Although I’ve never had a pet rabbit, I’ve always loved bunnies–and the ones in this video are especially lovable.
We had baby cottontails in our garden, some years ago. Cutest little things. One night, I was standing around, smoking my pipe, when three or four of the little rascals came out and started chasing each other around me. I felt like a maypole. The rabbits in this neighborhood get quite tame, and I love their company.
Patagonia, in South America, used to be known for extraordinarily big men. Now it’s known for extraordinarily big dinosaurs.
The newest contender for the crown, Patagotitan, was discovered in 2012 and only presented to the world this year. Scientists calculate it as being roughly the size of eleven elephants, and some 120 feet long.
Bob Bakker, the paleontologist who did more than anyone to change the public perception of dinosaurs, once told me he thought God must have taken real delight in creating these giants. Who am I to disagree?
Now that they’re looking for them in the Southern Hemisphere, scientists keep discovering bigger and cooler dinosaurs–it’s hard to keep track of them all. We needn’t take the Darwinian spiel seriously, and we do have to allow for normal human error in reconstructing the whole animal from an incomplete set of bones: but we can certainly step back and admire God’s handiwork.
Any animal this size really ought to make us humble. And this is Mr. Nature, with more of God’s stuff, signing off.
One way to get your ship through the Clashing Rocks…
You do wonder about some of the things that go on in Greek mythology.
Jason and the Argonauts have to get through the Clashing Rocks that guard the Bosporus, without the ship getting cracked like a nutshell. In the Ray Harryhausen movie, this giant merman-thing (pictured above) comes up and holds the rocks apart for them. In other versions of the story, this doesn’t happen. Instead, for instance, they send a dove through the rocks and, after they move apart again after squashing the poor bird, the Argonauts are able to row real fast and get through, with only the Argo’s stern ornament bitten off.
Uh, guys… why didn’t you beach the Argo and haul it overland on rollers, as ancient sailors often did with their ships, and put it back in the water when you’d passed by the Clashing Rocks? No one seems to have thought of that. One is reminded of Laurel and Hardy in The Music Box, lugging the piano up those horribly steep stairs when they could’ve just carted it around the block to the front door. Duh…
Oddly enough, in later centuries, Greek and Roman ships routinely passed through the strait without seeing hide nor hair of the Clashing Rocks. The myth says that after Jason got through, the rocks didn’t clash together anymore. Perhaps their failure to crush the Argo made them give it up. Who knew great big rocks can get down-hearted?
Ah, well, they don’t call it mythology for nothing.
Former TV commentator Bill O’Reilly, bedeviled by assorted sexual harassment charges, now blames God for his problems.
So he says, “You know, am I mad at God? Yeah, I’m mad at him. I wish I had more protection.” (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/bill-o-reilly-blames-god-sexual-harassment-allegations-article-1.3584246)
Adam could’ve told him that wouldn’t work. “Well, gee, Lord! The woman that you gave me, she gave me the forbidden fruit, and I did eat.” No dice, Adam: you’re out of the Garden of Eden.
O’Reilly has paid out $32 million to settle accusations made against him by several women, his co-workers at Fox News.
If we assume the charges aren’t true, we must also assume that a number of women conspired to tell these whopping lies about him so they could get their hands on his money. There aren’t many people who believe that. But even if that were so, then the blame ought to fall on the false accusers, not on God: who, having endowed us with free will, made it possible for us to disobey His commandments. Would O’Reilly rather God had created us without free will?
False accusations of this or that are an everyday tool of politics in our glorious 21st century. Is that God’s fault? Or ours? And He has, after all, given us a Savior who can take away our sins–without taking away our free will.
Bill O’Reilly isn’t the first to blame God for his problems, and he won’t be the last.
Professor James Moriarty
For Agatha Christie, it was the Big Four; for Sax Roehmer, Dr. Fu Manchu; and for Arthur Conan Doyle, Professor James Moriarty, dubbed by Sherlock Holmes “the Napoleon of Crime.” These authors, and others, could not help wondering whether the evil events of their age were being orchestrated by a single conductor.
I think most of you in this audience know who that conductor is.
Where they went wrong, I think, was in attributing all the effects of evil to a single mortal cause–one man, or one organization. But what if it was many individuals, and many organizations large and small, not necessarily working consciously together, but performing similar actions motivated by similar objectives and compatible ideologies?
For instance: can anyone doubt that there are tens of millions of dollars flowing into Australia from all over the world, to support the campaign for a “Yes” vote on same-sex pseudomarriage? It doesn’t all have to come from the same source. Organized Sodomy has movers and donors all over Europe and America. Of course they’re going to want to branch out to Australia.
I am coming to believe that, by the inspiration of Satan, there is a conscious, purposeful, directed campaign for evil in this world today, whose goal is to erase Christianity and to destroy the family, leaving no effective barrier between the individual and the all-devouring state. I believe that all this stuff that we’re seeing in this century–the transgender movement, Antifa, Occupy, the universities’ expressed hatred of white people, the activities of the Democrat Party and their GOP minions in Congress, militant atheism and all the rest of it–is all part of a concerted effort ultimately tracing back to… well, Satan. Because that’s where it all comes from, in the end.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places… —St. Paul (Ephesians 6:12)
Source: ‘Leading Writers,’ Useful Idiots
I found this hymn by Charles Wesley posted on the Ezekiel Countdown blog yesterday (highly recommended: http://ezekielcountdown.com), and wished to use it here. This rendition is by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band, in 18th century style.
Christ’s soldiers had better arise. We’ve got our work cut out for us.
Puppies and kittens, dogs and cats–lots of huggable moments in this video. Sorry I couldn’t get one with hamsters and iguanas in it, too, but them’s the breaks.
Was God good and great and wise to build love into us, or what?
Mr. Nature here–and I can’t let this year go by without paying homage to the tiger swallowtail butterfly, one of my favorite creations by God’s mind and hands.
These tigers are holding a convention on a stand of buttonbush. I’ve never seen so many in one place. Around here, you just see one now and then, alone. But then we don’t have any buttonbush to attract them.
Mrs. Nature is thinking next year’s garden might be better as a butterfly garden–milkweed for the monarchs, and assorted wildflowers for the rest. I’m all for it. Maybe this’ll be my chance finally to see a hummingbird.
In Snorri Sturlusson’s history of King Harald I of Norway, written in the Middle Ages, he reports that Harald married a queen who had a reputation for practicing witchcraft. When she died, Harald was so distraught that he forbade anyone to move her body. Amazingly, the corpse, just left on the bed for month after month, did not decay. But finally, when they had to do something about the bedding, they turned her over–and she burst wide open, and a multitude of hideous little monsters swarmed out of her body, which instantly decayed.
Hmm… Was Snorri actually writing about America’s college and university system in 2017?
I visited The College Fix today (http://www.thecollegefix.com/), and it was so full of revolting news reports, I didn’t know where to begin. Catholic college, Georgetown, punishes students for promoting Catholic teachings on marriage. Smith College Queer Studies program–yes, you can get a degree in that, and don’t even ask what it costs–seeks to “disrupt normative sex,” only aberrant sex allowed. Another college teaches that “white people slaughtered and maimed their way to the top” and need to be brought down, I guess so other groups can have their turn to slaughter and maim people. And on and on and on, one after another. I just can’t zero in on any one of them. I couldn’t even get up the nerve to count them.
What are our colleges doing to us? If all these millions of students actually come to believe the drivel they’ve been taught, so ripe with hate, fury, and the potential for violence, what kind of hell-hole will America be turned into, in their hands? Think about it: someone’s got to.
Shut them down. Cut off the money and shut them down. Find some other means of higher education. And maybe someday we can build new colleges where decency and sanity prevail.
But first put a stop what what all these schools are doing.