Separation of Church and State, Was Never So Literal

This is about as surreal as it gets. An incredible video about the moving of a huge church on a huge truck, set to over the top choral music specifically written for the event. I'm honestly flabbergasted.

It's really strange, the truck is so small comparatively it looks like the church is moving on its own.

separation

Thou Shalt Not Confuse Iconoclasm With Bigotry

Letter From God - by: Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip

Also By Them:

-Thou Shalt Always Kill
-The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Supplemental To That.

Supplemental to the last post this is another painting by Brueghel, known as The "Little" Tower of Babel.

Also both might have been painted as a condemnation of the House of Habsburg, the Austrian rulers of an international empire at the time, that continued all they way to the cessation of the first World War, and whose last head of house only abdicated (albeit in exile) in 1961.

Let's All Work Together.

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563)

"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."

It is interesting to me that this is seen as a bad thing by God. I must admit I've aways found the story of the tower of Babel interesting. plus I really like towers, it seems the ideal construction method really. Brueghel's painting is Beautiful, it seems so much more evocative of the possibilities of people cooperating, rather than the foibles. Instead of a lesson against pride, I wish we could take this as a lesson in the power of working together towards odd tasks.

Perosnally I Think They Were Just Bored And Thought building a tower to heaven sounded fun. Which sort of reminds me of a quote from The Book of The Seven Seas, "At first I thought I might go fishing, but that seeming dull I resolved on a voyage around the world." The quote is by Joshua Slocum about his 3 year journey, the first ever solo-circumnavigation of the globe, begun in the spring of 1895.

FUN FACT: (if it really could be defined as such) while the height of the tower is something of contention, it is listed in a couple of places:

The Book of Jubilees: 5433 cubits and 2 palms (according to ancient measurements, one cubit is twenty-four inches) putting the height of the tower at about 10,866 feet tall, about 8.75x taller than the Empire State Building, or nearly 2.5 kilometers.

A typical mediaeval account is given by: Giovanni Villani (1300): He relates that "it measured eighty miles round, and it was already 4,000 paces high (5,920 m (19,423 ft)) and 1,000 paces thick, and each pace is three of our feet."

The 14th century traveler John Mandeville also included an account of the tower, and reported that its height had been 64 furlongs (= 8 miles), according to the local inhabitants.

The 17th century historian Verstegan provides yet another figure - quoting Isidore, he says that the tower was 5164 paces high, about 7.6 kilometers, and quoting Josephus that the tower was wider than it was high, more like a mountain than a tower. He also quotes unnamed authors who say that the spiral path was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers and animals, and other authors who claim that the path was wide enough to have fields for growing grain for the animals used in the construction.

So the height kind of tends to vary from story to story, but is sort of universally immense by modern standards.

And finally, a contemporary author looking at it from an engineering perspective wrote, in his book, Structures or why things don't fall down (Pelican 1978–1984), Professor J.E. Gordon considers the height of the Tower of Babel. He wrote, 'brick and stone weigh about 120 lb per cubic foot (2000 kg per cubic metre) and the crushing strength of these materials is generally rather better than 6000 lbf per square inch or 40 megapascals. Elementary arithmetic shows that a tower with parallel walls could have been built to a height of 7000 feet or 2 kilometres before the bricks at the bottom were crushed. However by making the walls taper towards the top they ... could well have been built to a height where the men of Shinnar would run short of oxygen and had difficulty in breathing before the brick walls crushed beneath their own dead weight."

Most of this was taken from the Wikipedia Article here.

From The Desk of Brother Gatling Gun of Serenity

"The following is the first communique from a group calling itself Unitarian Jihad. It was sent to me at The Chronicle via an anonymous spam remailer. I have no idea whether other news organizations have received this communique, and, if so, why they have not chosen to print it. Perhaps they fear starting a panic. I feel strongly that the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at least not disgusting:

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression!

People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.

We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone.

Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee.

People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.

Startling new underground group spreads lack of panic! Citizens declare themselves "relatively unafraid" of threats of undeclared rationality.
People can still go to France, terrorist leader says."

Quoted entirely from Jon Carrol

BONUS! Get your very own Unitarian Jihad name with this hand Name Generator:
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Gattling Gun of Serenity. What's yours?
Post It Here as a Comment!

Additional Point of Interest: The first six presidents of the United States had ties to either The American Unitarian Association, or The Universalist Church of America, which were the predecessors of the modern Unitarian Universalist Church.

Mixed Messeges

What should we take from this?

Engineered Spirituality

The Endless Knot, is a Tibet Buddhist Motif, and one the "Eight Auspicious Signs"

It Symbolizes "Interplay and interaction of the opposing forces in the dualistic world of manifestation, leading to their union, and ultimately to harmony in the universe."

I found this interesting though, it's an explanation on how to draw an Endless Knot with Engineering Nomenclature and specificity. Ancient Traditional Symbolism, through mathematical Distillation:

Drawing an endless knot:

Plot the vertices A, B, C, D of square ABCD. Plot E, the midpoint of line segment AB. Plot F, the midpoint of line segment BC. Plot G, the midpoint of line segment CD. Plot H, the midpoint of line segment DA. Plot I, the midpoint of segment AE. Plot J, the midpoint of EB. Plot K, the midpoint of BF. Plot L, the midpoint of FC. Plot M, the midpoint of CG. Plot N, the midpoint of GD. Plot O, the midpoint of DH. Plot P, the midpoint of HA. Draw line segment AI. Draw line segment IN but with leaving a gap in its middle. Draw line segment NG. Draw line segment GE but leaving a pair of gaps at 1/4 and 3/4 of the way between G and E. Draw line segment EJ. Draw line segment JM but leaving a gap in its middle. Draw line segment MC. Draw line segment CL. Draw line segment LO but leaving a pair of gaps at 1/4 and 3/4 of the way between L and O. Draw line segment OH. Draw line segment HF but leaving a gap in its middle. Draw line segment FK. Draw line segment KP but leaving a pair of gaps at 1/4 and 3/4 of the way between K and P. Draw line segment PA. Erase points D and B, and the drawing is done.

Point, Counter-Point.

Point:


Counter Point:

Irreverance is on My Mind... ....Or is Reverance Not on My Mind?