"Victory belongs to the most persevering. "
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
Muscles strained and veins popped as a determined frown spread across my face. I put all of my manly strength forth. The thing held fast, but I was determined that I would not be beaten. Taking a deep breath, I lunged forward again, bending down and putting all of my 145 pounds behind it over and over. I trembled. It trembled. These are the times that vex a man's soul. Manhood is at stake. To fail now is the ultimate insult against all that is masculine. Not me. Not now. I would not fail. "Yield! Yield! Yield!" I secretly thought, hoping that my mental shout would somehow affect things. I was almost outdone. Almost out of energy, I felt both fatigue and pain set in. With one last effort, I summoned all within me, calling upon every last muscle cell, every ounce of willpower, the inner strength that has carried countless men through such ordeals. For all mankind I let a silent cry escape my lips in this last all or nothing attempt. I felt it give! Ever so slightly, I felt its unyielding hold loosen. I felt it open slightly and then I knew I had it. I knew I had won. There comes a surge of energy with the knowledge that you will not fail, that manhood will be preserved. I had felt it give! Spurred by the newfound confidence, I continued my relentless pull. With a loud "POP" it gave up, surrendering to the greater force. I felt a sole drop of sweat travel down my left cheek. That's OK, I had stood the test, met the challenge, and passed. Exhausted but valiant, I smiled in satisfaction.
I looked at my Angie smiling with joy and surprise. She could see eons of primordial testosterone powered chest thumping in my eyes. She was proud of her man. With a smug look of confidence, I raised my hand with the evidence of my victory firmly encased within my grip. She took the evidence of my triumph quietly acquiescing to the greater strength.
I leaned back and arrogantly pondered the accomplishment.
My left eyebrow rose slightly as I saw my Angie grinning.
I was scared internally as I masked my anxiety, wondering my true strength. I wondered silently,
"Why in the world do they make wine bottles so hard to open?"
For all the men that have had to open wine bottles in front of their ladies as well as their friends. You understand.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Just for some fun...
Count every "F" in the following text:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS
Click Comments for answer...
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS
Click Comments for answer...
Do You Remember The Titans?
Watch Who You Callin’ Nigga’ Fool, If You Aint Careful, That’s All You Eva’ Gon’ Be!
READ THIS FIRST
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/17/nagin.city/index.html
“A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.”
~Saul Alinsky
“One day our descendants will think it’s incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”
~Franklin Thomas
Can you believe it? Can you possibly believe that it has been 140 years since Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and our country still has these issues and I am bloggin about them? It is understandable I guess. Nobody knows how long it will take, if ever, to be completely washed away from the horrendous inhumanity that occurred prior to the emancipation proclamation. Well, washed away should never occur but, understanding and moving forward towards embracing our differences and utilizing them to prosper should. We ARE created equal. Ok, well maybe black men can naturally jump higher, but for the most part men are men…and women are women.
Socioeconomic as well as life experiences take a huge part of who we become both as individuals and as a collective community whether it is on a city block scale or a nation as a whole. But it baffles me still to think we are that different in our minds. We know racism is wrong, but yet we choose to stay ignorant. We choose to not understand. We choose to live the way we do and fight for everything that is not working for a better tomorrow. A great leader once said, "I am doing today what most won't, so that tomorrow I can have a life that most don't." If we were forced to live together and understand, we would overcome because we were forced to just like in the movie “Remember the Titans”.
It is not an easy thing to do. It seems that ever since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, there has been a decline of monumental black leaders. There have been great speaking, intelligent black men working in this country to further themselves…but not as a black “movement”. They have all had their own agendas. Which can be looked at like, I did it, so can you…but that is not what leadership is. Realistically we know what our parents tell us…if you had parents, but who ever raised you even if you were in a foster home or orphanage, hopefully, somewhere along the way somebody said, “You can be whatever you want to be.” If not, know this, YOU can be whatever you want to be. So with that out of the way, back to the subject. You now know you can be whatever you want and there still aren’t any great black leaders with the followers that MLK or Malcolm had. So now a great movement that worked or was working and changed so much in the ignorant thinking of white America came to a crashing halt because of an assassination. That movement needs to find a heartbeat again because America is falling apart. We can not do this separately. We need all races and sexes combined to become Captain Planet.
Really though, there is a black movement going on in America and sadly it is seemingly trying to separate blacks from whites and totally destroy the very work by one of the greatest men to ever live. Racism is just ignorant. Separatism is just ignorant. You cant make it on your own and we cant make it on our own.
"I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality." My main man MLK. That is a great leader with a positive outlook. Al Sharpton's outlook..."If black people are unemployed it's lazy, if white people are unemployed it's a depression." This is the “black leaders” outlook of today and I am sorry that they exist.
Oh and by the way Mayor Nagin, I mean Ray, you can’t apologize for me not taking the words you said the way you "meant" them. That is not an apology. Way to go American “leader”. I wonder what would have happened if I was mayor and said something of the same with white insinuations. I don't think that would fly too well. Don't feed on separation. Let's work together.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Paraskevidekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th
"It Is Bad Luck To Be Superstitious."
-Andrew W. Mathis
I just finished reading the abstract of a study published in the British Medical Journal in 1993 entitled "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?" With the aim of mapping "the relation between health, behaviour, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in the United Kingdom," its authors compared the ratio of traffic volume to the number of automobile accidents on two different days, Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th, over a period of years.
Incredibly, they found that in the region sampled, while consistently fewer people chose to drive their cars on Friday the 13th, the number of hospital admissions due to vehicular accidents was significantly higher than on "normal" Fridays.
Their conclusion:
"Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended."
Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th — must be pricking up their ears just now, buoyed by seeming evidence that their terror may not be so irrational after all. But it's unwise to take solace in a single scientific study — the only one of its kind, so far as I know — especially one so peculiar. I suspect these statistics have more to teach us about human psychology than the ill-fatedness of any particular date on the calendar.
The Most Widespread Superstition
The sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding reputations said to date from ancient times, and their inevitable conjunction from one to three times a year portends more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear. Some sources say it may be the most widespread superstition in the United States. Some people won't go to work on Friday the 13th; some won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on the date.
Just how many Americans at the turn of the millennium still suffer from this condition? According to Dr. Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of phobias (and coiner of the term "paraskevidekatriaphobia"), the figure may be as high as 21 million. If he's right, eight percent of Americans are still in the grips of a very old superstition.
Exactly how old is difficult to say, because determining the origins of superstitions is an imprecise science, at best. In fact, it's mostly guesswork.
Bad Friday
It is said: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams. Don't start a trip on Friday or you will have misfortune. If you cut your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Ships that set sail on a Friday will have bad luck – as in the tale of H.M.S. Friday ... One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell once and for all the widespread superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky. A special ship was commissioned, named "H.M.S. Friday." They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday, and was never seen or heard from again.
Some say Friday's bad reputation goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit. Adam bit, as we all learned in Sunday School, and they were both ejected from Paradise. Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified. It is therefore a day of penance for Christians.
In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day (later Hangman's Day in Britain), but in other pre-Christian cultures it was the sabbath, a day of worship, so those who indulged in secular or self-interested activities on that day could not expect to receive blessings from the gods — which may explain the lingering taboo on embarking on journeys or starting important projects on Fridays.
To complicate matters, these pagan associations were not lost on the early Church, which went to great lengths to suppress them. If Friday was a holy day for heathens, it must not be so for Christians — thus it became known in the Middle Ages as the "Witches' Sabbath," and thereby hangs another tale.
The Witch-Goddess
The name "Friday" came from a Norse deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility), or both, the two figures having become intertwined in the handing-down of myths over time (the etymology of "Friday" has been given both ways). Frigg/Freya corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans, who named the sixth day of the week in her honor "dies Veneris."
Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian Teutonic peoples, we are told — especially as a day to get married — because of its traditional association with love and fertility. All that changed when Christianity came along. The goddess of the sixth day — most likely Freya in this context, given that the cat was her sacred animal — was recast in post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated with evil doings.
Various legends developed in that vein, but one is of particular interest: As the story goes, the witches of the north used to observe their sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the dark of the moon. On one such occasion the Friday goddess, Freya herself, came down from her sanctuary in the mountaintops and appeared before the group, who numbered only 12 at the time, and gave them one of her cats, after which the witches' coven — and, by tradition, every properly-formed coven since — comprised exactly 13.
The Unluckiest Day of AllThe astute reader will have observed that while we have thus far insinuated any number of intriguing connections between events, practices and beliefs attributed to ancient cultures and the superstitious fear of Fridays and the number 13, we have yet to explain how, why or when these separate strands of folklore converged — if that is indeed what happened — to mark Friday the 13th as the unluckiest day of all.
There's a very simple reason for that: nobody really knows, though various explanations have been proposed.
The Knights Templar
One theory, most recently propounded in the novel "The Da Vinci Code," holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence, but a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago. The catastrophe was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam.
Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in "Tales of the Knights Templar" (Warner Books: 1995):
"On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake."
A Thoroughly Modern Phenomenon?
There are drawbacks to the "day so infamous" thesis, not the least of which is that it attributes great cultural significance to a relatively obscure historical event. Even more problematic, for this or any other theory positing premodern origins for Friday the 13th superstitions, is the fact that no one has been able to document the existence of such beliefs prior to the 19th century. If people who lived before the late 1800s perceived Friday the 13th as a day of special misfortune, no evidence has been found to prove it. Some scholars suspect the stigma is a thoroughly modern phenomenon exacerbated by 20th-century media hype.
Going back a hundred years, Friday the 13th doesn't even merit a mention in E. Cobham Brewer's voluminous 1898 edition of the "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," though one does find entries for "Friday, an Unlucky Day" and "Thirteen Unlucky." When the date of ill fate finally does make an appearance in later editions of the text, it is without extravagant claims as to the superstition's historicity or longevity. The very brevity of the entry is instructive — "A particularly unlucky Friday. See Thirteen" — implying that the extra dollop of misfortune attributed to Friday the 13th can be accounted for in terms of an accrual, so to speak, of bad omens: Unlucky Friday + Unlucky 13 = Unluckier Friday.
If that's the case, we're guilty of a misnomer for labeling Friday the 13th "the unluckiest day of all," a characterization perhaps better reserved for, say, a Friday the 13th on which one breaks a mirror, walks under a ladder and spies a black cat crossing one's path — a day, if there ever was one, best spent in the safety of one's own home with doors locked, shutters closed and fingers crossed.
Source:http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th.htm
-Andrew W. Mathis
I just finished reading the abstract of a study published in the British Medical Journal in 1993 entitled "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?" With the aim of mapping "the relation between health, behaviour, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in the United Kingdom," its authors compared the ratio of traffic volume to the number of automobile accidents on two different days, Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th, over a period of years.
Incredibly, they found that in the region sampled, while consistently fewer people chose to drive their cars on Friday the 13th, the number of hospital admissions due to vehicular accidents was significantly higher than on "normal" Fridays.
Their conclusion:
"Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended."
Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th — must be pricking up their ears just now, buoyed by seeming evidence that their terror may not be so irrational after all. But it's unwise to take solace in a single scientific study — the only one of its kind, so far as I know — especially one so peculiar. I suspect these statistics have more to teach us about human psychology than the ill-fatedness of any particular date on the calendar.
The Most Widespread Superstition
The sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding reputations said to date from ancient times, and their inevitable conjunction from one to three times a year portends more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear. Some sources say it may be the most widespread superstition in the United States. Some people won't go to work on Friday the 13th; some won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on the date.
Just how many Americans at the turn of the millennium still suffer from this condition? According to Dr. Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of phobias (and coiner of the term "paraskevidekatriaphobia"), the figure may be as high as 21 million. If he's right, eight percent of Americans are still in the grips of a very old superstition.
Exactly how old is difficult to say, because determining the origins of superstitions is an imprecise science, at best. In fact, it's mostly guesswork.
It is said: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams. Don't start a trip on Friday or you will have misfortune. If you cut your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Ships that set sail on a Friday will have bad luck – as in the tale of H.M.S. Friday ... One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell once and for all the widespread superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky. A special ship was commissioned, named "H.M.S. Friday." They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday, and was never seen or heard from again.
Some say Friday's bad reputation goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit. Adam bit, as we all learned in Sunday School, and they were both ejected from Paradise. Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified. It is therefore a day of penance for Christians.
In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day (later Hangman's Day in Britain), but in other pre-Christian cultures it was the sabbath, a day of worship, so those who indulged in secular or self-interested activities on that day could not expect to receive blessings from the gods — which may explain the lingering taboo on embarking on journeys or starting important projects on Fridays.
To complicate matters, these pagan associations were not lost on the early Church, which went to great lengths to suppress them. If Friday was a holy day for heathens, it must not be so for Christians — thus it became known in the Middle Ages as the "Witches' Sabbath," and thereby hangs another tale.
The name "Friday" came from a Norse deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility), or both, the two figures having become intertwined in the handing-down of myths over time (the etymology of "Friday" has been given both ways). Frigg/Freya corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans, who named the sixth day of the week in her honor "dies Veneris."
Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian Teutonic peoples, we are told — especially as a day to get married — because of its traditional association with love and fertility. All that changed when Christianity came along. The goddess of the sixth day — most likely Freya in this context, given that the cat was her sacred animal — was recast in post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated with evil doings.
Various legends developed in that vein, but one is of particular interest: As the story goes, the witches of the north used to observe their sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the dark of the moon. On one such occasion the Friday goddess, Freya herself, came down from her sanctuary in the mountaintops and appeared before the group, who numbered only 12 at the time, and gave them one of her cats, after which the witches' coven — and, by tradition, every properly-formed coven since — comprised exactly 13.
The Unluckiest Day of AllThe astute reader will have observed that while we have thus far insinuated any number of intriguing connections between events, practices and beliefs attributed to ancient cultures and the superstitious fear of Fridays and the number 13, we have yet to explain how, why or when these separate strands of folklore converged — if that is indeed what happened — to mark Friday the 13th as the unluckiest day of all.
There's a very simple reason for that: nobody really knows, though various explanations have been proposed.
One theory, most recently propounded in the novel "The Da Vinci Code," holds that it came about not as the result of a convergence, but a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago. The catastrophe was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam.
Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in "Tales of the Knights Templar" (Warner Books: 1995):
"On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake."
A Thoroughly Modern Phenomenon?
There are drawbacks to the "day so infamous" thesis, not the least of which is that it attributes great cultural significance to a relatively obscure historical event. Even more problematic, for this or any other theory positing premodern origins for Friday the 13th superstitions, is the fact that no one has been able to document the existence of such beliefs prior to the 19th century. If people who lived before the late 1800s perceived Friday the 13th as a day of special misfortune, no evidence has been found to prove it. Some scholars suspect the stigma is a thoroughly modern phenomenon exacerbated by 20th-century media hype.
Going back a hundred years, Friday the 13th doesn't even merit a mention in E. Cobham Brewer's voluminous 1898 edition of the "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," though one does find entries for "Friday, an Unlucky Day" and "Thirteen Unlucky." When the date of ill fate finally does make an appearance in later editions of the text, it is without extravagant claims as to the superstition's historicity or longevity. The very brevity of the entry is instructive — "A particularly unlucky Friday. See Thirteen" — implying that the extra dollop of misfortune attributed to Friday the 13th can be accounted for in terms of an accrual, so to speak, of bad omens: Unlucky Friday + Unlucky 13 = Unluckier Friday.
If that's the case, we're guilty of a misnomer for labeling Friday the 13th "the unluckiest day of all," a characterization perhaps better reserved for, say, a Friday the 13th on which one breaks a mirror, walks under a ladder and spies a black cat crossing one's path — a day, if there ever was one, best spent in the safety of one's own home with doors locked, shutters closed and fingers crossed.
Source:http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th.htm
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Readers Are Plentiful; Thinkers Are Rare
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-Arisotle
Before Aristotle, with his sheer brilliance, came up with the idea that Earth is in fact round, people believed that earth was flat. And then Ptolemy came up with the idea that Earth is the centre of the universe. Then it was the turn of Copernicus to state that the Sun is at the centre and planets revolve round the sun, shattering all the earlier theories to pieces. Then followed Galileo and Newton, each one of them proving a new theory, thereby confuting all prior beliefs.What if someday in the future, some intelligent scientist comes up with a new theory disproving all the facts we believe to be true? Then, there won't be anything called the gravitational force or quantum mechanics.Bodies don't attract each other. Neither is the Big Bang true. Space time correlation does not apply. Sure there is going to be someday, when the basic thing we believe to be true is going to be proved false. So, is it better not to believe in any theories that currently exist? Maybe we can prove more facts if we don't believe in already proven facts. If Aristotle believed that earth was flat, he might have never discovered that Earth is in fact round.
-Arisotle
Before Aristotle, with his sheer brilliance, came up with the idea that Earth is in fact round, people believed that earth was flat. And then Ptolemy came up with the idea that Earth is the centre of the universe. Then it was the turn of Copernicus to state that the Sun is at the centre and planets revolve round the sun, shattering all the earlier theories to pieces. Then followed Galileo and Newton, each one of them proving a new theory, thereby confuting all prior beliefs.What if someday in the future, some intelligent scientist comes up with a new theory disproving all the facts we believe to be true? Then, there won't be anything called the gravitational force or quantum mechanics.Bodies don't attract each other. Neither is the Big Bang true. Space time correlation does not apply. Sure there is going to be someday, when the basic thing we believe to be true is going to be proved false. So, is it better not to believe in any theories that currently exist? Maybe we can prove more facts if we don't believe in already proven facts. If Aristotle believed that earth was flat, he might have never discovered that Earth is in fact round.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Are You Qualified To Read This?
According to this, you need a 4th grade education to read this site. I wonder if this post will bump up my "syllables per sentence" ratio. Or maybe just the use of the word "ratio". Now that's superfluous and/or gratuitous.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
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