Slashdot Mirror

As long as you keep the gators fed.
Why We Crave Horror Movies

I can offer links to bibliographies concerning the persecution of witches in the medieval period. But the focus of my work is on popular articles that influence today's neopagan and witch communities, so my reading is almost exclusively of derivative works.

Here goes:
* Hanover.edu bibliography of both primary sources and recent scholars
* Kings.edu bibliography on the subject
* Jenny Gibbons, "Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt", originally in __Pomegranate__, 1998 issue 5, since on many web sites

Hope this helps.

Sure, the Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, but Dan Brown prefaces it with a Fact page that calls the Priory of Sion a real organization founded in 1099. The truth of the matter is that the Prior of Sion was a Hoax, originally started in 1957. (See Priory of Sion for the evidence of this.) He also makes this generic claim: All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.

The book goes on to make laughable errors -- Gospels in the Dead Sea Scrolls!? (There are no gospels or any Christian or New Testament material in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jesus had thousands of followers in his lifetime? Jesus was of no consequence at all in his lifetime -- an unknown rabbi in an obscure part of the Roman Empire. 5,000,000 witches burned!? No. More like 200,000 and all after 1400, and mostly by local governments. Constantine made Christ A God?! -- Constantine was pro-Arian (the losing side) in that fight. All he cared about was the unity of the church for political purposes, not its doctrine. Mithras was called the "Son of God" and "Light of the World" and was raised after three days!? All wrong. Sunday worship started by Constantine -- again wrong -- history shows it is predominant back int the 2nd century (Constantine is fourth century).

The book is schlock, both as literature, and in its research.

Mary Magdalene was not a hooker. Pope Gregory (the "Great") started that nonsense in the 6th century even though there was no scriptural basis for it, and it wasn't until the Second Vatican Council in 1969 that the Vatican acknowledged the church had been lying about this ever since.

Unlike the US, India has had a woman as the head-(honcho)-of-state for quite a while. It was sad to see the bruhaha (about how far women had come in the US) when a woman was just put on the VP ticket, when there have been many democracies in the world that have elected women to the highest position in the government long before the largely symbolic woman on the VP ticket (for one of the major parities) stunt.

AFAIR, women in India have held high political positions (Chief Minister of states) for over 50 years, and Indira Gandhi first became Prime Minister in 1965 (?). So it's not really a big deal.

What is a big deal is the fact that Abdul Kalam (President) is a Muslim, Manmohan Singh (Prime Minister) is a Sikh, and Sonia Gandhi (President of the ruling Congress Party) is a Catholic. All hold elected positions. This has happened in a country made up of ~80% Hindus.

If this is not a resonding success story for secular democracy, I don't know what would be.

We'll just have to see how long it takes the US to elect a woman/black/hispanic to the top spot.

"1-year gap in Bush's Guard duty. No record of airman at drills from 1972-73"

1. 
   Fact: Gore was misquoted by both Katherine Q. Seelye of the New York Times and Cici Connolly of the Washington Post. Their misquote was widely disseminated by Jim Nicholson of the Republican National Committee.
   
   Fact: Gore was speaking to a school group in New Hampshire about the importance of political participation. He mentioned a schoolgirl in Toone, TN who brought a toxic waste problem there to his attention. When he decided to hold Congressional hearings on the matter, he looked for other places with similar problems and found Love Canal. He never claimed to have found the toxic waste there.
   
   The school group he was talking to demanded that the Washington Post retract its misquote of the Vice President. The Washington Monthly reported:
   
   "'I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing,' Gore told the students. 'I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee---that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all.'
   
   "After the hearings, Gore said, 'We passed a major national law to clean up hazardous dump sites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices that ended up poisoning water around the country. We've still got work to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because one high school student got involved.'"
   
   The context of Gore's comment was clear. What sparked his interest in the toxic waste issue was the situation in Toone - "that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."

you're British right

Hey one second, I remember you, please explain a post you made before about electron resistance pushing back when I attempt to squeeze a metal. I'm aware that electrons have free travel within metal, but I thought that the integrity of the metal was maintained via a lattice structure. I wonder what a quark star would look like.

Sigh.... Yes, I realize it's a joke. But this is Slashdot, where nitpicking is encouraged and adored, right? Right?