Archive for May, 2007
Buying sandals online
May 8th, 2007 • reviewme
I, like many people, prefer wearing sandals to full fledged shoes any day. For me, sandals are much less restrictive and infinitely more comfortable than almost any pair of shoes I’ve ever owned. However, I’ve never shopped for them online as I like to try before I buy for things like fit, comfort, and such. That was until I found active-sandals.com. They’ve got a large selection of sandals for both men and women in a variety of colours and styles. If I find a sandal I like, I’ll probably purchase it from them given the nice discount I can get if I’m willing to wait for them in the mail.
The site is dead easy to navigate although I found the graphics to be a bit dated and on the verge of cheesy even though they’re very high quality. The women’s selection is a tad larger than the men’s even though some brands such as Crocs have meager offerings and the men’s Crocs section is completely bare. That’s not very good for the most common place sandal I’ve seen here in Boca Raton in the last few months. I can attest to their sheer comfort like so many other people have whom I’ve asked about their selection of Crocs over some other company. This lack of selection in such a popular brand will not get a lot of sales and instead will lose those customers to other sites. Active-sandals.com also sells sandals from companies I’ve never heard of such as Cobian and Sanuk but sell the common ones such as Reef and Rainbow that you’ll find in any local Pac Sun.
The site also sells jeans and shirts although I do not know why since their focus is on sandals and not designer jeans. While this does not detract from the main focus of the site it seems kind of tacked on, almost like an after thought. Apparently Joe’s Jeans are designer but I’ve never seen them in the designer shops here, this may be a west coast thing. Aside from Reef Apparel I’ve never heard of any of the “designer” clothing they sell and I live in a town that thrives on designer names.
Overall, the site is easy to navigate and is very easy on the eyes. The selection for the sexes is varied and can be a bit scant but if I’m going to buy some Rainbows I know where I’ll be buying them. I hope the selection in the future for men grows and the selection for women is more fleshed out to include more styles.
The preceding has been a sponsored post.
Mithraism on Cities of the Underwold: Rome
May 8th, 2007 • cult, history, tv
Tonight I watched the episode of CotW which was based in Rome. Overall, things were interesting and I found it pretty amazing to see most of the structures that were on the show were still relatively in tact. Trajan’s Basilica was amazing to see. But that’s not what caught my eye. What did was the first 15 or so minutes of the show where Eric Geller got to explore a Mithraeum behind the Circus Maximus.
A museum? No. Mausoleum? Nope! A Mithraeum. It was the Mithraic place of worship built in a cave or underground. Many of these have been found in Rome and the former states of the Empire yet we do know very little about what was actually conducted in a Mithraeum. Thanks to the Avestas and Indians Vedas we know who Mithra was and what his deity entailed but we still cannot conclude what went on between the members who attended a Mithraeum. A lack of real written scripture or history attributes to this as well. The Mithraeum that Geller got to explore was in relatively good shape given the fact that it was most likely 1800 years old. Many of the walls still stood from the foundation although many of them were eroded by time. A large number of benches were still well in tact and the many rooms of the Mithraeum were also in tact. Then they panned to a votive of Mithras slaying the primordial bull during his ascent to the heavens. If it was the original that had stood since the place was still in use, it was in marvelous condition and from what I could see only had a small piece missing of the upper left corner.
The whole temple was in good condition from what they showed and was rather immense for being underground. I thought it was extremely interesting to see that this was the first segment in the show and was also the longest in the episode. For what was many people’s first introduction to Mithraism, I think it was an OK outing but did the show’s subject justice at showcasing the splendor of this underground temple.
Top 5 ways Paris Hilton could get out of her jail time
May 7th, 2007 • 1 comment funny
So my girlfriend and I were talking about Paris Hilton’s recent conviction for “blatant disregard” of her probation. And really, I think the whole situation is hi-larious and the judge is really sticking it to her — no, this is not meant as a double entendre. But we decided to come up with a list of 5 ways she could easily manage to skirt her jail time altogether:
Short, concise list but hey, we’re talking about a hotel heiress here, who needs to be complicated? My vote is definitely for #1 as I could actually see her mom wanting to pull such a stunt.
Quick question
May 7th, 2007 • christianity, kenites
I’m busy researching the Kenites due to a discussion sparked on IRC between myself and a member of the Shepherd’s Chapel. If anyone has some information I could glean that’s not from Wikipedia, please comment it or contact me with the information. It seems finding out their origin or primary place of living before being integrated into the tribe of Judah and migrating to Jerusalem is more difficult than I first thought.
Interesting stats and search engine rankings
As any good webmaster does, I’ve been pouring over my stats and logs as of late in an order to try and weed out any 404 hits for my wiki. Since I reorganized my site a few months ago to move the wiki into a subdirectory and have the blog be the main attraction, I’ve had a ton of 404s in relation to searches on Outlook error messages and Exim errors. Thankfully, Google has been quick to dump these old links in favor of the new ones.
However, I’m noticing a sharp trend in my stats for this month in particular. My posts about the upcoming ABC debate between two Christians and two Atheists and the PBS documentary about the history of non-theist thought have generated enormous amounts of traffic. In almost any permutation of PBS atheism documentary and ABC atheist debate, I’m in the top 5 queries if not the top 2 or 3. Now, what I wrote isn’t overwhelmingly interesting but I’m noticing a ton of hits from these searches along with hits from other sites directly linking here. I’ve done very little directly to influence this as I’m not going around to every non-theist site I can find and spamming my posts there. In fact, I’ve really only passed a few emails about these subjects with Hemant from friendlyatheist.com. And I only made two posts about each one on my favourite forums in order to spark debate there, not drive traffic here. This odd trend has garnered me 5,000 hits more than my highest trafficked month so far and it’s only the seventh day of the month.
Does this indicate, to me at least, that more and more people in America — and the world in a wider respect — becoming more accepting to non-theist views or are fostering their inner non-theist in a search for knowledge? I would venture a guess at a combination of both. However, I’m also so inclined to guess that given the proximity of airing dates for both programs, this may also be the driving force of the traffic increase, no pun intended.
America’s growing digital divide
May 7th, 2007 • Uncategorized
Pew Internet just published a new study detailing the growing digital divide between Americans. I do not know how accurate the numbers are however, they’re quite an eye opener in regards to the growing divide between the technically adept and those who refuse to use new technology or lack the understanding of it.
read more | digg story
Being nude is a loss of dignity?
May 6th, 2007 • 3 comments christianity, confusion, intolerance
As I was reading through my feeds tonight, I saw that Sean Prophet had posted up an interesting piece on a photograph of 18,000 nude participants in Mexico City’s Zocalo Square and how the Church sees it as a loss of human dignity. From a photographic standpoint, getting this many people together for a single shoot is simply amazing. I know from shoots I’ve been on in the past, getting one person (the model) to cooperate is difficult enough let alone another 17,999 people. But this is not what struck me as truly amazing.
Older people and clergymen see it as an offense against the Church itself and a deplorable act for people to be publicly seen nude. Gasp! I then remembered a quote from Genesis:
2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Adam and Eve were not shy about their nudity. It’s not like they were the only ones around either as God had just created beasts of the earth and beasts of the air just before he created Adam. Now, here’s Adam and Eve sitting around, stark naked in front of a whole host of animals and they do not care and I highly doubt the animals cared either. So is the Church saying it’s okay to be nude around animals but not other humans? The Bible is filled with passages of various people being very nude:
1 Samuel 18:1-4
The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. … Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.Isaiah 20:3-4
And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.Mark 14:51-52
And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.
I randomly selected these three passages, there is no rhyme or reason to their order. According to the Bible, it’s quite alright to be naked if you want to be. It does not matter if it’s in front of men, slaves, or even prophets. So how is being nude a loss of dignity in any sense? Biblically, it’s okay. Societally in Mexico, it’s not okay it seems. So if the Bible is the word of God as scribed by men, aren’t the clergymen committing blasphemies by charging people with being less than dignified or ridiculing them by pointing fingers when they see someone naked? When did prudishness become bedfellows with the Church?
Historically, people were not so bothered about being nude around each other. In Rome, it was quite accepted and encouraged. This is true of much of ancient Italy itself from the Romans to the Spartans to the Cretes and Minoans. Native and Meso Americans were frequently nude in public religious rituals and elsewhere. I even think original baptisms as performed by John the Beloved required you to be nude as to cleanse not only the spirit but the entire body of past transgressions. Ben Franklin was even a proud supporter of “air baths” and nudism in general. So when did society deem being nude was deplorable? I have no idea really but I’m sure it had something to do with the Puritans and other fundamentalists.
Thoughts on the ABC debate from last night
May 6th, 2007 • atheism, christianity, debate
I culled this first from Pharyngula and then from digg to get a rounded idea of other people’s thoughts.
What comes from the Dawkins forums is of no surprise but reading the comments from Pharyngula were interesting. Myself, like many others, think that Comfort’s argument is completely bizarre. In the banana video, Comfort goes on record to state that during the big bang, there was a bubbly fizzy brown liquid “created” and it just sat there…assumptively in the same spot. Then after millions of years, aluminum gathers around the fizzy brown liquid and somehow magically takes the form of our well known soda can. And if by “duh” moment, that can was then topped with a top and given a tab. Comfort then goes on to babble about how paint magically fell from the sky on to the can — and only the can — to paint it in now familiar colours. So is he saying that Coke and Pepsi have been around since the dawn of time? I’m flabbergasted. But no, this is his argument about atheists being “dumb” and non-intellectuals.
Comfort espouses that everything must have been created by someone — gee, that’s a deep statement. Buildings have builders (but not architects?), soda cans have soda can makers (does he know that robots make these cans?), paintings have painters, and so on and so forth. So during the debate when audience questions were fielded, I wonder why no one asked “If everything has a creator, does the Creator too have a Creator?”. I know I would have and would have gotten a great chuckle out of his rebuttal.
This is what is so many Christians think and they call non-theists crazy but I wonder if they will ever look in the mirror.
You’re not Christian, you’re not Atheist, what are you?
May 5th, 2007 • 2 comments beliefs, gnostic luciferianism, satanism, unfaith
I’m asked what my beliefs are quite often when I say I’m not Christian, Agnostic, Atheist, nor any other major religion. So what are my beliefs? I’m a Gnostic Luciferian. What does that mean?
Being a Gnostic Luciferian means that I do not believe in God. I don’t worship Satan or anything of the sort although I am a true Satanist. I believe that Lucifer was the progenitor of all original knowledge and creativity, and that this original sin is the embodiment of all humanity. I strongly believe that I’m meant to go through life learning as much as I possibly can about anything that I care to and nothing will stop me from doing so, and in that quest I will use any means possible to gain the knowledge I seek. I believe that the Satanic attributes of Lucifer are not only a coincidence of opposites but are wholly necessary for life to move forward. Yes, this means I like the evil attributes of Lucifer and totally dig the evil ways of Satan. But do not confuse this with god worship or me placing Lucifer as Godhead in my beliefs as I am the only Godhead I’ll ever need. My entire life will be spent in self-empowerment and betterment through any method I see fit.
I do not condone the juvenile actions of other fellow Satanists such as church burnings and sacrifices in order to conjure some demon or demiurge from the depths of Hell. These people completely miss the point of Satanism and are acting upon the popular media’s portrayal of Satan.
So what’s in a name? The term Luciferian has been around since the 4th century CE, named after the followers of Bishop Lucifer Calaritanus. He was labelled a heretic and excommunicated from the Church because he opposed Arianism even though Trinitarianism won out over Arianism in the 5th or 6th century. Odd that a man would be labelled a heretic because he is in opposition of heretical views that deny words of God. Some time after the 4th century CE, the name gained its now familiar ill connotation in popular Christian view, although this view is not shared by many Jews, cabalists, and other Christians who have gone beyond shallow indoctrination. It’s also been used in older Freemason text and by some of their proponents. All in all, most people see the name as evil incarnate and this does not bother me in the least.
In summation of Gnostic Luciferianism, I’m most compelled to learn in order to better myself and satisfy my internal Godhead. While I am a Luciferian, this ascribes me to the beliefs of Satanism as well and this is well accepted. Evil and the act of evil are comfortable bedfellows in my unfaith and serve me to my own personal ends. Without evil, I do not believe that we’ll advance ourselves due to inhibitions, blind faith, and herd mentality.
PBS Atheist documentary airing update
May 5th, 2007 • 2 comments atheism, tv
Since my original post just a few days ago, an intrepid commenter found the grid detailing when the documentary will be shown on PBS affiliates around the nation. It will be showing on WXEL in West Palm Beach on May 12 from 9PM to 12AM.
I’ll be setting the DVR up to record this since it’s hard to find anywhere else. If you read the comments on Pharyngula, you’ll see that someone links to a website that supposedly is showing it now however, I cannot vouch for this.