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Monday, December 26, 2011

Happy Chanukah!


I know I'm a little late to post a Chanukah greeting, considering that tonight is the 7th night.




Do you have any idea how hard it was to find a Jewish Zebra?

Friday, October 28, 2011

Best of Answers



I've answered many hundreds of questions about Jewish identity with variations of an essay that derived from a lesson plan I'd used long ago with teens. Some of them had many more outside references listed than did others. At some, I used Jewish history sites; others showed references to secular historical evidence, international linguistic scholarly references, and to web sites of different respected Rabbis. At others I detailed the history of the false notion of Jews as a race and used award winning Biology web references.
The photo there is of one of my answers to the question of Jewish identity that someone nominated to Yahoo and Yahoo Answers chose to feature as a Best of Answers. While all the information in it is correct and contains much of the information I provide elsewhere, if *I* were going to choose one of the thousands of times I've answered this question asked on a daily basis, I would have chosen one of the better referenced answers I'd posted many times.

Here is a link to the above question: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101027162339AAi9CII
Here is a link to another of the many hundreds of times I have answered this question:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgEGzRemtJg1A2CbyhoQKfPty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20111020175125AAigOTe
I might be back later with more.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Can anyone identify this species of ant?



I change the water in my birdbaths and bowls several times a day since it is so very hot outside. After lunch during the regular "refill time”, I looked out on the back patio to see the bowl right next to the door filled with these squiggling and drowning winged ants. At first glance I wasn't sure if it was some form of wasp or ant, but I decided upon ant after closely looking at its head and especially upon finding a much smaller version of this winged creature alongside its larger relatives also squirming in the bowl. That one has no wings and is easily identified as an ant, but I still don’t know what species. I’ve never seen one like it before. I’ve seen “cow killer ants” with hair on their abdomen, but their bodies were completely covered with hairs. This one only has concentric circles of short black hair with the orange abdomen *very* slightly visible through each circle if you look very closely through a magnifying lens. I couldn't get a clear photo of that or the smaller ant ( it came out blurry), but it looks almost identical to the winged creatures except for being much, much smaller. The most distinctive feature is the black hair rings circling like a bulls eye around the lower 2/3 of the abdomen to the anus.
What is this? I've been searching for an hour in online identification guides and in my own books on insect identification and so far, it eludes me.
Any help would be appreciated. If this many winged ants dropped into this water bowl this morning, I must have a colony very near, looking to expand. I wonder how many didn’t drop into the bowl?
I have a couple of other photos that look similar. I put all the winged ants in a jar with tiny air holes..until I discover just what I'm dealing with here, before I either exterminate or release them. Three of the winged ants didn’t survive, but 7 still remain, along with one of their tinier ant relatives
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UPDATE JULY 26, 2011

While I received many emails giving guesses as to the species, I actually discovered the answer today on my own. I discovered is that it is technically a WASP,
even though the very tiny female has no wings.
I discovered this is a type of "velvet ant", a type of ant some call
"cow killer ants" or "cow ants" because they can inflict painful stings. I'd never
seen one like this one before, but I have seen several other very
colorful species on my property. As the orginal entry indicated, I had already thought of them, based on the behavior of these creatures, but they just looked so very different from the other velvet ants I'd seen here I ruled that out initially.

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/wasps/mutillidae.htm

You'll find one that looks SIMILAR to what I have pictured scrolling
down at "Subfamily: Sphaeropthalminae

Tribe: Sphaeropthalmini
Genus: Sphaeropthalma
subgenus Sphaeropthalma Blake
pensylvanica floridensis Schuster
pensylvanica pensylvanica (Lepeletier)"

The pensylvanica pensylvanica (Lepeletier)is the one it looks like. But this close up photo here also fails to show that there is red visible in between each circle of black spiky hairs on the abdomen http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/wasps/Mutillidae_38.htm
I'd thought it reminded me of the velvet ants I'd seen in behavior but
the fact that the head and thorax didn't have many hairs threw me
off...and the fact I'd never seen more than one velvet ant at a time
before.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

To Answer: How is it a Hate Site?

I've decided to come back to my long neglected blog to post something I’ve had in my computer for quite a while and have sent in many email requests since 2005. In that time I’ve also discovered new incriminating information as a result of Glen Beck’s scandalous recommendation of a notorious Nazi sympathizing author. I’ve given most of this information so often I decided to post it here so I can just give a link to it rather than have to try to keep finding it in my own computer and copy pasting the whole thing. I must admit that today I’m posting it in a hurry in response to yet another request and I have not gone back to any of these links to make sure they still work. Someone write me if any of the links are now broken/not working. I probably should also return to clean up grammar or spelling that I also didn’t check. Having said all that, I hope this will be useful for your purpose today.
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The Come and Hear site touts itself as presenting the real Talmud , however, I discovered through reading the page on copyright issues that Come and Hear had taken the Talmudic texts it presents from a book titled, "The Plot Against Christianity" by Elizabeth Dilling, which apparently had published hundreds of pages from the Soncino Press edition. The Plot Against Christianity is antisemitic screed. Elizabeth Dilling was a notorious antisemitic rabble rouser who worked very hard to present herself as a scholar. http://www.roytov.com/downloads/ElizabethDillingTheJewishReligion.pdf
Glen Beck was appropriately catching all kinds of flack for his recommendation of a book by that notorious antisemite whose works appear all over Come and Hear, Elizabeth Dilling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71L1ojJ_InY
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/menachem-rosensaft/glenn-becks-nazi-loving-t_b_604021.html
PLEASE also note following
http://www.jstor.org/pss/30037654
Only the first page is available there. More if you are a member.
However while*some* pages of that Talmud are legit, there are pages where the debate or extreme ideations that rabbis were often arguing against or condemning, are highlighted out of context in a manner not seen in the Talmud or the actual Soncino edition. Such editing actually alters meaning of the discussion. Since the altered portions come from Dilling’s book rather than the actual Soncino edition, somehow Carol Valentine has gotten away with altering the Talmud without being called on it legally.

Noontide Books is the publisher of Elizabeth Dilling’s book. They also published David Duke's autobiography, "My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding". David Duke, one of the most notorious antisemites in the United States, is a former Ku Klux Klan leader who has attempted to make white supremacy and antisemitism respectable.
The Come and Hear web site, aside from its on-line Talmudic publication, has many essays written by the web site owner, Carol A. Valentine, and others, under the heading of America under the Talmud. For example, in her essay, Holy Atrocities and Judaism, she presents cherry picked out of context portions of the Talmud and other Jewish writings through a hostile, antisemitic lens using classical propagandizing canards. Carol Valentine's purpose appears to be to promote that the United States is quickly becoming a nation governed by Talmudic law. Her web site promotes the exact forms of propagandizing used in past generations as another way to say the Jews control everything.
The author, Carol A. Valentine, also owns another web site called “Public Action, Inc” There she writes on other inflammatory topics . One of her favorites appears to be Waco and the Branch Davidians, the Seventh Day Adventist version of “Messianic Judaism” and the group notorious for David Koresh. Her web site also prominently promotes a list of Holocaust Revisionist web sites.

Many people stumble upon the Come and Hear website thinking they find something very useful, a web site that offered search capabilities for a significant part of the English translation of the Babylonian Talmud. Upon discovering that the web publication of the Soncino Talmud translation wasn’t authorized by the Soncino Press, and that the web master who put up this site uses it to attack Jews and Judaism, it becomes clear this is a site dedicated to perpetrate malicious fraud in a most insidious method.

In between the double lines below are just a few things you will find there. If you cannot see the rabid Jew hate in these portions found at the Come and Hear site, copied verbatim from the web site's perversions of Talmud, Torah and Judaism they post there, then you are likely to be blinded with it yourself. If you want to learn what Jew haters spread among themselves to justify their sickness read that disgusting offal.
I will NOT give direct links to the precise pages I copied this from on that site because I do not want to advertise for it. I have the links handy, but I’m not going to popularize that garbage.
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“Blasphemy Approved
Not content with consistent reviling or blasphemy of God's Word, this subterfuge is taught by the Talmud to permit blaspheming the Divine Name: "Blasphemy is an indictable offense only if it is mentally directed against God. If, however, one reviles the Divine Name, whilst mentally employing it to denote some other subject, he is not punished!"
The Darwinian theory of evolution, like the Spinoza theory of "immanence," pantheism, are similar Cabalistic ideas in new word form.
The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, will tell you how when the Dutch began to call the theories of Spinoza by their right name - Atheism - his own Cabala teachers who were members of the Beth Din (Talmud law court) quickly excommunicated him to prevent more unpopularity from fastening upon the already unpopular Jewish community. But, ever since, he has borne in Judaism the title of "Blessed Spinoza." All that he did was to voice the Cabala, a foundation of the basically atheistic "Jewish" Babylonian Talmudic religion. Karl Marx, himself son of a Jewish Rabbi, called the "En Sof" by a still fancier name, "dialectical materialism," the mindless bashing of germ to fish to mammal to ape to man, with the Jewish-spawned Marxist revolution as its crown and triumph
Stripped of its deceptions and falsehoods, there is nothing monotheistic about Judaism, nor does it have anything in common with Christianity to which it is irrevocably and diametrically opposed. “
----- from another page there
“The Talmud is divided into six main divisions called "Sedarim" (orders), but each division and each volume is a hodge-podge of every subject imaginable. The main and overall characteristics of the Talmud are: pomp, silliness, obscenity and more obscenity, a setting up of laws seemingly for the purpose of inventing circumventions, and evasions; delight in sadistic cruelty; reversal of all Biblical moral teachings on theft, murder, sodomy, perjury, treatment of children and parents; insane hatred of Christ, Christians and every phase of Christianity. “
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Now back to honest information to dispel that despicable site:
The Talmud makes no mention of Jesus. The Talmud makes no mention of Mary. The Talmud does not condone sexual immorality.
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudMap/Gemara.html
The Talmud is many volumes of Rabbinical debate and discourse of how to apply the laws of Torah to the lands of the Diaspora.
This is the opening of the link below
" Talmud: The Real Truth About The Talmud

Talmud: Statement of Purpose
There are many lies circulating the internet about the Jewish Talmud. These allegations are supported by "direct quotations" from the Talmud that are frequently wrong or taken out of context. However, most people lack the scholarly background to verify these claims. Most people have no way of knowing that these accusation are false and malicious. What we are attempting is to demonstrate in detail how these accusations are both wrong and intentionally misleading. We are trying to show to the world the real truth about the Talmud."
Now back to my own words. Jesus is not taught about in Judaism. He is insignificant to the Jewish religion. He is not an object of hate, he is simiply a non-issue to the faith of the Jewish people. He is no more a part of Jewish teaching than Buddha or Mohammed or any other leader of any other religion would be.
Below are some real ethics of the Talmud :
"They said of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai that no man ever greeted him first, even idol worshippers in the market" [i.e., Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai was the first to greet every person, even idol worshippers] (Berachot 17).
"[it is proper to] support the idol worshippers during the sabbatical year …. and to inquire after their welfare [commentators: even on the days of the holidays of their idols, even if they do not keep the seven Noahide commandments] because of the ways of peace." (Shevi'it 4,3)
'We support poor Gentiles with the poor people of Israel, and we visit sick Gentiles as well as the sick of Israel and we bury the dead of the Gentiles as well as the dead of Israel, because of the ways of peace." (Gitin 61a)
Helpful references to help you learn why perverting the Talmud is definitely antisemitic.
http://www.angelfire.com/mt/talmud/
Also read this http://www.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/4232_12.asp
http://www.jewfaq.org/gentiles.htm