Sects

Some quaint or interesting snippets about sects.

Four members of a breakaway Muslim sect in Russia's Tatarstan region have been charged with cruelty against children for allegedly keeping them underground. Police discovered 27 children and 38 adults living in catacomb-like cells in an eight-level underground bunker. The sect's elderly leader, Faizrakhman Sattarov, had reportedly wanted to build his own Islamic caliphate beneath the ground. The sect was uncovered during an investigation into recent attacks on Muslim clerics in Tatarstan, a mainly Muslim region on the River Volga. According to the Russian website ‘Islam News,’ Mr. Sattarov, 83, in the mid-1960s, after interpreting sparks from a trolleybus cable as a divine light from, God declared himself an Islamic prophet.

Nineteen under-age children were removed by the Russian authorities. Officials said the children, aged between one and 17 years, had never left the compound, gone to school or been treated by a doctor, and had rarely seen the light of day. Sattarov and his followers began to shun the outside world. Only a few sect members were allowed to leave the community to work as traders at a local market. (And presumably to do the shopping with the money they made. After all, even a prophet has to eat.)
The cramped cells descend on eight levels under a decrepit, three-storey brick house on a 700 sq m (7,530 sq ft) plot of land. The house was built illegally and will be demolished, local police were quoted as saying. What were the toilet facilities I wonder? A prophet has to evacuate his bowels and empty his bladder like everybody else.

Members of an Amish breakaway group in Ohio have been found guilty of hate crimes for forcibly cutting the beards and hair of community members. The 16 defendants - six women and 10 men, including four sons of Samuel Mullet the leader face 10 years or more in jail over the incidents, prompted by a dispute over religious differences. Prosecutors said the victims' hair was cut because it has spiritual significance in the Amish faith. Defence lawyers argued the attacks did not amount to hate crimes but were incidents of internal family disputes. It’s a long long story involving violence and oddball punishments like men being forced to sleep in chicken coops and it only becomes more and more ridiculous.

Back to the main stream: Roman Catholic priests have read out a letter from the leader of the Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, in each of the Church's parishes in Scotland, criticising the Scottish government for plans to introduce gay marriage, trying, as he puts it to change what he considers to be the only legitimate definition of marriage - the lifelong union of a man and a woman. The letter also announces the launch of a National Commission for Marriage and the Family to co-ordinate a campaign against gay marriage. It says: "We reaffirm before you all the common wisdom of humanity and the revealed faith of the Church that marriage is a unique life-long union of a man and a woman." In March, Cardinal O'Brien described gay marriage as a "grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right". This from a celibate (and what could be more unnatural than that?) of whom one has to ask if he has ever been in love, ever been one to one close to another human being rather, than his idea of god and his Christian beliefs, right or wrong?

The operative words above are ‘common wisdom of humanity.’ Boy, does that cover a wide field, there simply ain’t no such animal and, if you don’t believe me, comment on this Blog, analyzing ‘common wisdom’ and telling me exactly what it is. Then there is ‘the revealed faith of the church’ and ‘universally accepted human right,’ both statements as invalid as ‘human wisdom.’ And finally ‘life-long’ which these days doesn’t seem to amount to diddly-squat with a great many as the divorce courts will testify.

What the good cardinal fails to understand is that marriage was not created by Judeo-Christianity or Islam. It existed long before, as did same sex marriage which was, for example, quite common in Rome or so I am led to believe, and Greece? Where even if it wasn’t called marriage per se it did consist of and was accepted as the union of two of the same sex.

It all boils down to ignorance fear and hatred of which ignorance is probably the worst.v

Filming

Well who would have believed it? This is Blog number 550. I don’t know how many good folk read them, probably no more than a handful, but I write them for my pleasure if nothing else, even if I haven’t really anything worthwhile to say. Douglas says one day he is going to edit them. Well, his task just grows bigger and bigger especially if I should reach 600!

I have at last joined Facebook (or have I already mentioned this?) and my list of friends grows and grows. I am quite amazed how many from more than twenty odd years ago have been in touch. It does seem to me though that some people use Facebook purely as a personal bulletin board with comments that are not all that interesting except maybe to a small inner circle.

Filming – Chris and Douglas have been involved in the making of a commercial for INKA, a large supermarket chain. The actual filming round and about our area of the woods took only two days though the two of them were busy a long time beforehand sussing out locations, props, etcetera. Mind you, most of the props in the end came from our house. We were denuded of Victorian knick-knacks, gimcracks asnd gewgaws: plates, bowls, jugs, vases, cutlery, stools, baskets trays, and even garden ornaments. Can’t wait to see the finished result to recognise it all. We even had a cook and his assistant in our kitchen cooking for a unit of thirty people: chicken and sautéed potatoes, bean salad, coleslaw and more. Mind you, they did clean up beautifully when it was all over and after it was all over Chris and Douglas were both totally exhausted. I said I don’t really know how the commercial would have been made without them. Knowing the Greeks it would have been of course but it would have been a different kettle of fish that’s for sure. Douglas is the doyen of production managers but it took every bit of effort to keep the unit on track. Greeks tend to be a little on the haphazard side even when they agree with each other and the director tended to change his mind and want something else with every set-up. He is, in Douglas’s words, too much of a perfectionist but he is a bloody good director as his work on ‘The Island’ only goes to prove. If there was any chance of my writing a screenplay that actually stood a chance of being produced I would be more than happy to leave it in his hands.

The neighbours were agog with all the coming and going and the aftermath is that we have a kitchen and a fridge stuffed with euros worth of food, some of which has already been given away as we will never finish it all. There are melons, apples, oranges, grapes by the kilo, olive oil, about three dozen eggs, and a veritable mountain of cheeses, some in a jar of olive oil.

A short while ago, to follow in the wake of Chris’s commercial, Douglas was roped in to do another and, from what I’ve heard of that, I simply can’t wait to see it.

Retirement? Forget it. In fact Chris has been trying to do far too much (a concert was mooted for November but we insisted he put it off till the New Year) and right now he is going to be booted off to the Athens flat for a well earned rest.

Hubble

Further to a previous Blog: after writing it I read about The Hubble Space Telescope producing the most extraordinary views of the Universe to date. Called the Extreme Deep Field, the picture captures a mass of galaxies stretching back almost to the time when the first stars began to shine. This view required Hubble to stare at a tiny patch of sky for more than 500 hours to detect all the light.

“It's a really spectacular image,” said Dr Michele Trenti, a science team member from the University of Cambridge. “We stared at a patch of sky the size of the moon for about 22 days, and obtained a very deep view of the distant Universe and how galaxies looked in their infancy."
The Extreme Deep Field will become a tool for astronomy. The objects embedded in it can be followed up by other telescopes. It should keep scientists busy for years, enabling them to study the full history of galaxy formation and evolution.
Data acquired in 2003 and 2004 saw the telescope burrow into a small area of space in the Constellation Fornax (The Furnace). Again, it necessitated many repeat observations, and revealed thousands of galaxies, both near and far, making it the deepest image of the cosmos ever taken at that time. Hubble helped astronomers calculate the age of the universe, about 13.7 billion years old. (Tell that to the creationists.) The Hubble telescope was carried into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle. It has taken more than 2,000 separate exposures over 10 years using its two main cameras - the Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed by astronauts in 2002, and the Wide Field Camera 3, which was added to the observatory during its final servicing in 2009. To see what it does, Hubble has to reach beyond the visible into the infrared. It is only at longer wavelengths of light that some of the most distant objects become detectable. Of the more than 5,000 galaxies in the XDF, one of them  is a candidate for the most distant galaxy yet discovered. If this is confirmed, it means it is being seen just 460 million years after the Universe's birth in the Big Bang. Scientists time that event to be 13.7 billion years ago.
Until that corroboration, another of the image objects probably holds the record. This galaxy is seen as it was 600 million years after the Big Bang.
But as remarkable as the XDF is, it is a prelude for an even deeper Hubble view. A team led from Caltech (US) and Edinburgh University (UK) has acquired more than 100 hours of additional observations, doubling the exposure time in the all-important near infrared wavebands made possible. The expectation is that it will contain galaxies even closer to the Big Bang. To see the first starlight in the Universe will most likely require Hubble's successor. The James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2018, will carry a much larger mirror and even more sensitive instruments.
It simply boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

Bankers

“How much could taxes be raised without triggering mass protest? How tightly could imports be squeezed without precipitating a collapse in production? How far could wages be reduced without provoking labour unrest?” Greece 2012? No, Germany 1923. Take note Gauleiter Merkel, it could happen to you again. It has happened time after time. There simply is nothing new and history repeats itself. After World War One every country involved was in debt up to their collective eyebrows. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression it took a long time, some pretty hefty loans and, hard work for currencies to be stabilised. And who pulled the strings? Why, no one else but the bankers of course, four men in particular! I learn all this from a fascinating, and rather frightening book, titled “Lords of Finance” by Liaquat Ahamed.

The blurb on the back cover of the book reads. “In Lords of Finance we meet these men – the four bankers who truly broke the world. Their names were lost to history, their lives and actions forgotten, until now. Ahamned tells their story in vivid and gripping detail, in a timely and arresting reminder that individuals – their ambitions, limitations, and human nature – lie at the very heart of global tragedy.

And what have modern bankers been up to? Apart from paying themselves enormous bonuses of course and being pulled out of the mire of their own making by government money?

Money is the root of all evil. It is a pity the fat cats of this world who in their insatiable greed want more and more, legally or illegally, and who cling on to their treasures no matter what can’t see the harm they do. This book is a must read, but don’t take it to bed with you. It could give you nightmares.

American friends have asked solicitously whether the situation in Greece has affected us and, fortunately, the answer is it hasn’t impinged on us yet to the extent it has affected the Greeks. The price of goods has rocketed of course. Greece is no longer that inexpensive country we first knew. The price of petrol at nearly 2euro a litre is partly to blame as is VAT at 23% and god alone knows what price heating oil is going to be this winter. One is going to have to be extremely abstemious and hope the winter won’t be as bad as the last. We don’t eat out nearly as much as we used to and that applies to a lot of people so restaurants suffer because of it. Though prices in restaurants seem to be pretty stable it’s obviously more economical to eat at home and eating out has become a treat. We’re fortunate in that our income is in sterling but, even so, we do still have to be careful. We see shops and business folding every day and the politicians like the ostrich with their heads in the sand. Okay, okay, I know ostriches don’t actually do that but it is a good description of those who live in an ivory tower and refuse to face reality.

PS: In the September issue of Opera magazine there is an advertisement for a competition – a new opera preferably with a GLBT subject -$20000 prize money and guaranteed performance so I wrote a libretto based on the life of the Baron Jacques D’Adelswärd Fersen, a rare and exotic bloom indeed. There is plenty of information about him on the internet and there has been at least one novel written – “Exile of Capri” by Roger Peyrefitte. The only problem is I can’t find a composer and, if I should find one, could he undertake to write a full length opera in six months? Submission date 29^th March. I must admit an advertisement in September hasn’t given much time although it is not quite as bad as some Greek ads I’ve seen for events that give no time at all to attend. Anyway, if anyone knows a composer willing to undertake such a massive task please let me know but time is running out fast.

Astronomy

We know we will never suffer a Mars attack as, thanks to rover, we can see the planet harbours no life. But, once again the big question, what are the chances of life in some form or other existing elsewhere? Well, technology has advanced so much in the last few years, and that includes astronomy, our knowledge has expanded at the rate of knots and, I would imagine, will go ever faster until the day comes when we will know for certain about alien existence. Our world is very small. Our world is miniscule, our world is a drop in a vast ocean. Where does it rate in the scheme of things? A new study suggests that every star in the night sky is host to 1.6 planets. (Don’t ask me how you get .6 of a planet because I don’t know) but this implies there are some – wait for it because this is staggering, take a deep breath – there are some 10 billion earth-sized planets in our galaxy. Ten billion! How does a hitch-hiker get around that?

Using a technique called gravitational microlensing, an international team found a handful of exoplanets that imply the existence of billions more. Gravitational microlensing is a method that uses the gravity of a far-flung star to amplify the light from even more distant stars that have planets. While the number of actual events and detected planets was low, the team was able to estimate how many such exoplanets must exist.
Researchers from more than 20 international institutes and universities have worked on this. “Just the recent 15 years have seen the count of known planets beyond the Solar System rising from none to about 700, but we can expect hundreds of billions to exist in the Milky Way alone,” said co-author Dr Martin Dominik, from the University of St Andrews. Astronomers used a number of relatively small telescopes that make up the Microlensing Network for the detection of small terrestrial exoplanets to look for the rare event of one star passing directly in front of another as seen from Earth.
The team witnessed 40 of these microlensing events, and in three instances spotted the effects of planets circling the more distant stars. While the number of actual events and detected planets was low, the team was able to estimate how many such exoplanets must exist.
Gravitational microlensing can find planets of all sizes and distances. It can currently spot a planet as small as Mercury, orbiting at a similar distance to its host star, or as far away as Saturn.
Obviously infinity is a reality and the question I have to ask is where in the human mindset does god come into all this? And what price astrology?
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To be or not to be - a Catholic

Following after the popcorn and dental floss stories here is another. Cecilia Gimenez: The woman who ruined a prized Jesus Christ fresco in Spain, her do-it-yourself restoration in a church leaving the 19th Century fresco of Christ described as “resembling a hairy monkey in a very ill-fitting tunic,” but she is now demanding royalties after her botched restoration became a hit with tourists.

“Everybody who came into the church could see I was painting,” the eighty odd years old said. Her lawyers, say any economic compensation would go to charities. (?)  Thousands of people have since visited the church near Zaragoza and Ryanair, jumping on an obvious bandwagon, is now even offering deals to the north-eastern Spanish city, encouraging tourists to see the fresco in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church in Borja. Ms Gimenez said with the best intentions she had decided to restore the work by Elias Garcia Martinez because of its deterioration due to moisture. She claimed to have had the permission of the parish priest to carry out the job. “How could you do something like that without permission? He knew it!” she was quoted as saying. But during the restoration, the delicate brush strokes of Elias Garcia Martinez were completely obliterated. The once-dignified portrait is now an abomination. Ms Gimenez appears to have realised she was out of her depth and contacted the city councillor in charge of cultural affairs. Cultural officials said she had the best intentions and hoped the piece could be properly restored.
Well, thinking of a couple of stories in the news makes me wonder if the church, various churches, is anything more than power and money. I think of the fundamentalist preachers in the states who coin a fortune by selling the idea of god to the deluded in need of comfort and now Germany's Roman Catholics are to be denied the right to Holy Communion or religious burial if they stop paying a special church tax. A German bishops' decree which has just come into force says anyone failing to pay the tax - an extra 8% of their income tax bill - will no longer be considered a Catholic. The bishops have been alarmed by the number of Catholics leaving the Church. I should think this will have more of them leaving. Catholics make up around 30% of Germany's population but the number of congregants leaving the church swelled to 181,000 in 2010, with the increase blamed on revelations of sexual abuse by German priests.
If the religious tax is not forthcoming, Catholics will no longer be allowed to receive sacraments, except before death, or work in the church and its schools or hospitals. Without a “sign of repentance before death, a religious burial can be refused,” the decree states. Opting out of the tax would also bar people from acting as godparents to Catholic children.

And while on the subject of sexual abuse the Roman Catholic Church in the Australian state of Victoria has confirmed that more than 600 children have been sexually abused by its priests since the 1930s. The Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, described the figures as "horrific and shameful". Campaigners say the true number of abuse victims could be up to 10,000. Abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests has been a major issue in Australia recent years. During a visit in July 2008, Pope Benedict XVI met some of the victims and made a public apology for the abuse.

Compensation

Continuing with our thoughts on how silly this world is becoming. Before now we’ve had a good laugh on all the stupid judgments  made in courts of law both in America and the UK as far as compensation is concerned which has led to everyone walking on eggshells just in case but even then something is likely to take one by surprise. I think in particular of the woman been awarded massive compensation because she thought that as her Winnebago was automatic she could go back and make herself a cup of coffee while the vehicle drove itself. Not only was she awarded a hefty sum but the company had to provide her with another vehicle and explain in its instruction manual that automatic does not mean it drives itself. Then there was the lady who burnt her mouth in MacDonald’s because her coffee was too hot, another hefty payout, and the lady who tripped over an infant in a furniture store, the judge not taking into account that it was her own infant. And now we have a $7000000 pay out, yes, folks, seven million dollars, in the case of the poisonous popcorn.

A US man has been awarded $7.2m (£4.4m) in damages after claiming he developed "popcorn lung" from inhaling the artificial butter in microwave popcorn. A Colorado jury agreed with Wayne Watson that a popcorn manufacturer should have had warning labels that the bag's fumes were dangerous to inhale. He developed respiratory problems in 2007, after regularly eating popcorn.

"Popcorn lung" is a form of irreversible disease that scars the lung and makes it difficult for air to flow out.
The verdict is the latest in a series of successful cases, including those by popcorn plant workers who became ill. The cases link diacetyl, an ingredient in the flavouring, to health problems. Mr. Watson had previously settled with flavourings company FONA International Inc., though we aren’t told how much he got from them; but add it to seven million dollars and more, that comes to one hellava lot of popcorn.
And for those of you who munch popcorn and sugary delights here is another juicy twenty-first century story to chew over.

Eleven inmates in a suburban New York jail have sued their prison for $500m (£300m) and access to dental floss, saying they are losing their teeth. In a civil rights lawsuit filed on 10 September, the inmates say they are suffering cavities and pain because they are unable to floss.

Deputy Correction Commissioner Justin Pruyne defended the ban, saying floss can potentially be used as a weapon. Santiago Gomez, the lead plaintiff, says other jails permit flossing.
The inmates at the Westchester county jail in Valhalla say without floss they develop cavities and bleeding gums, despite brushing their teeth three times a day. They also say they need constant dental work for temporary fillings because they are denied crowns and root canals.
Mr. Pruyne said staff were exploring if there were products "which would be appropriate in a custodial situation... maybe some sort of floss that breaks easily" but that "staff and inmate safety come first".
Are hundreds of thousands of inmates in prisons all over the world losing their teeth because they don’t have dental floss?
Mr. Ripley, you really can’t make it up.