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Post by PeterB on Mar 3, 2008 0:43:55 GMT -4
Yes, as Gillianren said, it's rubbish. And yes, I checked out the site. I see it's based on the claims and methodology of Michael Drosnin, whose work has been thoroughly debunked. If you need some material to confirm this, please go to cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/torah.htmlEssentially, these are the problems: 1. Hebrew has no vowels. This means a stream of consonants can represent a wide range of words, giving the Bible Coder more room to find meaning where he wants. 2. We're only told about the messages the Bible Coder wants us to hear. Because few of us know Hebrew, we're not likely to find out what messages the Bible Coder found but didn't tell us about, like "bblcdsbllcks", which obviously comes out as "Bible Code is bollocks". 3. Similar messages can be found in other books. The classic example is when Drosnin challenged his critics to find messages about him in "Moby Dick". They duly found a message in that book suggesting he'd be murdered, using exactly Drosnin's process. The lesson is this: take a large enough pool of letters and search in all sorts of directions, and you'll find letters which run together to make words. And as the pool increases in size, the number of words increases at an exponential rate. Conclusion: The Bible Code is bollocks.
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Post by PeterB on Feb 1, 2008 20:41:11 GMT -4
It was interesting to read the comments on the link that Obviousman provided. At first the comment "What if they'd written racist comments on their cars and driven into Harlem" seems a thoughtful response. But the difference is that racist comments are illegal, and nothing written on the cars was illegal.
What does it say about someone's maturity when their reaction to seeing people express different attitudes is to throw stones at them? One thing to be said for living in a city is that you can't escape from people who think differently from you, and if you were as thin-skinned as those Alabaman good ol' boys, you'd be in a lot of trouble.
Having said that, the lawyers in New Orleans weren't much better. Their attitude seemed to be that if you had enough money to afford to be charitable, it was worthwhile trying to scam some more out of you.
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Post by PeterB on Feb 1, 2008 20:05:09 GMT -4
Yes, I saw that episode on the TV too. I laughed at their discomfiture, but it also made me shake my head at the behaviour of the locals (both those in Alabama and those in New Orleans).
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Post by PeterB on Feb 22, 2008 11:33:33 GMT -4
Ginnie said:
Jason replied:
Given that police are rarely present when a murder takes place, by your argument they can never know who a murderer is either.
Jason, may I suggest you visit a few Innocence Project and related web-sites to read some of the stories there.
The classic Australian example of wrongful conviction for murder was Lindy Chamberlain, who was accused of killing her daughter Azaria at Ayers Rock back in 1980. In 1982 she was convicted, despite serious doubts about the forensic evidence, and some evidence supporting her claim that a dingo took the baby. Her appeals went all the way to the High Court (the highest court in Australia), but were rejected every time. It wasn't until 1986 that she was released, and until 1988 that she was exonerated.
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Post by PeterB on Feb 22, 2008 11:15:33 GMT -4
Jason said:
Execution for murder is a modern example of "an eye for an eye". Out of interest, do you support punishments for other crimes being equivalent to the crime committed?
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Post by PeterB on Feb 15, 2008 12:02:51 GMT -4
If you are against the death penalty , no matter what the behavior of the person or the nature of the crime, then surely you must be totally against any war, under any circumstances, right? G'day Ginnie I'm opposed to the death penalty. That doesn't mean I'm opposed to all forms of killing. I accept that there are times when killing is necessary. I accept there are times when being responsible for someone's death shouldn't be punished. If someone tried to break into my house, I'd use what force I thought was necessary to defend myself and my family. And by corollary, if some country tried to attack my country, or an allied country, I'd have no problem with the necessary use of force. That's why I had no problem with the invasion of Afghanistan, but why I've always been ambivalent about the invasion of Iraq.
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Post by PeterB on Feb 15, 2008 11:54:05 GMT -4
Jason said:
No, I’m not saying it’s never possible to establish someone’s guilt. I’m saying that innocent people get found guilty, and that innocent people get executed. I’m disturbed by the prospect that I could be executed before I get a chance to establish my innocence. I’m also disturbed that you don’t seem to see this.
If innocent people are wrongly convicted, then jailed, they can be pardoned, released and, theoretically, compensated. If innocent people are wrongly convicted, then executed, you can’t resurrect them.
Well, you may think it sends that message, but I don’t think it does. In any case, as I said above, there are many people who’ve been found guilty of murder who are actually innocent. Surely you can’t just assume that a person should be executed because they’ve been found guilty.
Absolutely.
I think you’re missing my point here, so please excuse a bit of explanation of what I’m driving at.
Culpability in the case of a killing can exist anywhere on a scale from None to Total. Accidentally dropping a gun which goes off and kills a family member is an example of the former, and a calculated, cold-blooded murder is an example of the latter. In between these two extremes are all sorts of cases, for example, killing a pedestrian while drunk driving, a violent husband going too far in beating his wife, a battered wife killing her violent husband, or accidentally, recklessly or deliberately giving someone the wrong medication.
Now I’m assuming you’d say that at some levels of culpability, a killer shouldn’t be executed, while at other levels of culpability, a killer should be executed. This means there’s some cross-over point, where culpability becomes such that the killer should be executed. This suggests you could have two cases where the levels of culpability are very close, yet one killer gets executed and the other doesn’t. I don’t think it’s possible to assess culpability that accurately, which then leads to the hypothetical situation I described, in which less culpable killers are executed and more culpable killers aren’t.
Once again you’re missing my point. I’m not talking about the absolute numbers of rich or poor people who are convicted. I’m talking about the likelihood of being convicted. I don’t have the stats, and it might make an interesting project for a law student, but I understand that if you get a good lawyer, you’re far less likely to be executed than if you have a court-appointed lawyer. And the people most likely to be able to get good lawyers are rich people.
Fair enough, I won’t press this one, as I’m not familiar with the process.
Yes, there might be a deterrent effect in that case, but there’d also be less time for an innocent person to establish their innocence. In any case, my understanding is that the greatest deterrence to committing crime is having a high expectation of being apprehended.
Executing an innocent person ensures they’ll never live a crime-free life. And as I mentioned earlier, imprisoning someone for life is another way of ensuring they won’t commit crimes again. As for committing greater crimes, that makes it sound like you’re advocating the execution of people who haven’t yet murdered someone, for fear they might. I hope this isn’t what you mean.
Thank you.
Having said all that, I’m a Skeptic, and as a result I don’t like absolute positions. My opposition to the death penalty is one such absolute position, and as a result I like to think I look carefully at the evidence on both sides of this issue when discussing the issue.
But I’m also intrigued that you didn’t respond to my comment about the number of Christian people who support the death penalty. After all, there are many cases of Jesus either teaching forgiveness or practicing it, whether in the Lord’s Prayer, or the line about whoever is without sin casting the first stone, or forgiving seventy times seven times, or taking the log out of your own eye, and so on. Why do so many Christians not see it in themselves to forgive a murderer execution at least?
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Post by PeterB on Feb 14, 2008 1:35:11 GMT -4
If you believe the death penalty is always wrong, is it because you believe that nothing justifies ever taking a human life, or is it something else about the death penalty - how it is carried out or the errors it may result in? I object to the death penalty on several grounds. The first one I alluded to in the previous post - in order to ask the question of whether the man in question deserved the death penalty, you had to assume his guilt. In other words, your question was a hypothetical one. The problem is that life isn't as clear cut as hypothetical questions, and it's rare that you can confirm someone's guilt with as much certainty as you had in your question. Put simply, despite the processes, checks and balances built into trials, innocent people are often found guilty, whether because of lying or mistaken witnesses, shoddy forensic work or poor quality lawyers. And that means innocent people get executed. And yes, people need to understand that forensic evidence in real life isn't necessarily as straightforward as it is on "CSI". A second objection is the moral balance. If it's wrong to take a person's life, why is executing okay? What does executing achieve that putting a person in prison for the rest of their life doesn't achieve? Following on from that, it disturbs me that so many Christian people approve the death penalty, despite what Jesus had to say about forgiveness. Countries which are more secular than America have been able to give up the death penalty. A third objection is the absolute nature of execution. I assume you'd accept there are circumstances in which killing someone should not result in a murder conviction. Culpability can be placed anywhere on a sliding scale from none to total, but when deciding to execute someone, you have to be willing to say that, potentially, someone else who was an iota less culpable gets to live. The problem is that I don't think any human process can assess culpability that accurately. The result will almost certainly be that someone will be executed, while someone more culpable won't be. A fourth objection is that poor people are dispropotionately represented among those executed. I get the impression that being able to afford a half-decent lawyer goes a long way to saving you from execution. A fifth objection is that (apparently, I'm quoting others here) juries are more likely to acquit people if they know the death penalty will be enforced in case of guilt. This can result in more guilty people going free. I know that I'd have a hard time convicting someone if I knew they'd die if they were found guilty; even at second hand, that person's death would be on my conscience. A sixth objection is that I understand there's no particular evidence that it reduces crime rates, murder rates or rape rates. I know some people promote the death penalty on the grounds that it ensures the criminal won't offend again, which must surely as a result reduce murder or rape rates. But there are other ways of ensuring the person doesn't offend again, such as keeping them in jail longer, or working harder with youth offenders to break the crime cycle (and thus preventing the first murder).
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Post by PeterB on Feb 14, 2008 0:58:22 GMT -4
Throw aside the possibility of human error in the trial and conviction for the moment. I said, if this is correct, not "if we think it is correct" or "if he is convicted in a court". In other words, if this person really did recruit mentally impared women and hand them over to Al Qaeda to blow up hundreds of others, would he be worthy of the death penalty? If you could be certain there was no error in the legal process, would I accept the idea of executing him? Probably not. I'm with Al Johnston and The Supreme Canuck - I think the death penalty is wrong. And in answering this way I'm assuming you're talking issues generally, rather than the specifics of this case in particular. Even so, my answer remains the same. But once we look at the specifics of the case, things certainly get a lot murkier, as is usually the case in real life. Was he coerced? Was he threatened with the same fate as his predecessor, who was murdered for not going along with the terrorists' plot? Did they threaten his family? And if he did go along with the plan, that suggests he'd be the sort of person willing to lie under oath, and claim he *was* coerced. Perhaps the man has no living relatives, went along with the plan willingly, and produced a martyr video in which he confessed; in which case you might like to confirm he wasn't brainwashed, or mentally ill himself...
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Post by PeterB on Oct 21, 2007 21:43:45 GMT -4
Do you want the Turkish government to pay the Armenians reperations or something? Because of what the Ottoman Empire did? The Turkish attitude to the Armenian Massacre is similar to that of Holocaust Deniers, and they use similar arguments. I dare say that if today's German government had a similar attitude towards the Holocaust, it would be roundly condemned. I certainly don't think the Turks need to pay reparations, but they need to accept the reality and intent of what happened.
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Post by PeterB on Oct 16, 2007 2:11:36 GMT -4
Well without trying to be to harsh about it, most of the people that took part are well and truely dead, too many people in that part of the world keep living in the past (too many over here do too.) Surely it is better to have the events acknowledged as being wrong (which Turkey seems to be willing to do since they are in agreement that they happend) then get on with the future rather than pouting over the past. The problem, PhantomWolf, is that, to my knowledge, the Turks in general deny the reality of the Armenian Genocide. They accept that many Armenians died of malnutrition at the time, but they deny that there was any intent to massacre Armenian population. This sort of distinction is similar to the one put about by some Holocaust Deniers - they accept that some Jews died, but claim it was all due to disease rather than killing with intent.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 29, 2007 22:51:27 GMT -4
In the Shakespeare play, which I saw a performance of last year, Cleopatra commits suicide by viper. Is that how she actually did it? As far as I know, it's true. Whether a viper or some other venomous snake I'm not sure. I have a vague suspicion she chose a snake sacred to the native Egyptians, suggesting she was thinking of how the native population would think of her. The story goes that she had a couple of venomous snakes put into a jar of figs, and kept reaching in for another fig. Eventually one of the snakes bit her. I think the idea was supposed to be that she wouldn't know when it would happen. I'll see if I can find any specific references.
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Post by PeterB on Aug 29, 2007 3:39:22 GMT -4
As mentioned in earlier threads, I have a monthly spot on radio in which I discuss various historical topics. I prepare a 2-3 page document for the talk, and I've posted these to Apollohoax to provide something different to discuss. This time, I decided to use the anniversary of the death of Cleopatra (a bit late, admittedly) to discuss her life and legacy.
= = = =
It’s one of the most expensive movies ever made (taking into account inflation). And behind the scenes, the actors playing two of history’s most famous lovers were involved in their own sizzling love affair. The actors were, of course, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the lovers whose parts they were playing were Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and her Roman paramour, Marcus Antonius, better known to us as Mark Antony.
The 12th of August marked the anniversary of the end of Cleopatra’s life, a little over 2000 years ago. It’s a life worth knowing more about, not just because the myths which have built up over the years have disguised the real person behind them, but because she was a remarkable person in her own right.
The two main myths about Cleopatra are that she was Egyptian, and that she was incredibly beautiful. In reality, although she was Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt, she wasn’t Egyptian – she was Greek. And although she successfully seduced two of the most powerful men in Rome, she certainly wasn’t renowned for her attractiveness.
So how does a plain looking Greek woman come to rule Egypt and get important Romans into bed?
To answer these questions, we need to look at some Egyptian, Greek and Roman history. And hopefully at the end you’ll have a new insight into these cultures, cultures which still fascinate us today.
The Egypt of Pharaoh Ramses the Great, in the 13th century BC, was already an ancient culture. But it was also nearing the end of its greatness. In the 11th century BC, Egypt fragmented into competing principalities. From the 10th to the 7th century BC, Egypt was ruled by a succession of foreign Pharaohs and kingdoms – Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians. In the mid-7th century BC, the Assyrian king, in need of a loyal ally, proclaimed a native Egyptian prince as Pharaoh, and his descendents ruled Egypt for over a century. Egypt was then conquered by Persia in the late 6th century BC, although it successfully revolted a couple of times. Then, in the late 4th century BC, the Persian Empire, including Egypt, was conquered by the army Alexander the Great, King of Macedon.
After Alexander’s death in 323BC, his generals fought over his empire, eventually splitting it into three successor kingdoms – Macedon and Greece, Syria and the East, and Egypt. Egypt was ruled by Ptolemy, one of the older and shrewder of Alexander’s companions. Ptolemy and his descendents then ruled Egypt for the next 300 years.
Ptolemy had a conservative strategic outlook. He was satisfied to rule only Egypt, given its considerable wealth. He only looked to control land beyond Egypt in order to secure Egypt’s borders. He secured his rule over Egypt by encouraging Greek immigration to Alexandria, Ptolemy’s capital city, and founded by Alexander the Great as he passed through Egypt. He also had himself portrayed as a traditional Pharaoh to the native population, in statues which are essentially identical to those produced centuries earlier. The kingdom’s prestige was also increased by Ptolemy’s creation of the Library of Alexandria, which would for centuries attract many of the brightest teachers and thinkers in the Greek-speaking world.
But Ptolemy’s descendents squandered his legacy. The kingdom remained secure for a century after Ptolemy’s death, but after that, ever more frequent squabbles within the ruling family caused civil strife. The strife was worsened by the dynasty’s gradual adoption of a practice previously used by native Egyptian Pharaonic families – institutional incest: brothers and sisters would marry, producing offspring who did the same.
Egypt’s decline occurred as the Roman Republic began throwing its weight around the Mediterranean world. From a strategic point of view, Egypt and Rome had good reasons to be allies: Rome was willing to pay good money for Egyptian wheat, to feed its urban poor and maintain domestic peace, and Rome had fought and defeated the other Successor kingdoms of Macedon and Syria, which were Egypt’s rivals. But the Romans had rarely been able to resist sticking their noses into the internal affairs of their neighbours, and the more Egypt suffered from civil war, the more likely that Rome would intervene to protect what it saw as its own interests.
It was into this world that Cleopatra was born in 69BC. Her father, Ptolemy XII, was an illegitimate son of Ptolemy IX, chosen to be king because all other descendents had been killed. Ptolemy XII had consciously pursued a pro-Roman foreign policy, but this didn’t stop Rome from annexing the island of Cyprus in 58BC, until then ruled by Egypt. When Ptolemy didn’t protest, the citizens of Alexandria rebelled and overthrew him, installing his daughter Berenice as queen. Ptolemy regained his throne three years later with the assistance of Roman legionaries, having Berenice executed. When he died, in 51BC, he specified that Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy XIII should be joint monarchs. Cleopatra was 18, and had reportedly already survived at least one murder attempt, from within her own family. Ptolemy XIII was 12.
At this point it’s worth considering the sort of education that Cleopatra would have received. Traditionally, Greek women weren’t educated. They were second class citizens who, like slaves and resident aliens, didn’t have the vote – politics was strictly for the chaps. But despite this lack of political power, there wasn’t an intrinsic prohibition against education; one of the pupils at Plato’s Academy in the early 4th century BC was a woman. The main practical problem was that few women had the independent wealth to afford such an education. Obviously, in the case of Cleopatra, belonging to the ruling family of Egypt made cost a non-issue. Likewise, she would have had access to the best Greek teachers at the Library of Alexandria.
Cleopatra took the trouble to learn Egyptian, and it’s said that she was the first member of her family to do this. That she took the trouble to do so endeared her to the native population. But the fact that she felt the need to do so suggests that the native population was a force to be reckoned with, something which had become increasingly apparent with more frequent native rebellions in the preceding century.
Within months of Cleopatra and Ptolemy ascending to the throne, joint rule broke down. Cleopatra tried to kick Ptolemy off the throne, but was herself unseated. She made an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, but then in 48BC, external matters spectacularly intervened.
At this time, the Roman Republic had been embroiled in a civil war of its own for a year. The Republican army, led by Pompey, had been defeated in Greece by the army of the rebel Julius Caesar. Pompey fled to Egypt in search of sanctuary. Ptolemy XIII, presumably seeking Caesar’s favour, ordered Pompey to be murdered. Two days later, he presented Pompey’s head to Caesar. It was a dramatic miscalculation. Caesar ordered his troops to seize Alexandria and declared that he’d arbitrate the dispute between Ptolemy and Cleopatra.
Cleopatra took her chance, and had herself smuggled into Caesar’s presence, hidden in a rolled up carpet. It may have been typical of Cleopatra, but she must also have known her gesture would appeal to Caesar’s own sense of the dramatic. From that point on, Caesar was Cleopatra’s man, despite an age difference of thirty years between them, although it took several months of fighting before Caesar’s legionaries were able to overcome Ptolemy’s forces. Ptolemy was killed, and Cleopatra confirmed as queen, sharing the throne with another younger brother, Ptolemy XIV. Nine months after first meeting Caesar, Cleopatra gave birth to a son, officially also named Ptolemy, but generally known as Caesarion.
Within a couple of years, Caesar had won the civil war, had himself proclaimed dictator for life, and been assassinated. Shortly after, Ptolemy XIV also died, probably poisoned by Cleopatra to make way for Caesarion. Caesar’s death prompted another Roman civil war, this time between Caesar’s lieutenants and his assassins. His lieutenants, his heir Octavian and his chief general Mark Antony, quickly won, and divided Roman territory between themselves. Antony took the eastern provinces, and headed for Egypt.
Antony had grown up with a wild reputation, and throughout his service to Caesar he continued to display boorish behaviour in Roman company. But he quickly became besotted by Cleopatra (fourteen years his junior), and their relationship produced three children. He used Egypt’s wealth to fund an unsuccessful invasion of Parthia, and Cleopatra seems to have been willing to indulge his financial excesses. There is a story told, possibly apocryphal, that Cleopatra bet Antony she could spend a fortune on a feast. He scoffed when she had a plain meal served, at which point Cleopatra is supposed to have dissolved a pearl ear-ring in vinegar and drunk it.
Such stories didn’t go down well in Rome, where Octavian was able to assemble both legal and moral arguments to justify war against Antony and Cleopatra, although the real reason for his attack was purely expedient – there is little doubt he wanted to rule the entire Roman world. In 31BC Octavian’s fleet defeated that of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in Greece, with Antony and Cleopatra both escaping to Egypt. The following year, as Octavian’s armies closed in on Alexandria, Antony committed suicide. A week later, suspecting that she’d be put on display as a trophy of war by Octavian, Cleopatra likewise committed suicide. Octavian then had Caesarion murdered, although Cleopatra’s children by Antony were spared, living out their lives in obscurity in Rome.
What was it about Cleopatra that so entranced Caesar and Antony? One thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t her physical beauty. In that respect, having her played in movies by famous beauties as Elizabeth Taylor and Salma Hayek is way off the mark. Contemporary historians describe her in rather unremarkable terms. But lest anyone think this is just Roman libel, Egyptian coins also show an unflattering portrait, with a bulbous nose and often a scrawny neck.
Instead, two factors come to mind. Firstly, there was the fact that she was the intellectual equal of Caesar and Antony, despite being female and considerably younger than them. Roman women, like most Greek women, had no education or political power. They were expected to remain silent in the presence of men, unless spoken to, and to bear any hardship with stoic resignation. Adhering to these standards brought honour upon the family. Cleopatra would have been a heady contrast to stuffy, honourable Roman matrons, proof that a woman could relate to a man on an intellectual basis as well as a physical.
Secondly, she was a ruling queen, someone who wielded as much power as Caesar or Antony ever did. Many women find power an aphrodisiac, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that men might find it so as well, especially when they hadn’t experienced it before.
And this is probably the most important legacy Cleopatra leaves to us – that women can aspire to the same heights of power as men, without needing to rely on physical beauty to achieve or wield it.
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Post by PeterB on Sept 3, 2007 20:02:46 GMT -4
Yes, my dear wife is under instructions to get as much sleep as she can.
And the things you put on babies are nappies, at least here in Australia.
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Post by PeterB on Sept 3, 2007 2:16:57 GMT -4
Your wife is a little bit in the Pudding Club? Yes, she has a couple of buns in the oven. Sheesh, I hope so! :-)
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