Archive for March 2017
CANNIBALISM: A Perfectly Natural History
CANNIBALISM: A Perfectly Natural History
by Bill Schutt
Sculptor Leonhard Kern
Old Testament Bible-Second book of Kings 6:28/29
Famine in Besieged Samaria
Eat Thy Neighbor
We eat him, because we knew him and were fond of him
(Dieri tribesman)
In the fields of Austria-photo by Guenther Benes
STONE AGE CUISINE
When I was a student at University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Professor Bernard Wailes (Cambridge) suggested I write an original essay. "How about Stone Age foodstuffs?" the novice replied with a chuckle. That was 1968.
Twenty years later, 1988, I returned to Philadelphia. Professor Wailes encouraged me to pick up the unfinished essay. I decided to make it into a manuscript for publication: Neolithic Culinary Delights. I spent many months at the museum doing research. At the cafeteria I had met a friendly young woman who became interested in my story and asked if she could read a chapter or two. One day she dropped by at my house and told me that my story was "unique" and I should have it copyrighted before someone could steal it. I told her that I had no idea how to go about it. She offered to do it for me, but she needed the manuscript. I said it was in my bank safe and I would drop by the museum the following week.
Rattled, I called a friend, a private investigator, and asked if it was true that people steal manuscripts. He laughed, and said that maybe my "friend" would put her name to it. He suggested I come to his office with the manuscript and we would go to a patent and copyright lawyer: Gregory Gore of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. In those days few people knew what Neolithic was-so I had it copyrighted as Stone Age Cuisine. The story is still the same but updated- I now have far more FACTS at my fingertips thanks to the Internet.
Recipe
500 lbs of RESEARCH
100 lbs of DETERMINATION
1 bucket of IMAGINATION
2 handfuls of LAUGHTER
1 pinch of LUCK
March 3, 1957 - March 3, 2017
The road to success is always under construction
I grew this rosebush (Angel Wings) from seed (1990)
HOMO SAPIENS
VITA EST IN MOTU
Change is the essence of life
Homo erectus
Homo Neanderthal - named after Joachim Neander (1650-1680)
My Papa - 20th century Homo sapiens
Otzi's ancestors came from today's India
In nature every species is in the food chain: to eat and be eaten. In the natural world cannibalism is often the rule, not the exception.
WHAT IS GOD?
The water-lily pond of Guenther Benes (Vienna, Austria)
Christopher Hitchens: Religion is part of our cultural and intellectual history. It was our first attempt at literature, at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at healthcare, believing in faith healing, and at philosophy.
Clock Towers
London/England; Tokyo/Japan; Tabriz/Iran; Mumbai/India; Hainan/China; Hong Kong; Hoboken/NJ/US; Toronto/Canada; Cape Town/South Africa-visit Wikipedia!
The tallest clock tower on planet Earth is in Mecca, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(Koran 9:33)
Is Google making us stupid because we no longer practice our memory for information recall?
The spiritual meaning for rosemary is "remembrance"
The Italian village of Acciaroli has more than 300 residents aged over 100-and a population of just 2,000 people. Acciarolians follow a traditional Mediterranean diet, but one that contains even more rosemary than most. The residents grow the herb and eat it almost daily. This could be the secret behind the longevity boost, suggest University of California researchers. 'Rosemary is used in herbal medicine to improve circulation, enhance MEMORY, assist digestion and relieve anxiety' says Dr Andrew Flower, a researcher in herbal medicine at the University of Southampton. 'There are also a wealth of studies showing the anti-microbial, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and even anti-cancer effects from compounds in rosemary.'
(London-- Daily Mail, January 17, 2017)
Before events "Fade from memory"
The memoir of Nicola, mother of Nick Clegg (British politician)
Please visit my "biography" for MY childhood memories-of the same Japanese camps-Kramat and Tjideng-mentioned in the book. My 100-year-old mother still remembers!
FREE SPEECH
The Frankfurt Book Fair: Freedom of the WORD is not negotiable. The fair is a place for dialogue.
Censorship of free speech has become rampant at universities. Debating controversial ideas is not on the agenda. Views that students find offensive and above hurtful have to be silenced because they can't cope with it (thereby leaving them vulnerable when they enter the workforce).
In the US it is legally OK to say offensive things about a religion and thus provoke hurt or anger. If some want it "criminalized", then we are no longer supporters of free speech.
Salman Rushdie (author of The Satanic Verses) on what is freedom of expression. 'Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.'
Mark Steyn (Canadian journalist and writer): The thin line between free speech and hate speech doesn't exist. Free speech by definition is for the stuff you don't approve of. His book AMERICA ALONE (The end of the world as we know it) is considered politically incorrect. ["If Jesus were alive today, he'd most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an 'Arms are for Hugging' sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams."]
John P. Rossi (Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, January 7, 2007) reviewed AMERICA ALONE-"A cultural critic submits how the West was done in." The West will be confronted with a militaristic Islam and is unprepared to face this threat to the pervasive influence of multiculturalism, and a tolerance of Islamic intolerance that has already crippled many countries in Europe. The rise of an unsustainable welfare state and a decline of religious [Christian] values created a crisis of confidence. Mark Steyn labels multiculturalism the West's "real suicide bomb". It was conceived by Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own. Professor Rossi ends the review: It is the best read I have come across in some time.
Amitara Kar (The Daily Star, Dhaka, Bangladesh): "Once we learn how to keep ourselves from 'voicing our thoughts', we forget how to think them in the first place. And ideas perish at conception. What could be more dangerous than that?" Some publishers and secular authors fled Bangladesh in fear of attack over their work because free speech is never allowed to trump blasphemy.
THE CANDLES ARE MANY BUT THE LIGHT IS ONE
HANS KUENG
There will be no peace among nations without peace among religions and there will be no peace among religions without dialogue among religions.
WHO WAS JESUS?
John P. Meier, a Catholic priest, is professor of New Testament at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is perhaps the foremost biblical scholar of his generation.
A STUDY IN CREATIVE MYTHOLOGY
Rudolf Augstein was the founder and publisher of Der Spiegel, West Germany’s most famous newsweekly. He was raised a Roman Catholic and became an agnostic as an adult.
It seems that free speech (dialogue) is what is left over when a community has determined in advance what it does not want to hear.
Nothing is so hostile to religion as other religions
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Everybody is entitled to think their faith is superior to others, otherwise—what’s the point of having faith
The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new
How can we learn from the past-unless we—REMEMBER it?
HEAVEN IS MY THRONE, AND THE EARTH IS MY FOOTSTOOL
(New Testament: Acts 7:49)
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them (New Testament: Gospel of Matthew 5:17).
New Testament: Hebrews. The Law requires that nearly everything be cleaned with blood and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness (9:22). He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves, but he entered the Most Holy Place once and for all by his own blood having obtained eternal redemption (9:12).
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day (New Testament: Gospel of John 6:51-54).
New Testament: Gospel of Matthew
Jesus stood before the governor (Pilate) and the governor asked him: “Are you the king of the Jews?” --- “Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied (27:11). Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS: INRI/Jesus of Nazareth, king of Israel.
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword (10:34).
New Testament: Acts (5:30-31)
The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him on his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.
Old Testament: Book of Deuteronomy (21:23)
Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.
WORDS are the most powerful DRUG used by mankind
(Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936 — Nobel prize for literature, 1907)
If you have an "idea of something", you must express it: either you say it in proper words or you present the idea symbolically.
(Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646-1716)
THE LAST SUPPER
Gospel of John 13—Jesus predicts His Betrayal
13:21—I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me
13:26—It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread. He gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, saying, What you are about to do, do quickly
13:30—As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out
13:31—When he was gone, Jesus said: Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him
Gospel of Luke 22—Jesus arrested
22:48—Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?
Imagine if Judas had not kissed Jesus—to betray him!
The Gospel of the apostle Paul
Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David (2 Timothy 2:8)
Koran 4:157—They declared: ‘We have killed the Christ, Jesus son of Mary, the apostle of God’—They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but they thought they did
The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, BEGINNING AT JERUSALEM (Gospel of Luke 24: 46/47).
How can we learn from the past-unless we—REMEMBER it?
The prophet is God’s associate
My research led to Georg von Welling (1655-1727) who wrote Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum Et Theosophicum (translated into English by Patricia Baker, 2006). Georg discussed "spirit-people".
Warnings against seeking speech with spirits
Heaven and Hell
Speech in Heaven
Number 312: It has been granted me to be in company with angels, and also to talk with those who are in hell, and this now for many years sometimes continuously from morning until evening.
THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH
I refer to my novel—The Blue Mirror—chapter 17—starting at page 384—language is a skill for transmitting survival—ETC
Please go to New & Noteworthy 2016—for more details on SPEECH
Franz Kafka‘s (1883-1924) science fiction story—A Report for an Academy—has an ape named Red Peter.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951): If there were no language, there would be no logic.
JOHNNY APPLESEED
This is a biography of John Chapman (1774-1845), a Swedenborgian evangelist, known as JOHNNY APPLESEED.
John Pitcairn of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, is mentioned (page 118); his sons built on their estate the famous New Church Cathedral (see New & Noteworthy—2016). I wrote to the author‘s agent (The Sagalyn Literary Agency) if they would be interested in representing my religious novel The Blue Mirror—also about Emanuel Swedenborg. Author Howard Means focused entirely on Heaven and Hell, in those days an immensely popular book; though Swedenborg wrote about many other heavenly subjects—The Earths in The Starry Heaven, and Their Inhabitants—which I discuss at length in my novel.
Helen Keller (1880-1968), a famous Swedenborgian, wrote My Religion; published in 1927 by Doubleday & Co.
available as e-book at www.amazon.com
Chapter 2: "God was born on our Earth because we know how to write. I know everything there is to know about God because I read all the books," the bishop said."A religion cannot become a global faith without books to teach."
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
1688 — 1772
