleep.

Try hitting your ipad with a 5# rubber mallet.

"Have a Great Day - Every Day!" by Norman Vincent Peale is a calendar book - a motivational entry for every day. Usually something amounting to, have confidence, or try try again.

Today's entry is unusual:

"Almighty God freely bestows the good things in this world in proportion to a person's mental readiness to receive. An individual coming to the divine storehouse with a teaspoon, thinking 'lack,' will receive only a teaspoonful. Another more positive and believing person coming forward confidently with a gallon container will receive a gallon of life's blessings. We can only receive that which we expect according to our faith. So think big"

* Calls local rental place about an industrial-size dumpster *

FenelonSpoke: Weddings are not always my favorite things to do...

He said they didn't want some minister who would go off on some bizarre rant.

I was at a friend's wedding where that happened. Bride, groom, and entire group held hostage for unexpected lecturing.

I had told him of my ordination: My brother, a registered ULC minister, asked, "Do you want to be a ULC minister?" I said, "Yeah." He waved his hand and said, "Presto! You're a minister!" (I made up the "presto" part.) Official, by the rules of the ULChurch.

I said, I can do the ceremony like that. "Do you want to be married?" Both: "Yes." Waves hand: "Presto, you're married!" Followed by, "Now, let's party!"

FenelonSpoke: Yes; I read your posts about the wildfires last night. How far away are they from you?

Sorry for delay in replying, just got back from reading previous thread comments - not the best use of my time this a.m.

Not sure how far away the fire was, but it was widespread - the ridge west of us, just a couple of miles or less, was topped out widely with dancing flames like candles on a 100-year-old's birthday cake. That's what I had never seen before.

Thinking of driving out there today to see what it looks like. Apparently, it's died down overnight. But the sky to the West was lit up orange at Midnight.

Did you see my comment about being called upon to officiate a wedding for a friend of my daughter's?

Another colorful artwork.

And that background is green-screened.

Howdy, y'all. It's a beautiful Spring day here in NE Okla. Hoping for some rain, though, to stop these raging wind-whipped grassfires.

Whoa, looks like my last comment blurffed the close-italican, but something closed it anyway.

Sticks tongue out at barrel.

Heading for bed before I do something else and really damage myself.

May your time awake be fine, your sleep deep and refreshing, and your dreams be sweet, y'all.

Emmie: "His wife is still in Thailand at the moment"

Mindful, does his fiancee know about his wife?[/i

Hahaha! What I get for writing too fast! Yes, wife-to-be.

I meant to mention, he's an Oklahoma farm boy, tatted up, and from looking at him, you'd never expect he's been living in Asia, and world-traveled. Good kid.

Whoa! Driving home, we could see that the grass fire - which around Noon was clearly huge in the next county, has spread over the hills and approaching us. Wider, and closer, than I've seen a brush/grass/forest fire in forty years (off and on) of living here.

We'll probably be okay... but lots of damage.

Forecast rain, you can't come too soon!

CMU VET: Keep in mind that Marla Maples, Trump's ex (Yeah I Know) said that he's the best fvck she ever had.

That's so sad.

Captain Whitebread: I think this is the first time I ever got in the top 10. My life is kinda sorta complete, or somethin'

Not until you're a #1, Cap'n. It's spectacular. Like, ten whole seconds of fame. On Cable TV.

Short, stubby fingers. Photographic proof!

In before 100, maybe? Gotta quit early tonight, anyway. Got a tomorrow awaiting.

♥

Unusual day. Friend of our daughter's is getting married. He has asked me to officiate their nuptials.

I've been a gen-u-wine registered minister for nearly forty-five years, but almost no one knows - Universal Life Church, FWIW - yeah - and I've never been asked to officiate at baptism, wedding, funeral, or anything else, even by friends & family who know.

I might get stage fright and faint.

So, I had a serious preliminary interview with him today. His wife is still in Thailand at the moment - no, no, it's not what you're thinking, you Morons - they're serious and in love - so I'll talk with the two of them when she's in the USA next month.

She wanted someone to marry them who was older than they, married only once, and had children - it's a Thai thing. I happen to qualify. As far as that goes.

Talked about devotion, fidelity, children, faith (they're both Buddhists!). Told him, whether they want to take advantage of it or not, I would consider myself their marital counselor for life.

Forced me to take myself seriously. That was different.

Thanks, daughter, for the recommendation.

I just realized, we didn't start the book thread with a library photo. How long has it been since that happened?

Or was it just too hard to top the Vatican?

Wait, in that picture, which one is Trump and which is Weirddave?

And which one was the cardboard cutout?

/obligatory snark

...It was great being in a crowd of people who are passionate about conservative principles....

But... but... all I read on here is how CPAC is useless and no good and taken over by the GOPe! You sure you were at CPAC?

Enjoyed your report, Weirddave.

Haven't seen what LI has yet, but there are videos at
Nice Deb
http://bit.ly/1OX05Kq
and
Noisy Room
http://bit.ly/1SsJG7j

OneEyedJack: I do remember how she was disparaged for her "just say no" motto on drug use. The left howled and mocked her for that, because...I don't know why.

Maybe they felt like there should have been some huge new government program with massive funding to go with that.

Man, I really hate to do this - and waited a bit before posting - because I might be mistaken as saying something disparaging about the late First Lady, but since it was brought up...

If Carrie Nation wants to stand out there with the Salvation Army band and preach against boozing, more power to her. When she and her moralizing ilk attack the bars with an axe, or get a Constitutional Amendment passed prohibiting booze, that's a whole different matter.

It wasn't Nancy's saying "Just say no" - it's that her husband was in charge of (admittedly inherited) the "huge government program with massive funding" that locked up people and ruined lives and families for smoking a little mother nature. (Yes, and harder drugs.)

Blanket Prohibitionism is always the solution worse than the problem it's intended to treat. Unconstitutional, in the sense of presuming guilt without an actual transgression.

People who drink or do drugs, generally speaking, it's a personal matter, not a transgression. Self-abusive levels are a matter for one's family, church, and might be a matter for one's boss, but not for law.

People who drive drunk, deal to kids, barf and pass out on the street, are belligerent or threatening to others - whether because they are narcotized or not - are transgressing, and a matter for law.

Legalization can go too far the other way, when repeated drunk drivers are let off with a slap on the wrist, when pot candy ends up in kids' hands, and worse, enforcement of laws against transgression is too lenient.

The poor, drunk, drug abusing, and demented we will have with us always, and our current vast epidemic of abuse is a failure of religion, of education, of economy, the degradation of family and neighborhoods, and understandable disregard for big and unbalanced government and consequent disdain for the rule of law.

"Just say no" is fine, upstanding moral advice, a great generalization. Nancy didn't deserve the horrid disparagement she got; it was, for a few of us, simply that The Government, her husband's administration and others, held a gun to your head while saying it, that made her statement difficult to appreciate.

I'll stop there. It's all be said (and argued against) a million times for decades.

It's early in the day, but I think I'll grab a beer and toast her memory. And Ron's.

Addenda to How the Urantia Foundation Lost Their Copyright:

The non-profit Foundation's primary purpose was to preseve the text inviolate, entirely understandable for a supposed divine revelation, right? There is an apocryphal story that the revelators told the people preparing to publish the book, that the first fifty years were the most dangerous period in which the book might be corrupted and its message distorted. The lawsuit was settled, and the copyright voided, just under fifty years after the original publication. Today, the Foundation's version, while not exclusively theirs, can be seen to be the original, basically unaltered text.

Back in the pre-Internet days, I visited the Foundation and talked with the fellow who was in charge of preparing the official digital version. He pointed out instances where, in print, a compound word might be divided across lines, and decisions had to be made whether it would be hyphenated or not in the flow of digital text. Interesting process, trying to stick to the original text but dealing with nuances of formatting.

Note that there is no going back to the original papers on anything - after the first printing, the "handwritten" originals were all burned, presumably to avoid their becoming objects of veneration.

There were many changes made to the text by the Foundation in various printings. These were mostly very minor, punctuation or typos corrected, with just a very few that altered meaning. The typo "hestitate" persisted into the eleventh printing. The phrase "in the manger" - regarding the magi visiting Jesus - was removed and later returned.

At first, the Foundation just made the changes on the sly. As the readers discovered and objected, they eventually tipped in a page noting changes made, without explanation. By the time the copyright was lost and the Foundation had their own digital copy of the book online (Urantia.org), all of these changes had been set by a committee tasked with "final" decisions. Hyperlink footnotes at each change lead to notes on the history of the changes, and why they were made, which seems reasonable and honest.

Oh yeah. The era of internal dispute has ended, and while some bitter feelings remain, mostly the factions have been reconciled. I think. I haven't kept up with the "movement" since the lawsuit was settled.

For some time, I've threatened to write this up for the book thread. Now I've done it. As usual with my lengthier posts, I've waited to post it late in the thread - hundreds of comments, some topic drift, and new thread up.

©

How the Urantia Foundation Lost Their Copyright

Generally speaking, books are meant to inform, educate, inspire, or entertain.

Some books are meant to be believed.

Only a few extreme kooks would think there ever was a Middle Earth with wizards and hobbits. People are expected to believe that Joseph Smith used magic glasses to read golden tablets under an angel's tutelage. The Gospels challenge the reader, even when some parts might be considered less than fully valid, to accept that the life and teachings and person of Jesus are fundamentally historically true.

§ Origination

The Urantia Book (UB) purports to be written by angels, et al., and claims to be nothing less than the fifth epochal revelation of truth to our world.

The UB can be read for amusement, inspiration, perspective, and theological insight, without being "believed in," but the way it presents itself does challenge one to believe or not. Much like Jesus: He might be considered merely a Great Teacher or prophet, but that whole claim to Sonship with God, pre-existence and knowledge of life beyond this one, forces one to choose between dismissal of him as deluded ("Messiah complex"), or to accept belief in his claims (assuming one regards these claims as actually his, not as ex post facto Christian interpolations).

The Urantia Papers - 196 papers and a Foreword - which comprise the book originated in the 1930s and 1940s, but the Urantia Foundation, Chicago, didn't publish and copyright the book until 1955. The book has no listed author, just the various beings to whom the papers are attibuted, a Chief of Seraphim, a Divine Counselor, and others, all orders of personalities defined in the papers.

§ Promulgation

For decades, the book was quietly promoted by word-of-mouth. Readers, sometimes on their own, often through the encouragement of the Foundation-authorized Urantia Brotherhood, formed living-room groups to read and study the book. Some regional "societies" were formed, but private study was the main impetus.

By the 1970s and 1980s, the book began to take off, expanding beyond the sedate and straight original readership to include a large hippish, new-agey following, who had their own ideas about promotion and popularization of the revelation. (There have been personality cults - including one end-of-the-world faction - and those alleging to continue contact with the divine beings, channeling new and supplemental papers, but I won't go into that extreme fringe. The vast majority just study the original work.)

At a certain point, for reasons too complicated to bother with here, but in typical human fashion, there came a political split amongst the readership. As an example of the depth of the division, the Brotherhood was de-authorized by the Foundation, forming their own unofficial Fellowship, while the Foundation formed a new Brotherhood.

Importantly for my purpose here, while various factions disputed handling of the revelation, all basically adhered to its authenticity.

§ Litigation

Some bootleg versions of the book, and other matters, led to lawsuits, the most prominent of which dragged on for years, as the Foundation sought to enforce its copyrights and restrict the proliferation of the papers in other forms, translations, and the newly-arising digital format.

It emerged in court that the titles and sub-titles of the papers were humanly composed. However, although the Foundation's lawyers came very close to claiming otherwise, in the end, they had to testify that the papers had no human authorship. (I will not here go into either the skeptics' arguments for human authorship nor the available information regarding the mostly-mysterious origins of the papers.)

It was this admission by the Foundation of no human authorship that finally ended the legal disputes. In the end, it was the very believability of the superhuman origin of the papers that undid the Foundation's claim to exclusivity: the courts ruled that the Urantia Papers were a "found object," that could not, and should never have been, copyrighted!

©

me, re 5th Element: by breaking an ashtray

*rethinks*

Or water glass. Whatever.

Posted by: naturalfake - Disguised space Alien What Always Eats the Marshmallow with Soy Sauce!

Never mind the comment... that's a great crossing-the-memes tagline.