Thursday, May 19, 2011

A funny thing happended on the way to the forum

In recent months there have been a lack of posts to this blog for a number of reasons. First I have been fighting to overcome an extra large dose of writers block. Add to that a general lack/disinterest in sexual encounters. I know part of that is due to the aging process, the other is that I have just not gotten out as often as in the past. In some ways I feel that the sex drive is like a car on cement blocks. not exactly how one would want to envision things. Boy do I need someone to examine my stick-shift (pun intended).

So what to do with the blog then? Well I could do the following:
  1. Delete it. No not a real option I do need an outlet for my creative side.
  2. keep the blog as is and wait till the writers block clears (when ever that will be is unknown)
  3. Turn it into a photo blog. Interesting since I do have a vast number of images that I have downloaded in the past decade. This would make the blog like a great many others on the net
  4. I could convert the blog to be a commentary platform on issues that catch my eye or I want to comment on.
  5. I could also expand the scope of the blog to include the last three items.
O.k. its number 5 as a combo.

Did someone say combo #5


Now with that bit of fun out of the way on to the item that recently caught my attention:


So here are my two drachmas on the subject:

Did we, as they assert, do it? Hardly, the Roman empire was a collection of different cultures that were more or less forced by the Roman legions to make nice and live together. The map that is shown in the article was the full extent of the Roman Empire at its height 117AD by most accounts and it can give you a good idea of how many different cultures (Egypt, Greece in the east to the Gauls, Celts and the various tribes living in Britain to the west). Add to this mess of languages and Goddess based religions all of the political in-fighting among the ruling families that was Roman politics By the third century, all you really needed was the backing of the Roman legions and you could and did have military generals becoming the Roman emperor.

It was not until the last period (330-476AD) of the empire that the Church became a political power in the empire and became the "official" religion. A old adage goes "power corrupts" and the early Christian took full advantage. When the city of Rome finally fell in 476AD anything that was considered as "Roman" suddenly became either illegal or immoral like the acceptance of the difference sexual orientations, the rights that women had under Roman law, owning a cat and above all acceptance of other religious beliefs like sacred prostitutes (male and female). Now there is a way to do service your deity.


Now the owning of a cat might seem the odd item out in that list but consider this the cat was seen as a physical representation of the Egyptian Goddess Bast (Can't have that, that is Idol worship) They also saw the cat as evil/the devil because of the glow being shone from their eyes at night. Guess that we learn how stupid this was since the eradication of European cats both domestic and wild probably made the numerous outbreaks of the Black Death even worse than they should have been. why do I say that? the logic is rather simple. A cats natural prey is rodents among other things, Rodents like the different species of rat carry fleas that are the carriers of the black death and several other deadly diseases. You get rid of the preditor and the rodent population explodes leading to more human/rodent and human/ flea encounters. flea bites human for a snack and human gets what ever disease the flea is carrying.

One other thing I would like you to think about regarding the fall of the Roman Empire, and is not mentioned in the article, is that It was the Western half of the Roman Empire that fell in 476AD not the entire empire. In 330 AD the Roman Empire was divided into a number different administrative regions. By 395AD the Roman empire is divided into two seperate states. The Eastern Empire is governed from Constantinople (now Istanbul) and survived as the Byzantine Empire until 1300AD when its converted into the Ottoman empire.

All you have to do is look at the last fifteen centuries since the fall of the Roman Empire to see what damage the Church caused. For example the purging of the Library of the city of Alexandria in the 5th century, the numerous invasions during the Crusades, the Roman and Spanish inquisitions and finally all of the Witch trials (also called the burning times) to see my point. One thing that I am not is Anti-Christan but I am definitely Anti-fanatic. Any group (political, religious, sports teams Etc...)can create fanatical followers hoping to gaining a power base. The only group to my knowledge that does not have fanatics might be the Buddhists. (I'll have to check on that)

In the end, I really hate it when people do not do their research and decide that any group of humans are a likely and usable target to blame historical events on to support their ultra narrow world view.

hmmm Istanbul/Constantinople .
Sgt. Archer

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