Thursday, January 18, 2007
Odds and ends
Believe it or not, I have ANOTHER karma-related post forming in my mind; while this is FAB after last year's spiritual dry spell, out of respect for those readers who aren't into that sort of thing I'll toss out some other stuff to give 'em a break:
I did a new tech thing for the 1st time in ages: When viewing sites via BlogMad (click the image with the goofy eyes in the sidebar if you want to join), if I get distracted and just click on a link rather than opening it in a new window, there's no way to get back to the page I came from (the back arrow will take me to the blog BEFORE that one); this is a bummer, since after I go look at whatever they recommended I usually want to post a comment about it. On one such occasion, I started wondering how, on some sites, when you click a link it opens in a new page, and wouldn't that be a good thing to have for MY links so that BlogMad users could click on them to their heart's content and still be on my blog... so I did some code checking, and figured out how to do it. To keep Blogger from seeing the code as attempted html, I'll use () instead of <>, which gives us:
(A HREF="your URL here" target=_blank)
Sometimes "_blank" has single or even double quotes around it, but my husband says that's only necessary if you have "weird characters" as part of a command, so not to worry about it; whichever way you format it, it seems like a good idea even if you don't use BlogMad or some other surfing service (although it might aggravate some folks who're attached to tabbed browsing)... you don't want your links to send people away from your site, just to add other goodies to their experience therewith.
We're still getting raccoon visitors, and it appears to be 3 different ones; 2 I've verified as male by the vaguely unsavory but necessary step of laying down on the carpet and looking under their tails to see their little testicles... my husband has started referring to this as "up-fur," a play on the fetish of "up-skirt," a form of voyeurism in which men get a thrill by seeing up women's skirts (usually without their knowledge). The 3rd coon just seems too big and goofy-looking to be female, so we're assuming he's male... but we've been faked out before, so I'll keep an eye on him and see if I can spot anything anatomically definitive.
In other critter news: My husband had blocked the hole the rats had chewed into the attic with a glue trap, insisting that the super-stickiness would prevent them from breaking through; when I heard them in the attic again, he checked the trap... and found that they'd pulled one side out, and covered JUST the part of the glue that their fur would brush against as they went through the hole with little wood shavings. Is it just me, or are they acting more and more like something out of a horror movie? (Note to self; don't walk around alone at night barefoot and in my underwear.)
My husband brought home an amazing DVD, a documentary about the struggles of gay people in the Orthodox Jewish community; it's called "Trembling Before G-d"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278102/
and it's eye-opening, educational, fascinating... and of course heartbreaking at times. The special features, all of which are top-notch, include something as wonderful as the movie; clips of a series of rabbis speaking at length on the topic... including one who is himself gay. One of these eloquent gentleman told a story to illustrate how urges that would typically be met with disapproval if acted upon can turn out to exist for a valuable reason; a man he knew who'd had the overwhelming urge to steal everything he saw for his entire life found himself in a Nazi officer's office during WWII, and, when the latter went out for a moment, he saw that on the desk there were several hundred passports of Jews who were going to be deported and sent to camps... and he listened to his instinct just that once, grabbed them all and saved those people's lives. The man believed that God had given him the burden of that urge to bear so that he could be there and take action with a speed that no normal person could; WAS it God, or was it fate, coincidence, or perhaps karma drawing an "instinctive thief" to things that needed to be stolen? Geez, I can't even post about a movie without getting metaphysical, lol; the important point here is, I highly recommend that you watch this DVD.
The day after watching that DVD, the site I usually use to view the listings for my numerous digital cable channels
http://www.zap2it.com/
was down, and I had to use the much harder to read backup
http://www.excite.com/tv/data.jsp?nl=1
via which I found a movie that looked interesting; while I was watching it, an ad was shown for a movie with a gay theme, which seemed odd because the movie I was watching had a gay major character... how often does THAT happen? The channel I was watching didn't seem familiar, which isn't that noteworthy because I've got hundreds, but I started to wonder... and then an ad came on for "Queer as Folk," and I eagerly brought up the URL that was shown with the station identification
http://www.logoonline.com/
and discovered that, without my cable company having bothered to tell me, I've acquired "Logo," a really cool LGBT channel. (Did they not inform the customers on purpose, so that no one could protest?) If you're familiar with so-called "alternative" movies, you know how creative, brilliant and cutting edge you can expect much of their programming to be; check and see if you've got Logo and just didn't know it... and if you do, check it out.
I've found a couple of interesting URL's; if you want to find the cheapest gas in your area, go here
http://www.gaspricewatch.com/new/
and, if you've wondered what the, um, "big deal" is about the Tommy Lee/Pamela Anderson sex tape, and don't mind EXTREME close-ups of genitals, and, er, piston-and-cylinder type action, you can download it free here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/33214506/Pam_Anderson_and_Tommy_Lee.zip
And finally: The doctors have now decided that my mother must have blood clots in BOTH lungs, not just one, AND that she might have pneumonia too, just not a bad case (YET). On the + side, the test they did to check for markers in her blood that would indicate that cancer had taken hold somewhere new came back clean; for now, she appears to be cancer-free. Let's hope that this is the last cancer-related post I ever have to make about her.
I did a new tech thing for the 1st time in ages: When viewing sites via BlogMad (click the image with the goofy eyes in the sidebar if you want to join), if I get distracted and just click on a link rather than opening it in a new window, there's no way to get back to the page I came from (the back arrow will take me to the blog BEFORE that one); this is a bummer, since after I go look at whatever they recommended I usually want to post a comment about it. On one such occasion, I started wondering how, on some sites, when you click a link it opens in a new page, and wouldn't that be a good thing to have for MY links so that BlogMad users could click on them to their heart's content and still be on my blog... so I did some code checking, and figured out how to do it. To keep Blogger from seeing the code as attempted html, I'll use () instead of <>, which gives us:
(A HREF="your URL here" target=_blank)
Sometimes "_blank" has single or even double quotes around it, but my husband says that's only necessary if you have "weird characters" as part of a command, so not to worry about it; whichever way you format it, it seems like a good idea even if you don't use BlogMad or some other surfing service (although it might aggravate some folks who're attached to tabbed browsing)... you don't want your links to send people away from your site, just to add other goodies to their experience therewith.
We're still getting raccoon visitors, and it appears to be 3 different ones; 2 I've verified as male by the vaguely unsavory but necessary step of laying down on the carpet and looking under their tails to see their little testicles... my husband has started referring to this as "up-fur," a play on the fetish of "up-skirt," a form of voyeurism in which men get a thrill by seeing up women's skirts (usually without their knowledge). The 3rd coon just seems too big and goofy-looking to be female, so we're assuming he's male... but we've been faked out before, so I'll keep an eye on him and see if I can spot anything anatomically definitive.
In other critter news: My husband had blocked the hole the rats had chewed into the attic with a glue trap, insisting that the super-stickiness would prevent them from breaking through; when I heard them in the attic again, he checked the trap... and found that they'd pulled one side out, and covered JUST the part of the glue that their fur would brush against as they went through the hole with little wood shavings. Is it just me, or are they acting more and more like something out of a horror movie? (Note to self; don't walk around alone at night barefoot and in my underwear.)
My husband brought home an amazing DVD, a documentary about the struggles of gay people in the Orthodox Jewish community; it's called "Trembling Before G-d"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278102/
and it's eye-opening, educational, fascinating... and of course heartbreaking at times. The special features, all of which are top-notch, include something as wonderful as the movie; clips of a series of rabbis speaking at length on the topic... including one who is himself gay. One of these eloquent gentleman told a story to illustrate how urges that would typically be met with disapproval if acted upon can turn out to exist for a valuable reason; a man he knew who'd had the overwhelming urge to steal everything he saw for his entire life found himself in a Nazi officer's office during WWII, and, when the latter went out for a moment, he saw that on the desk there were several hundred passports of Jews who were going to be deported and sent to camps... and he listened to his instinct just that once, grabbed them all and saved those people's lives. The man believed that God had given him the burden of that urge to bear so that he could be there and take action with a speed that no normal person could; WAS it God, or was it fate, coincidence, or perhaps karma drawing an "instinctive thief" to things that needed to be stolen? Geez, I can't even post about a movie without getting metaphysical, lol; the important point here is, I highly recommend that you watch this DVD.
The day after watching that DVD, the site I usually use to view the listings for my numerous digital cable channels
http://www.zap2it.com/
was down, and I had to use the much harder to read backup
http://www.excite.com/tv/data.jsp?nl=1
via which I found a movie that looked interesting; while I was watching it, an ad was shown for a movie with a gay theme, which seemed odd because the movie I was watching had a gay major character... how often does THAT happen? The channel I was watching didn't seem familiar, which isn't that noteworthy because I've got hundreds, but I started to wonder... and then an ad came on for "Queer as Folk," and I eagerly brought up the URL that was shown with the station identification
http://www.logoonline.com/
and discovered that, without my cable company having bothered to tell me, I've acquired "Logo," a really cool LGBT channel. (Did they not inform the customers on purpose, so that no one could protest?) If you're familiar with so-called "alternative" movies, you know how creative, brilliant and cutting edge you can expect much of their programming to be; check and see if you've got Logo and just didn't know it... and if you do, check it out.
I've found a couple of interesting URL's; if you want to find the cheapest gas in your area, go here
http://www.gaspricewatch.com/new/
and, if you've wondered what the, um, "big deal" is about the Tommy Lee/Pamela Anderson sex tape, and don't mind EXTREME close-ups of genitals, and, er, piston-and-cylinder type action, you can download it free here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/33214506/Pam_Anderson_and_Tommy_Lee.zip
And finally: The doctors have now decided that my mother must have blood clots in BOTH lungs, not just one, AND that she might have pneumonia too, just not a bad case (YET). On the + side, the test they did to check for markers in her blood that would indicate that cancer had taken hold somewhere new came back clean; for now, she appears to be cancer-free. Let's hope that this is the last cancer-related post I ever have to make about her.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
The karmic algebra of charity + prejudice
My husband told me about the following story (the asterisks are mine):
"PARIS - A top French judge ruled that an extreme-right group cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don't eat pork because of their faith.
Judge Christian Vigouroux of the Council of State, the country's highest administrative body, said late Friday that such giveaways by the far-right group Solidarity of the French threaten public order.
His ruling approved a decision by Paris police to refuse permits to the group on the grounds that such handouts could spark angry reactions.
France is home to more than 5 million Muslims and some 600,000 Jews. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit eating pork, and Vigouroux said the group had shown 'a clearly discriminatory goal' with its charity.
Solidarity of the French was just one of several far-right groups that began distributing pork soup across France over the last four years.
Critics contend the giveaway of pork soup is a far-right ploy to draw support for their efforts to defend against perceived threats to European culture.
Far-right groups defend the soup as nothing more than an age-old staple of the rural heartland from which all the French, at least in the national imagination, are said to spring.
'Pork-fat soup is traditionally the soup of the poor because it provides complete nourishment,' said Bruno Le Griel, a lawyer for the group.
Le Griel argued that no needy Jew or Muslim was forced to consume the pork soup. But the judge said the group's Web site indicated it was a policy to ***refuse dessert to anyone who did not eat some soup first.***"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,242208,00.html
Despicable!! Disgraceful!! Utterly horrifying that any group anywhere would use hungry people as a way to display their prejudice and evil!!
My husband agreed with my outraged reaction, and then asked, "So what's the end karmic result of this combination of charity and discrimination, Karma Girl?" (He'll deny all belief in karma if asked directly, but tries to figure out what's good or bad karma and acts accordingly where applicable-he's sort of an unwilling acolyte, lol.) With widespread condemnation causing hordes of people to send out negative thoughts and feelings about this, it's no trick to see that the net karma for the miscreants is - NOW... but how about BEFORE everyone got up in arms about it?
When someone takes action that causes a hungry person to be fed, the resurgence of energy they feel, and the shift of their thoughts and feelings from ones of misery to contented ones, generates + karma... even if it's a scumbag that's providing the food. No, it doesn't seem "fair" that anything done by an evil person or with evil intent could have a + karmic result, but karma's NOT fair, any more than gravity or any other force of nature is "fair"; fairness requires some sort of sentient mind making judgments, and karma's just blind energies interacting. The gratitude of those being fed also generates + karma for as long as they feel it; sadly, human nature is such that people are steadily less grateful for what they're being given over time, and eventually will most likely take it for granted and feel NO gratitude, which is another example of how karma doesn't always reward do-gooding like we assume it "should." For the situation under discussion, some of those being fed might have felt contempt for the providers once they knew what was going on, but were too hungry to spurn the soup; I'm betting that the net karma of feeding each such person was -... but, before the truth came out, undiluted gratitude would have been the only energy flowing back from them to the benefactors, leading to + karma.
Hungry Jews and Muslims who discovered that they couldn't eat the soup, and that they couldn't have any dessert either, would have been furious and upset, and this would be powerfully - karma to those who planned it that way; since there were presumably far more people who CAN eat the soup than can't, though, the combined karma would still be +, although obviously less so.
The biggie in the karmic equation is what the mindset of the perpetrators was; are they crazy, sociopathic, self-righteous, or ugly types enjoying the pain they've caused? Based on the noteworthy ability of psychos and other rotten types to avoid suffering anything like the amount of grief they cause, it seems inescapable to me that we're being totally accurate when we describe these people as soulless; just like every other area of a human body can work improperly, not work at all, or even be partially or totally absent (some of these variations are of course deadly), the part(s) of the brain that allow the energies of thoughts and feelings to form the soul can fail to do so, leaving a person with a stunted, warped or nonexistent soul... and since our souls connect us to karma, such a person would have little or no connection to karma's "engine," such that, grim as it is to contemplate, they could do as they please and only have to deal with the direct results of their actions, not with karma. What that means in this case is that if the architects of this scheme are crazy or amoral/sociopathic, they could be "shielded" from the - karma flowing back to them in response to their actions... it turns my stomach to say that, but I don't see any way around it. The good news is that the + karma coming from those they fed would ALSO be blocked, but that's small consolation.
If, instead, these turds are just self-righteous @ssholes who think they're doing a good and noble thing, they WILL get all the karma, + and -, that their actions lead to, but because they're thinking pleased, proud thoughts, which are + and call forth further + energy, rather than ugly (-) ones, they almost certainly had a net + result earlier on despite doing something immoral... yeah, that sucks, but at least they'll get a karmic butt-kicking now that the sh*t has hit the fan and thousands of people are thinking hateful, enraged thoughts about them.
What we should hope for is that the Pork Soup Gang are mean-spirited types who were thrilled when they thought of a way to stick it to non-Christians and hide it under a pious mask of charity, and were rubbing their hands and chuckling gleefully at the brilliant scam they pulled off... because then, not only will all their well-deserved - karma find and surround them like a cloud of doom, but the negative energy from their loathsome thoughts and feelings will draw even more - karma to them. Granted, pure cause and effect will likely do them plenty of harm without karma's help, because with so many people ticked off at them some direct action is bound to be taken to their detriment eventually, but every bit helps.
And what would their net karma have been BEFORE it became widely known what they were doing? By what equation can we add their ugly musings (- karma) to the + karma from those they fed and the - karma from those they turned down? There isn't one, obviously, but one scary thing is clear; since this is supposed to be a small group, and there were undoubtedly many homeless who asked to be fed, the vast majority of whom could eat the pork... with more people generating + feelings/thoughts than - ones, the net karma to the scumbags would have been +.
This is why it's so important for each of us to make it our responsibility to pay attention to what's going on around us, analyze it correctly so that we recognize evil when we see it and don't confuse the evildoers with the victims, and then condemn the former and support the latter, not just in our heads and hearts but loud and clear so that everyone knows about it and can join in... because we can't always count on karma to "punish" wrongdoing, but we CAN count on ourselves to do so if we CHOOSE that path. And what would the karma to us be of that choice? That's a whole 'nother essay...
"PARIS - A top French judge ruled that an extreme-right group cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don't eat pork because of their faith.
Judge Christian Vigouroux of the Council of State, the country's highest administrative body, said late Friday that such giveaways by the far-right group Solidarity of the French threaten public order.
His ruling approved a decision by Paris police to refuse permits to the group on the grounds that such handouts could spark angry reactions.
France is home to more than 5 million Muslims and some 600,000 Jews. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit eating pork, and Vigouroux said the group had shown 'a clearly discriminatory goal' with its charity.
Solidarity of the French was just one of several far-right groups that began distributing pork soup across France over the last four years.
Critics contend the giveaway of pork soup is a far-right ploy to draw support for their efforts to defend against perceived threats to European culture.
Far-right groups defend the soup as nothing more than an age-old staple of the rural heartland from which all the French, at least in the national imagination, are said to spring.
'Pork-fat soup is traditionally the soup of the poor because it provides complete nourishment,' said Bruno Le Griel, a lawyer for the group.
Le Griel argued that no needy Jew or Muslim was forced to consume the pork soup. But the judge said the group's Web site indicated it was a policy to ***refuse dessert to anyone who did not eat some soup first.***"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,242208,00.html
Despicable!! Disgraceful!! Utterly horrifying that any group anywhere would use hungry people as a way to display their prejudice and evil!!
My husband agreed with my outraged reaction, and then asked, "So what's the end karmic result of this combination of charity and discrimination, Karma Girl?" (He'll deny all belief in karma if asked directly, but tries to figure out what's good or bad karma and acts accordingly where applicable-he's sort of an unwilling acolyte, lol.) With widespread condemnation causing hordes of people to send out negative thoughts and feelings about this, it's no trick to see that the net karma for the miscreants is - NOW... but how about BEFORE everyone got up in arms about it?
When someone takes action that causes a hungry person to be fed, the resurgence of energy they feel, and the shift of their thoughts and feelings from ones of misery to contented ones, generates + karma... even if it's a scumbag that's providing the food. No, it doesn't seem "fair" that anything done by an evil person or with evil intent could have a + karmic result, but karma's NOT fair, any more than gravity or any other force of nature is "fair"; fairness requires some sort of sentient mind making judgments, and karma's just blind energies interacting. The gratitude of those being fed also generates + karma for as long as they feel it; sadly, human nature is such that people are steadily less grateful for what they're being given over time, and eventually will most likely take it for granted and feel NO gratitude, which is another example of how karma doesn't always reward do-gooding like we assume it "should." For the situation under discussion, some of those being fed might have felt contempt for the providers once they knew what was going on, but were too hungry to spurn the soup; I'm betting that the net karma of feeding each such person was -... but, before the truth came out, undiluted gratitude would have been the only energy flowing back from them to the benefactors, leading to + karma.
Hungry Jews and Muslims who discovered that they couldn't eat the soup, and that they couldn't have any dessert either, would have been furious and upset, and this would be powerfully - karma to those who planned it that way; since there were presumably far more people who CAN eat the soup than can't, though, the combined karma would still be +, although obviously less so.
The biggie in the karmic equation is what the mindset of the perpetrators was; are they crazy, sociopathic, self-righteous, or ugly types enjoying the pain they've caused? Based on the noteworthy ability of psychos and other rotten types to avoid suffering anything like the amount of grief they cause, it seems inescapable to me that we're being totally accurate when we describe these people as soulless; just like every other area of a human body can work improperly, not work at all, or even be partially or totally absent (some of these variations are of course deadly), the part(s) of the brain that allow the energies of thoughts and feelings to form the soul can fail to do so, leaving a person with a stunted, warped or nonexistent soul... and since our souls connect us to karma, such a person would have little or no connection to karma's "engine," such that, grim as it is to contemplate, they could do as they please and only have to deal with the direct results of their actions, not with karma. What that means in this case is that if the architects of this scheme are crazy or amoral/sociopathic, they could be "shielded" from the - karma flowing back to them in response to their actions... it turns my stomach to say that, but I don't see any way around it. The good news is that the + karma coming from those they fed would ALSO be blocked, but that's small consolation.
If, instead, these turds are just self-righteous @ssholes who think they're doing a good and noble thing, they WILL get all the karma, + and -, that their actions lead to, but because they're thinking pleased, proud thoughts, which are + and call forth further + energy, rather than ugly (-) ones, they almost certainly had a net + result earlier on despite doing something immoral... yeah, that sucks, but at least they'll get a karmic butt-kicking now that the sh*t has hit the fan and thousands of people are thinking hateful, enraged thoughts about them.
What we should hope for is that the Pork Soup Gang are mean-spirited types who were thrilled when they thought of a way to stick it to non-Christians and hide it under a pious mask of charity, and were rubbing their hands and chuckling gleefully at the brilliant scam they pulled off... because then, not only will all their well-deserved - karma find and surround them like a cloud of doom, but the negative energy from their loathsome thoughts and feelings will draw even more - karma to them. Granted, pure cause and effect will likely do them plenty of harm without karma's help, because with so many people ticked off at them some direct action is bound to be taken to their detriment eventually, but every bit helps.
And what would their net karma have been BEFORE it became widely known what they were doing? By what equation can we add their ugly musings (- karma) to the + karma from those they fed and the - karma from those they turned down? There isn't one, obviously, but one scary thing is clear; since this is supposed to be a small group, and there were undoubtedly many homeless who asked to be fed, the vast majority of whom could eat the pork... with more people generating + feelings/thoughts than - ones, the net karma to the scumbags would have been +.
This is why it's so important for each of us to make it our responsibility to pay attention to what's going on around us, analyze it correctly so that we recognize evil when we see it and don't confuse the evildoers with the victims, and then condemn the former and support the latter, not just in our heads and hearts but loud and clear so that everyone knows about it and can join in... because we can't always count on karma to "punish" wrongdoing, but we CAN count on ourselves to do so if we CHOOSE that path. And what would the karma to us be of that choice? That's a whole 'nother essay...
