Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin was supposedly the writing that appeared on the wall of the temple in the Babylonian empire. There was this prince who wouldn't have been a ruler's asshole except that he had a father who was ruler, and he mismanaged his responsibilities, instead wasting resources on extravagant feasts. (Which could also be written as "conducted wars on terrorism" I suppose, yes. Why did you ask that?) Anyway - back to the story. "Mene mene tekel upharsin" is one of those little verses that ranks units of weight or money, (I don't think anyone's quite sure now after so many thousand years,) from highest to lowest, and is one of those "nyah nyah nyah-na-nyah!" things that says "you're less than the least!" and which historians, denied the freedom to just write "nyah nyah nyah-na-nyah!" in scholarly tomes, say is a way of saying "You have been measured, and found wanting" which means pretty much the same thing.
Some say this is the legendary Temple, others say this is the legendary tower of Babel. What is pretty clear is that most historians agree on where it is. It's in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein built one of his palaces quite near to it. Spooky, right? A pretty bad leader, who didn't exactly get there by popularity, so close to that original temple?
And what IS on the place where most historians agree that Temple once stood? Why, GW Bush put an army base there... Mene mene tekel upharsin...
ADD Means Never Having To - Oooh, Look! A New Gizmodo Post!
She says that attention deficit disorder will become more common because we're operating in an entirely new mode. I say that it will produce an entirely new way of operating and that it's not a Bad Thing as is made out in this interview. We've only recently started applying scientific method to everyday matters, say the last 500 years or so - and the results have been a slow change. Back in the day, superstition and religion weren't the explanation for everything that happened, they were everything that happened. Comforting, to be sure, but it meant that for millenia, nothing changed because no-one thought about change.
Our forebears way back made huge leaps in their understanding, from biting things to kill them before they killed us, to stones, then sticks, then combinations and machines of stones and sticks, fire, cooking, clothing ourselves. Once we didn't have to spend all that time biting, we had time to think about what it all meant, and once we got as far as superstition, further change was suddenly not an option any more. The human race stagnated along on "good enough for your grandfather, it'll be good enough for you too, young man!" for millenia.
None of these changes was wrong, it's just that the outgoing school of thought always felt that what made us human beings, what they felt was our identity, was being lost. But as we now see, it's not lost, just doing new things.
Two Funnies
This picture looks like Harry Lennon to me cos I grok both streams man, I'm a bloke with a foot in each timeline, peace love and wizardy man! Change forever!
And speaking of how some changes are not necessarily bad, there are the occasional things that come along that make you wonder about that... Dis iss musikk!
Visit The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook and help support my work!
Some say this is the legendary Temple, others say this is the legendary tower of Babel. What is pretty clear is that most historians agree on where it is. It's in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein built one of his palaces quite near to it. Spooky, right? A pretty bad leader, who didn't exactly get there by popularity, so close to that original temple?
And what IS on the place where most historians agree that Temple once stood? Why, GW Bush put an army base there... Mene mene tekel upharsin...
ADD Means Never Having To - Oooh, Look! A New Gizmodo Post!
She says that attention deficit disorder will become more common because we're operating in an entirely new mode. I say that it will produce an entirely new way of operating and that it's not a Bad Thing as is made out in this interview. We've only recently started applying scientific method to everyday matters, say the last 500 years or so - and the results have been a slow change. Back in the day, superstition and religion weren't the explanation for everything that happened, they were everything that happened. Comforting, to be sure, but it meant that for millenia, nothing changed because no-one thought about change.
Our forebears way back made huge leaps in their understanding, from biting things to kill them before they killed us, to stones, then sticks, then combinations and machines of stones and sticks, fire, cooking, clothing ourselves. Once we didn't have to spend all that time biting, we had time to think about what it all meant, and once we got as far as superstition, further change was suddenly not an option any more. The human race stagnated along on "good enough for your grandfather, it'll be good enough for you too, young man!" for millenia.
None of these changes was wrong, it's just that the outgoing school of thought always felt that what made us human beings, what they felt was our identity, was being lost. But as we now see, it's not lost, just doing new things.
Two Funnies
This picture looks like Harry Lennon to me cos I grok both streams man, I'm a bloke with a foot in each timeline, peace love and wizardy man! Change forever!
And speaking of how some changes are not necessarily bad, there are the occasional things that come along that make you wonder about that... Dis iss musikk!
No comments:
Post a Comment