Posted on 01/03/2013 6:36:29 PM PST by BenLurkin
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s off-air comments that Russian Presidents are given a secret file about extraterrestrials living among us created much media interest. Most news reports claimed that Medvedev was simply joking. His apparent reference to the Men In Black movie as a source of information on a super secret agency that monitors extraterrestrials on Earth was commonly cited as key evidence that he was in fact joking. The reasoning is that no political leader would refer reporters to a comedy to clarify national policy. It has now emerged that Medvedev was not referring to the Men in Black comedy after all, but to a recent Russian television documentary titled “Men in Black” that reveals many details about an extensive cover up of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth.
However, a more accurate translation of what Medvedev actually said about the Men in Black phenomenon was: “You can receive more detailed information having watched the documentary film of the same name.” So Medvedev was referring to a Russian “documentary film” titled Men in Black, not the Hollywood blockbuster by the same name...
Russian Men In Black (MIB) documentary, a number of prominent UFO cases in Russia and the USA are discussed. The Roswell UFO crash is covered, along with a number of extraterrestrial abduction cases, and UFOs disabling nuclear weapons facilities. The documentary examines testimony that extraterrestrial bases have been established on Earth, and that some are in restricted US military areas with the full knowledge of the Pentagon. The documentary even goes on to seriously discuss President Eisenhower’s alleged meeting with extraterrestrials, where agreements were reached with some of the visitors giving them permission to take some of the Earth’s resources in exchange for advanced technology...
(Excerpt) Read more at exopolitics.org ...
That’s a distance. We were about 60, would go to Nashville to shop sometimes. Things might have been wonked with the DoD for us to stay there, but we went back to Oklahoma instead. I liked both states a lot.
Or even further out.
I guess when people didn’t have “science fiction,” they went straight to myth to explain their weirdnesses. Anoreth is Athena, the spirit of the duellist. Don’t try to explain it away, it doesn’t work.
Your walk doesn’t look too easy to me. Who are the Sionnsareen?
I think I need to go to sleep soon. Take care and keep the faith!
And I, too, was fortunate enough to meet Sionnsar, the few times he came to Vegas on business. To date, I have only spoken to LoM on the phone, but I’m thinking that is not a permanent situation. I have faith we will meet up!
How could we not! When FReepers get within 50-100 miles of each other the Meeting Magnets are employed and the power is turned on! ;o]
Fading—gotta go. Good night and sweet dreams, y’all!
The daughters of Sionnsar and LibreOuMort. They're young ladies in their 20s now, like Anoreth, which is kind of shocking actually. So many people think (James, Vlad, Frank, Kathleen) are my grandchildren!
Stay warm! We have chicken and a crockpot lentil dish.
And Sionnsar met Bob, and you met me, and yadda yadda. We have our vacation scheduled and some other dates - my mom’s visit - close to nailed down, so in the next week our so you can look at flights here. When we have a time fixed and you’ve looked into flights, I’ll send you an amount by whatever means works best, and you can book the flight.
The science competitions are driving me crazy this year, with four kids in them. I keep getting notices of things we might do, but no ... it’s Envirothon; no ... it’s Science Olympiad. At least they’ll have learned something, somehow.
A year ago, I was thinking the time was never going to pass between then and the visit! LOL! Time flies when you’re having fun!
I’m heading for the last roundup. The bed is looking very good right now. It’s a good thing it was Maid’s Day In, because I sure couldn’t have done what she did.
later, all....
Perhaps not. Or perhaps not the whole truth.
You see, I do not want to stand idly by and let Ayn Rand be unfairly maligned. It is easy enough for her to be fairly maligned, after all. She was not perfect, nor was she perfectly wrong, or wrongly directed.
I prefer to think that she has offered us a service by attempting to establish a path of logic and reason, for those who may be uncomfortable with mere religious platitudes, for logical and well-intentioned people to live lives of purpose and productive endeavor, yielding at its end a life worth having lived and one of good repute.
"Enlightened self-interest" is not an empty concept; it is, after all, what guides our proper behavior when driving in traffic. You may wish, or hope, that your fellow citizens are of good Christian nature behind the wheel, but what really matters is that they realize that all are served when each behaves responsibly.
Ayn Rand was dealing with economics, in a state of simplification to its obvious natural truths. I do this myself. I picture an individual with a cart-load of straw, meeting up with someone who has a surfeit of mud. Each has more than he needs of his commodity, and is willing to exchange for something different which will offer him the capability of expanding his comfort by perhaps building a more sturdy and functional house. Nothing in this scenario involves Christian precepts or any other belief system; it is an economic issue made as basic as possible.
In this manner, Ayn Rand, and perhaps I, are attempting to illustrate that the world of humanity has many ways to arrange itself for mutual comfort and advancement, and not every interaction between strangers need devolve into coercion or conquest.
That’s kind of what I was trying to say, in a way. The basics of economic exchange are objective. Nobody has found a workable basic explanation for economics other than “free people maximizing their personal value through the exchange of scarce resources.”
However, it’s never done at the “physics” level of the natural exchange of less- for greater-valued goods. There is always the imposition of an absolute standard by someone.
For a lot of reasons recently, I’ve been thinking about the so-called “labor theory of value”. It’s mostly hokum, but there’s a kernel of significance to it.
People are what make things valuable, in one way or another.
Those shows that speak of a world without people, are simply displaying a world without value. Even the beauty of nature untrammeled requires eyes to see it and a voice to laud it.
Your pastors’ view corresponds with what I and MANY others have come to believe will be the case.
In that vein, I think you will find the series of messages on this page extremely exciting. The formats include the PDF Notes of each message, PDF Transcripts (if you’re a reader), video (if you’re the visual type), and audio files (for those who learn best by hearing, or are too busy to sit and read or watch a video):
http://mikebickle.org/resources/series/38
These messages relate to the context, history, and moves of God that eventuated in the formation of the International House of Prayer in KC, MO. I reference it in relation to the present discussion, because the several messages are framed in the current historical context, and include revelatory and prophetic perspectives on yet-to-be things like The Great Harvest.
As Christ followers, I think you will be blessed with the content.
I meant to include you in this one:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2974752/posts?q=1&;page=1552#1552
I agree. People decide that a diamond is "valuable," even though you can't eat it or diaper a baby with it. And the same over a variety of products. Chocolate is more valuable than lard, even though chocolate won't keep you going in a famine for long.
Value is so much bigger than survival. What's the value of a song? Nothing, one might say ... but you just spent money to buy one from iTunes.
The pertinent discussion is not, I think, a dispute over whether the idea of "enlightened self-interest" has merit, but is one of what the source of enlightenment truly is.
Nothing in this scenario involves Christian precepts or any other belief system;...
Ah, but I think it actually does.
You mention "what guides our proper behavior"; but who decided what behavior was "proper" to begin with? The very notion of "proper" implies that you've got a standard you're using as a metric. Where did you get it? Where does everyone else get it? Why does there exist this universal expectation among men that they will be dealt with in an equitable fashion? Even among criminals we see this expectation manifest in the occasional news stories of drug dealers complaining about getting bilked out of payment for their goods, and in the deeper, more persistent notion that "there is honor, even among thieves."
I don't dispute everywhere Rand goes with the existence and implications of enlightened self-interest; as a matter of fact I agree with much of her argument. I simply observe that she doesn't go far enough in her effort to discover the True Root of the self-interest's enlightenment.
A better discussion of that source is, I think, found in a shorter work by an author recently named in these halls: C. S. Lewis deals nicely with the nature and origin of this expectation of fair dealing in "Mere Christianity," and his take on it is neither shallow, nor unsatisfying, in my view.
To put the point squarely, I think that Ayn Rand might have made a smashing Christian had she only dug deep enough to discover the true source of the self-interest's best enlightenment. She was dead-on about so very much else.
Galt should have been an Evangelist.
Your statement presumes its own answer. "The pertinent discussion ... is one of what the source of enlightenment truly is." Presuming, thuswise, that enlightenment has a source.
It may, or it may not. But to presume that it does, does not permit the discussion of whether it does.
When I speak of enlightened self-interest in the operation of motor-cars, I'm speaking of the sensible realization that getting where you want to go is not advanced by having to stop to fill out accident reports and exchange insurance information.
In motoring, proper behavior is accident-free, stress-free, and vulgarity-free. One arrives refreshed and ready to undertake the purpose of the travel.
That is what "proper" means is that particular discussion. Please do not conflate definitions unto the high heavens.
I assure you that I am not attempting to be invidious, or difficult.
You note that “what really matters is that [each motorist] realize that all are served when each behaves responsibly.”
Acknowledging our perceptions of “proper,” that something “matters,” and that there is behavior that is “responsible,” I simply observe that we like fish swim in this ocean of elemental ideas, but usually have no sense of being wet.
There is this “water”; there is this body of ideas we have woven into a tapestry of expectations we go around with, and they are so fundamental to our being that we only really think about them when we are affronted at someone’s failure to measure up.
So, I’m not trying to be tricky about definitions; I’m pointing out that our expectation of others’ behavior in accordance with those definitions infers the existence of something at a deeper level than those definitions; it infers a substrate, if you will, upon which those definitions stand, and I seek to name it; and seeing that everywhere, in all cultures, similar definitions stand upon this substrate, I am led to reject the idea that the substrate itself originates with man.
Others may certainly conclude otherwise; but that’s my perspective.
If you consider it a sport to gather your food by drilling through 36 inches of ice and sitting there all day hoping that the food will swim by, you might live in Upstate New York.
If you’re proud that your region makes the national news 96 nights a year because Saranac Lake is the coldest spot in the nation, and Syracuse gets more snow than any other major city in the US , you might live in Upstate NY.
If your local Dairy Queen is closed from October through May, you might live in Upstate New York .
If you get 131 inches of snow in a week and you comment that ‘winter’s finally here,’ you might live near Oswego in Upstate New York.
If you instinctively walk like a penguin for six months out of the year, you might live, bundled up, in Upstate New York.
If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance, and they don’t work there, you might live in Upstate NY.
If your dad’s suntan stops at a line curving around the middle of his forehead, you might live in Upstate New York.
If you have worn shorts and a parka on the same day, you might live in Upstate New York.
If you have had a lengthy phone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you might live in Upstate New York.
YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TRUE UPSTATE NEW YORKER WHEN:
‘Vacation’ means going south past Syracuse for the weekend.
You measure distance in hours.
You know several people who have hit a deer more than once.
You often switch from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ in the same day and back again.
You can drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching.
You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.
You carry jumper cables in your car and your girlfriend/wife knows how to use them.
You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
You know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction.
You can identify a southern or eastern accent.
Down South to you means Corning
Your neighbor throws a party to celebrate his new shed.
You go out for a fish fry every Friday.
Your 4th of July picnic was moved indoors due to frost.
You have more miles on your snow blower than your car.
You find 10 degrees ‘a little chilly.’ And 55 is shorts weather.
I would have gone with ...when the entire democrat party THRICE denied God and Israel a place on their party platform, and enough Americans were content with that to REelect obama.
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