According to this article, Nigeria used satellite images of city lights to correlate population movements to epidemic outbreaks. After the harvest season, there is a small population boom in the cities as migrant agricultural workers look for off-season employment. The close proximity of people combined with insufficient sanitation promotes the spread of diseases such as the measles. Interesting stuff.

It made me wonder about God’s three feasts of ascent where essentially the same thing happens. Three times each year, the entire nation (or at least representative men from each house) is supposed to gather in Jerusalem. Ancient Israel had superior hygienic practices than most of the rest of the ancient world, but that many people suddenly crammed into a much smaller space is sure to facilitate the sharing of germs.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The men pick up the viruses and whatnot in Jerusalem and bring them back home and spread it around at the farm. If the mitzvot concerning cleanliness were strictly observed the chances of a serious outbreak were minimized, yet the whole community could be exposed to and inoculated against new strains of disease.

The Feasts of Ascent might have served a secondary purpose as national pox parties.

The evidence:

• Politicians barely even give lip service to true liberty. Most of those who do demonstrably have no understanding of the word.
• The citizens are whiny dependents intent on ensuring everyone is as badly treated as they believe themselves to be.
• Government at every level ignores the law almost at will.
• Officers sworn to “protect and serve” are frequently just another criminal gang fighting over turf.
• No conscious, competent citizen can live through a single day without breaking multiple laws, and the most intelligent person could never hope to understand even a small part of our laws even if he dedicated his entire life to the study.
• The job market is flooded with degrees, but very little capacity for thought.
• The looters vastly outnumber the producers.
• There is a real possibility that the President is not eligible for his office.
• Politicians and media are intent on importing as many illiterate, welfare-dependent foreigners as they can before the native Americans wake up to their treachery.
• The economy is in the toilet due to ubiquitous corruption and government interference. The government’s response? More corruption and interference. The people’s response? Demand more corruption and interference.
• Everything, everywhere is monitored, cataloged, and cross-referenced.
• China is on the rise and we can’t sell our country, our infrastructure, and our jobs to them fast enough.
• We are militarily over-committed.
• Every military victory is either pyrrhic, fleeting, or fraudulent.
• Our military is flooded with foreigners.
• The news media, those so-called guardians of freedom, are engaged in a constructive conspiracy to ensure actual freedom is never again experienced in this country.
• We murder our children, while crying about the trampled rights of frogs and cattle.
• Women and children truly rule over us.
• The family, the very core of our civilization, is under incessant attack from politicians, courts, the press, entertainers, and corporations.
• Everyone knows certain truths about sex, race, and religion, but if you dare to speak those truths, you will be fired, sued, shunned, and possibly even imprisoned.
• And on and on and on.

Let’s face it: America is dead and there is no other people prepared to take her place. It is too late to save her. Don’t bother asking how we can restore our rights. Don’t bother spending all your savings on a good man’s election campaign. Who cares who’s running the train when it’s already derailed? Forget all that. It’s a waste of your breath and resources.

Ask yourself this question instead:

How should we now live given our current circumstances and the likely course of future events?

Israel and Palestine

• For pre-1948 history: The Israel Palestine Conflict, parts 1-4
• For post-1948 history: Israel-Palestine Conflict in 11 Minutes. I don’t think this video is entirely accurate and definitely not balanced, but it’s the closest thing I could find. There are numerous videos on Youtube on this subject, but most of them are blatantly false.

Liberia

• The depths of human depravity. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s caused by geography or climate or colonialist exploitation or anything of the sort. The Vice Guide to Liberia, parts 1-8

Did I miss anything?

The name of God is blasphemed among the nations because of you.

Here are the ranks as Vox enumerates them:

• Alpha – Natural leaders. Confident, charismatic, and dominant. Usually run the show wherever they go.
• Beta – Natural semi-leaders. Confident, but maybe not as charismatic. They have to work at it and frequently play second-fiddle.
• Delta – The rank and file. Mostly passive. Stable, hard-working “family” men.
• Gamma – Weak, scared, passive-aggressive loners. Sycophants and complainers. They get little respect and usually don’t deserve it.
• Omega – Creepy losers. Sociopaths.
• Sigma – Confident, charismatic, dominant men who don’t naturally incline toward leading anything or even necessarily participating.

Julius Caesar was a Natural, a born Alpha. He was charismatic, reckless, brash, and stunningly successful in war, politics, and womanizing. People adored him or abhorred him, but everyone respected him.

Augustus Caesar (aka Octavius, etc.) was not an Alpha. As a young man, he was intelligent and thoughtful but sickly and possibly even a coward. Men didn’t gravitate toward him or respect him. At best he was a Beta, but it’s possible he was a Delta or even on the border of Gamma. Fortunately for him, he spent much of his teenage years at the side of Uncle Julius, absorbing some of his character and methods. By the time Julius died he had become a Beta, and over the following decade he transformed himself into an Alpha. His more timid roots kept him from becoming a complete clone of Julius, however. He didn’t rule or conquer with the reckless abandon of his uncle, but remained a thoughtful and careful administrator. He relied very heavily on his even more intelligent capable advisor, Agrippa, whom I would call a strong Alpha if it weren’t for his continual preference to remain in Augustus’ shadow.

Tiberius began life as a Delta. He never wanted to be a leader, let alone an emperor. Circumstances forced him to adopt the behavior of an Alpha, but he always hated the role. The conflict between who he wanted to be and who he felt he was forced to be eventually broke him. He died an Omega.

Caligula could have been another Julius. He was born an Alpha, but he was twisted into Omega behavior under the murderous, perverted tutelage of his adopted grandfather.

Draw what conclusions you will. I strongly believe that men can become something to which they were not born. That can be a good thing or a bad thing.

HT: Vox Day

The Bible is the most remarkable body of literature on Earth. It includes oral tradition, court records, poetry, correspondence, history, and prophecy in a consistent and accurate whole. The reader must keep in mind the cultures, languages, and circumstances of the various authors to reach a full understanding. He can’t read as if Paul’s letters were written in English. He can’t even completely trust that the English translation accurately conveys the author’s intended meaning. Aside from the usual difficulty involved in understanding any text absent inflection and body language, politics and religious dogma and a natural failure to understand cultural memes that would have informed a contemporary reader make a perfectly accurate understanding almost impossible. Add the challenges of translation, especially from an essentially dead language to a living and evolving one, and the obstacles to true understanding seem insurmountable. It is all the more amazing, then, that we can read the Bible in English today and, so long as the entirety of its teachings are considered and not a single passage in isolation, still have a very good idea of what God is trying to tell us through it.

I can understand how some people come to elevate the Bible above God himself, treating the physical material of paper and ink as if it is itself something to be worshiped. We must keep in mind all the filters through which we read and study. Most people don’t read it in the original languages and some sections of scripture no longer even exist in their original forms. We don’t have access to the actual words that God spoke to Adam in the Garden, only a paraphrase that was passed down from person to person and translated from language to language. That’s not to say that the meaning of the words we do have can’t be trusted–as I already pointed out, the Bible is astonishingly consistent from end to end–but that they are frequently not word-for-word transcripts. Even in those places where the text is precise, the words are not always inspired or truthful. Letters and messages from kings and generals are reproduced for history and context, not necessarily because they contain any great truths. Some passages contain advice that doesn’t rise to the level of command let alone divine command.

The Bible is an amazing collection of Scriptures, but it is not all we need to understand the world or even all we need to understand God and our relationship with him. It is essential, but not everything.