Never saw it coming.
Category Archives: The Atheist’s Pulpit
One believer’s view.
The cycle of the niche
I’ve written about it before. I’ll write about it again. Twice each year, we witness an alignment of light on a hallway niche soon after dawn. The next full alignment will be in about 10 days, but already the circle of light touches the niche for the first time since last October.
The wheel of time turns.
Another year used up beyond all recovery
We’re humans: we destroy things. Next year? More of the same or worse.
Attackers in India Rape Case to Be Charged With Murder
I have tried so hard to ignore this brutality, but from the first headline I’ve heard her screaming. This is the nadir in a year full of crimes against humanity. I’m sickened and furious, not just at these men or all men or India. How can any human being lose every iota of compassion and become such a monster. If we can’t prevent the endless abuse of more than half our world, we are despicable. Every single work of art and act of selflessness cannot balance the scale.
Attackers in India Rape Case to Be Charged With Murder – NYTimes.com
The woman, who has not been identified, has become of a symbol for the treatment of women in India, where rape is common and conviction rates for the crime are low. She boarded a bus with a male friend after watching a movie at a mall, and was raped and attacked with an iron rod by the men on the bus, who the police later said had been drinking and were on a “joy ride.”
She died Saturday morning in Singapore, where she had been flown for treatment after suffering severe internal injuries during the assault. She had an infection in her lungs and abdomen, liver damage and a brain injury, the Singapore hospital said, and died from organ failure. Her body was flown back to India on Saturday.
Attackers in India Rape Case to Be Charged With Murder – NYTimes.com
Time isn’t holding up. Time is an asterisk. Same as it ever was.
Our End of the World parties might be a good time to recall the downfall of the Maya and all indigenous peoples began a little more than a baktun ago. Great calendars and astronomical observations just don’t stand a chance against a brutal man with a gun. Perhaps the NRA will back an expedition to go back in time and arm the Maya.
I found the entire “end of the world” hubbub irritating. Did Y2K teach us nothing? How could anyone believe or even wonder if this would be the end of the world. Puh-lease.
The Mayans and mesoamericans were phenomenally time obsessed. Europeans, on the other hand, have been pathetically sloppy with time-keeping. Sure, we have nanotime now, but it was just a few hundred years ago that time skipped 11 days in part of the western world but not all of it (*). We’ve flopped all over the place with calendars determined by the fiat of emperors and popes. Leap Year (except every 20 years except every 100 years except every 400 years); “30 days hath September…”; spring back, leap forward; a hodgepodge of day and month names: Wednesday (even Germans favor a more logical Midweek), February? Could our calendar be any more comical? We might as well add dog years to the discussion.
I have ZERO faith in any conversion between calendars. Time gives us illusions of both precision (which has sharpened) and accuracy (relative to what/when?). So, we foolishly say the Mayan calendar ends 12-21-12 and compound the nonsense by wondering what timezone that applies to.
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Long Count periods
The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from a starting date that is generally calculated to be August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar or September 6 in the Julian calendar (or ?3113 in astronomical year numbering). There has been much debate over the precise correlation between the Western calendars and the Long Count calendars. The August 11 date is based on the GMT correlation (see Correlations between Western calendars and the Long Count calendar section elsewhere in this article for details on correlations).
The completion of 13 b’ak’tuns (August 11, 3114 BCE) marks the Creation of the world of human beings according to the Maya. On this day, Raised-up-Sky-Lord caused three stones to be set by associated gods at Lying-Down-Sky, First-Three-Stone-Place. Because the sky still lay on the primordial sea, it was black. The setting of the three stones centered the cosmos which allowed the sky to be raised, revealing the sun.[1]
Rather than using a base-10 scheme, like Western numbering, the Long Count days were tallied in a modified base-20 scheme. Thus 0.0.0.1.5 is equal to 25, and 0.0.0.2.0 is equal to 40. The Long Count is not pure base-20, however, since the second digit from the right rolls over to zero when it reaches 18. Thus 0.0.1.0.0 does not represent 400 days, but rather only 360 days.
Note that the name b’ak’tun is a back-formation invented by scholars. The numbered Long Count was no longer in use by the time the Spanish arrived in the Yucatán Peninsula, although unnumbered k’atuns and tuns were still in use. Instead the Maya were using an abbreviated Short Count.
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
More than 30 years ago, my Droog, John Merck, suggested we celebrate the end of the Mayan calendar. Not as farsighted as the Maya, but way ahead of the herd.
The Lanza Lock changed the world
Since the year 2020, every gun in the world has been retrofitted or manufactured with a sensor that is capable of disabling the weapon. Over the years, these sensors have improved in detecting rage and various mental states that would lead to non-defensive use of the weapon. No weapon can be fired unless the shooter is in control of himself. If a weapon is fired, data is recorded that is admissible in court. Known as the Lanza Lock, the sensor is somewhat like an ignition interlock device on a car and a flight data recorder. Don’t ask me how this tech works — how do barcodes and WiFi work? All I know is when we put our minds to a task, we can solve problems.
As a result of the Lanza Lock, the peaceful enjoyment of guns and the legitimate defensive use of guns have been unaffected. However, use of guns in violence — including warfare — has stopped completely. The Gun Industry made a huge profit from the sensors and even more as people worldwide have bought guns for fun and hunting without fear of those weapons being turned against them or their loved ones.
There is no solution to our problem.
I surrendered years ago. The Gun Industry is armed to the teeth with deadly weapons and knows how to use them. There is enough money and testosterone fueling gun fanaticism to buy any and every politician in the country. I take some comfort that American gun owners don’t have to shoot people in the face to silence them, as in other countries. They own the issue and all of the power.
I have only one shred of hope that the face of the Gun Industry is really kabuki theatre. That the paranoia and rage — "my cold dead fingers" — are a mere display, much as that of a gorilla, a creature far more peaceful than humans except when startled. Certainly, shouting and braying that "leftist socialists want to take all the guns" seems odd given the supposed security of having a weapon. Of having access to a bottomless supply of an insane array of killing machines. Some security.
My hope that the fearsome mask of the blood-soaked Gun Industry is not real stems from the few gun owners I know, all of whom own hand guns and have them accessible when they travel. They are calm, sensible, even peaceful. I’ll add "mostly liberal" to stress this is not just Left vs Right. I imagine some on the Right wish we could do something about our problem with guns. I hope my gun-owning friends represent more than the non-lunatic fringe of an army of raging gun-fuckers ready to shoot first and ask questions never.
The Gun Industry has no suggestions other than that public slaughter would be lessened if MORE people had guns. That self-serving delusion is painfully absurd. A failure to realize how INSANE that is is itself a suggestion of insanity. That’s how it is in the hall-of-mirrors of mental illness.
In the time it takes me to write these feeble words, countless gun enthusiasts have increased their armory. The Gun Industry has soaked up more money and blood and hums along happily. And another sick bastard plots revenge. Yes, he could use knives or pencils, although few people would get hurt and anyone could stop him. There is no solution to our problems.