UFOs: Easter Island Statues: Ancient Aliens?

Again  and  again  and  again,   cable  TV's  "Ancient  Aliens"  program  portrays  the  big  Easter  Island  statues  as  creations  of  ancient  aliens ...

However,   aren't  they  overlooking  the  obvious?   Compare  the  Easter  Island  statue  with  a  traditional  statue  of  a  begging  Buddhist  monk  of  Southeast  Asia ...

Both  the  Easter  Island  statue  and  the  Buddhist  monk   have  topknots.

Both  the  Easter  Island  statue  and  the  Buddhist  monk   are  staring  stonily  ahead.

Both  the  Easter  Island  statue  and  the  Buddhist  monk   have  long  ears.

Both  the  Easter  Island  statue  and  the  Buddhist  monk   are  holding  something.   The  monk  is  holding  a  begging  bowl.    What  is  the  Easter  Island  statue  holding?    His  penis?

Take  a  closer  look  at  a  photo  of  another  Easter  Island  statue,  in  which  the  thing  being  held  is  clearer ...

It's  a  bowl,  isn't  it?

The  Easter  Island  statues  are  begging  Buddhist  monks.

Not  aliens.

Undoubtedly,  the  religion  of  the  Easter  Island  "long  ears,"  long  recognized  by  the  locals  as  a  separate  cultural  group,   was  Buddhism.    While  they  forgot  their  religion  --  descendants  of  the  "long  ears"  still  live  on  the  island  --  they  preserved  the  memory  of  their  symbol  for  their  faith,  the  monks  with  begging  bowls.

Additionally,  it  didn't  take  aliens  with  rock-dissolving  particle  beams  and  anti-gravity  levitators  to   make  them  and  put  them  in  place.

Scientist / explorer  Thor  Heyerdahl,    whom  the  natives  called  "Senior  Kon-Tiki,"    during  his  months  as  a  resident  there  researching  the  history  and  archaeology  of  the   culture,   simply  asked  the  natives  to  make  him  a  statue.

They  readily  complied,   chiseling  the  statue  out  of  the  cliffs  there  in  a  Stone  Age  fashion,  with  stone  tools,  in  a  few  weeks,  only ...

                                          From  "Aku-Aku,"  by  Thor  Heyerdahl
                                           George  Allen  &  Unwin,  Ltd.,  1958
                                              The  book  is  still  highly  readable.  
                                       Hunt  it  down,  buy  it  and  give  it  a  read.

Other  researchers  appear  to  have  deduced  what  the  natives  meant  when  they  said  that  the  statues  "walked"  to  the  sites  of  final  placement.   The  bottom  ends  were  carefully  shaped  so  that  when  the  statues  were  rocked  left  and  right  with  ropes,   the  statues  pivoted  forward  down  the  path ...

Finally,  when  it  was  time  to  raise  the  statue  up  and  slide  it  into  the  hole  in  the  ground  which  supported  it,    instead  of  anti-gravity  levitators  supplied  by  aliens  the  natives  took  logs  out  of  hiding  and  used  them  as  levers  to  pry-up  the  end  of  the  statue  farthest  from  the  hole,  and  shove  dirt,  pebbles  and  stones  under  it  until  the  incline  was  steep  enough  for  gravity  to  take  over ...

So,  when  the  folks  who  produce  the  "Ancient  Aliens"  series  on  cable  TV  include  images  of  the  Easter  Island  statues,   what  they  do  not  reveal  is  that  the  statues  are  evidence  against  their  basic  premise.

HUMOR: Skin Ointment

A  lady  with  very  bad  skin  problems  goes  to  her  pharmacy,  and  asks  the  pharmacist  to  recommend  one  of  the  over-the-counter  skin  ointments  available  on  the  pharmacy  floor.   The  pharmacist  recommends  the  best  and  most  expensive  ointment  out  there  on  the  shelves.   The  lady  selects  a  jar,  takes  it  to  the  front,  pays  for  it,  and  takes  it  home.

When  she  gets  home,  she  opens  the  jar,    and  is  shocked  to  see  a  fly  struggling  in  the  sticky  ointment.

The  lady  immediately  takes  the  jar  of  ointment  back  to  the  pharmacy,    and  with  lip-quivering  rage  she  opens  the  jar  in  front  of  the  pharmacist  and  growls,  "THERE'S   A  FLY  IN  MY  OINTMENT !!!"

The  pharmacist  calmly  looks  at  the  fly  struggling  in  the  ointment  and  calmly  says,  "Oh,  yes.  I'm  sorry.  I  forgot  to  tell  you.  That  fly  suffered  from  some  very  serious  burns  when  he  had  an  accident  involving  hot  soup."

HUMOR: How I Say "Goodbye" to the Wife When One of Us Goes Somewhere

I've  got  nicknames  for  my  wife:  "Littlest,"  "Tiny,"  "Tine"  and  "Tininess."

She  knows  me  very,  very  well,  including  the  bizarre  ideation  about  everything  which  fills  my  head.

When  I  leave  the  house  to  go  someplace,  I'll  sometimes  kiss  her  and  say,  "Bring  underwear."  She'll  answer,  "Absolutely."

What  in  Heaven's  Holy  Name  does  that  refer  to?

It's  actually  a  religious  joke.    She  knows  that  I  am  poking  gentle  fun  at  those  Christians  who  preach  The  Rapture  --  the  notion  that  someday,  perhaps  soon,  thousands  will  suddenly  disappear,  leaving  us  less  worthy  slobs  to  fend  for  ourselves  in  the  chaos  of  the  less  fortunate.

I  am  implying,  "Look,  if  the  police  call,  and  they  report  that  they  found  my  car  running,  and  my  clothes  in  a  pile  on  the  driver's  seat  and  floor,   it  is  because  I  have  been  raptured.  I  want  you  to  rush  over  there  with  a  clean  pair  of  underpants  and  substitute  that  in  for  the  not-so-clean  pair  in  the  pile."

When  Littlest  leaves  the  house,  I'll  tell  her,   "Remember,  shout  'Stop!  Don't!'  repeatedly!"

That's  a  not-so-religious  joke.   I'm  telling  her,  "Look,  if  some  ruffian  grabs  you  and  tries  to  drag  you  into  the  woods  and  rape  you,   I  want  you  to  to  keep  yelling,   "STOP  DON'T  STOP  DON'T  STOP  DON'T  STOP  DON'T  STOP ..."

THE BIBLE: Who Were the "Magi" ?

Ever  since  I  started  going  to  Sunday  Mass  at  St.  Rose  of  Lima  Catholic  Church  on  Kings  Highway  near  the  White  Horse  Pike  in  Haddon  Heights,  New  Jersey,  I  have  been  greatly  pleased  with  the  quality  of  the  homilies  at  Mass.  They  are  always  about  the  readings  from  Scripture,  and  they  are  always  a  digestible   scholarly  analysis  of  history  and  theology  comprising  the  background  of  the  readings.

In  other  words,   they  are  what  the  Church  intends  homilies  to  be !

Which  makes  Mass  what  the  Church  intended  Mass  to  be  --  a  gathering  of  the  family  at  the  dinner  table;  accompanied  by  good  talk.  Right ?

So,  congratulations  to  the  Pastor  at  St.  Rose  of  Lima,   Fr.  E.  Joseph  Byerley !  Good  job !  Good  job !

The  Masses  of  January  4,  2015  celebrated  the  Epiphany  of  Our  Lord  --   the  Mass  of  the  Adoration  by  the  Magi.

Who  were  the  Magi ?

Fr.  Peter  Idler,  in  his  homily,    discussed  the  gradual  mutation  of  the  magi  in  Church  iconography   from  3  Babylonian  Zoroastrian  scholar/occultists  to  3  diverse  kings  of  the  East,  as  insight  into  the  significance  of  the  kings  in  Matthew's  gospel   --  namely,  the  extension  of  the  salvation  process  to  non-Jews  --  matured.

And  both  Fr.  Brown,  in  The  Birth  of  the  Messiah,  and  The  Jerome  Biblical  Commentary,    focus-in  on  the  fact   that  these  guys  from  the  east  are  interpreting  the  appearance  of  a  "star."    They  are  astrologers,  in  other  words.

While  I  believe  that,  indeed,  the  primary  role  of  the  story  is  to  illustrate the  opening  of  the  salvation  process  to  Gentiles,  not  just  Jews,    I  always  favored  the  analysis  that  while  the  "magi"  might  have  started-out  referring  to  Zoroastrian  scholar / occultists,    it  gradually  came  to  refer  to  "scholars,"  generally  --  including  the  Jewish  scholars  still  living  in  Persian  society  after  the  Babylonian  exile.

And,  note  that  while  interpreting  the  appearance  of  a  star   seems  "astrological"  and  therefore  occultic,   Matthew's  inspired  gospel   takes  the  appearance  and  movement  of  the  star  very  seriously.

And  so  those  who  see  in  the  story  a  reference  to  a  "conversion"  of  "sinful  occultists"  to  Christianity  are  probably  wrong.

In  any  event,  note  also  that  the  allegedly  Zoroastrian  "magi"   prove  to  at-least-nominally-Jewish  Herod   that  the  star  is  significant  by  quoting  Micah  5:1-3  --  inspired  Hebrew  Scripture  --  to  Herod.

I.e.,  Herod  the  at-least-nominally-Jewish  king  accepts  the  magi's  instruction  on  Judaism !

In  other  words,   the  "magi"  were  in  fact  Jewish  scholars  from  Babylon.

That  does  not  eliminate  their  role  as  pictures  in  the  gospel   of  the  extension  of  the  salvation  process  to  Gentiles.    Matthew  uses  Jesus'  move  to  Zebulun  and  Naphtali  --  lands  of  Jewish  tribes  --   as  pictures  of  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  to  the  Gentiles.

CONSPIRACY THEORY: Why I Remain a 9-11 "Truther"

On  9-11,  my  Dad  called  me  shortly  after  the  first  plane  struck  and  said,  "Pete,  turn  on  your  TV !  Watch  what  is  happening  to  the  World  Trade  Center !"

So,  I  turned  on  the  TV  and  watched  the  planes  hit  the  towers.    I  looked  at  the  Pentagon  damage.    I  studied  the  matter  of  the  plane  slamming  into  the  ground  in  Pennsylvania.  The  first  thing  that  caught  my  attention,  as  I  grew  increasingly  depressed  as  the  day  wore  on,    was  how,  though  each  of  the  World  Trade  Center  towers  was  hit  on  the  side,   and  though,  in  each  case,  the  steady  streams  of  fire  and  smoke  came  out  of  one  side,  each  building  fell  down  into  its  footprint.

I  thought,   "Huh !!!   Two  cases  where  a  big  building  was  injured  on  the  side.  Two  really  good  chances  for   a  building  injured  on  the  side  to  collapse  toward  the  injured  side  after  uneven   burning   and  melting.

"And  yet,  neither  building  fell  to  the  side.    Both  buildings  fell  down  into  their  footprint!

"And,  in  each  case,    the  collapse  and  aftermath  bore  substantial  resemblance  to  a  controlled  demolition!"

But  that  is  not  the  reason  why  I  am  a  9-11  "Truther."  That  is  only  the  first  thing  which  caught  my  attention  and  made  me  a  little  bit  suspicious.

The  reason  why  I  became  a  "Truther"   is  because  after  the  twin  towers  fell,    I  began  surfing  the  channels  to  see  what  the  rest  of  the  world  was  seeing  and  saying  in  response,  and  I  caught  this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltP2t9nq9fI

As  I  watched,  I  thought,   "Wait  a  second !  I've  been  watching  coverage  all  morning !    As  far  as  I  can  tell,  that  is  Building  #7,  the  Salomon  Brothers  Building,   peeking  out  from  the  right  hand  side  of  Jane  Stanley's  head !    Why  is  she  saying  that  it  'collapsed'???!!!    It  hasn't  'collapsed' !!!     We  are  looking  at  it !  Live !  All  she  has  to  do  is  turn  around,  and  she  will  see  it !"

And  then  someone  pulled  the  plug  on  the  report,  in  the  middle  of  the  report.

And  then,  about  20  minutes  later,  what  did  the  world  see ?

The  world  saw  Building  #7,  the  Salomon  Brothers  Building,  collapse  for  no  good  reason,  but  not   in  a  fashion   which  "substantially  resembled"  a  controlled  demolition.

It  fell  precisely  like  a  controlled  demolition ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnLcUxV1dPo

Now,  World  Trade  Center  7  wasn't  just  any  New  York  skyscraper.     It  was  the  one  skyscraper   which   was  specially  hardened  against  collapse.  In  effect,  it  was  one  of  the  world's  toughest,  un-collapsible   buildings.  New  York  authorities  had  wanted  to  put  their  emergency  management  center  there,  for  that  reason.

  And  though  a  floor  was  burning   about  a  third  of  the  way  up,   on  one  side,    this  building,  too,    fell  in  perfect  order,   straight  down,  into  its  own  footprint.

So,  I  don't  care  what  anyone  says.

Even  if  "they"  pay  the  world's  most  expensive  engineer  to  go  on  television  and  say,  "Well,  the  reason  why Building  7  fell  is  that  fire  heated   the  salagadoola  which  was  attached  to  the  mechika  boola,  and,  you  know,   that  impacted  the  phased  system  actuator  which  caused  rapid  frequency  harmonics  in  the  steel  superstructure  so  that  a  rapid  energy  singularity   caused  the  thing  to  collapse  from  the  basement  up,  and  --  bippity  boppity  boo !   --   it  fell !,"  don't  believe  it !  Don't  believe  it !

Think:   Why  did  BBC  (and  CNN,  also),  before  Building  7  fell,   say that  Building  7  fell ?

Because  it  was  already  set-up  for  controlled  demolition  with  explosives,  and  whoever   was  orchestrating  Building  7's  demolition  screwed-up  the  timing  of  their   news  release.

And  why  did  BBC  suddenly  lose  its  live  coverage  of  the  Building  7  collapse?

Because  whoever  was  orchestrating  the  whole  fraudulent  thing   was  watching  BBC,  realized  that   that  was  Building  7  in  the  background,  peeking  out  from  behind  the  BBC  reporter's  head,  and  realized,  "Holy  crap !    We  issued  the  news  release  too  early !    Quick !  Cut  off  BBC !"

Now,  think  a  little  more:    Those  things  could  not  have  happened  to  Building  7  unless  "they"   knew  that  the  twin  towers  were  going  to  be  attacked  and  caused  to  fall.

So,   "they"  knew  that  the  twin  towers  were  going  to  be  attacked,  but  they  did  nothing  to  stop  it;    they  collected  on  the  insurance;    and  whatever  they  wanted  destroyed   in  Building  7  was  destroyed.

POLITICS: African Americans in My White Family Tree

Because  my  family  tree   --  my  "pedigree  chart"  family  tree  showing  lineal  ancestors,  only,  namely  2  parents,  4  grandparents,  8  great  grandparents,  16  great  great  grandparents,  and  so  on  --  has  been  extremely  well  researched  by  others,  I  am  able  to  actually  name  virtually  all  of  my  ancestors  back  4  generations,  and  in  the  case  of  a  few  family  lines,  running  through  certain  Mayflower  passengers  to  royal  ancestry,  I  can  go  back   about  1,000  years,  with  respectable  reliability.   (To  a  certain  extent,  the  Pilgrim  families  represented  descendants  of  dispossessed  royalty,  and  because  royal  pedigree  was  so  jealously   protected  and  fought-over  in  Europe,  including  by  the  law,    royal  pedigree   ended-up   being  fairly  well  documented  and  well  established   in  Europe.)   About  one-fifth  of  the  population  of  the  United  States  has  been  subsumed  into  the  "descendancy  cone"   of  at  least  one  of  the  Pilgrims.     I  and  my  brothers  and  sisters  and  our  cousins  on  our  mother's  side  are  lucky  enough  to  have  been  subsumed  into  the  distinct  descendancy  cones  of  four  (4)   of  the  occupants  of  the  Mayflower,  which  gives  us  four  (4)  good  shots  at  being  a  descendant  of  one  of  the  extremely-well-established  descendancy  cones   of  European  royalty.

I  also  had  my  DNA  tested  by  Ancestry.com.

The  results  only  confirm  what  is  on  my  pedigree  chart,  except  that  one  of  the  unknowns  --  a  great  great  grandfather   surnamed  "Fuller"   who  was  probably  a  Protestant  Northern  Irelander  living  in  Londonderry  --   turns  out  to  have  been   a  very  "purebred"  Scandinavian,  not  a  "Scotch  Irishman"  as  family  legend  predicted.   And,  lo  and  behold,  Londonderry  had  a  Scandinavian  quarter  capable  of  generating  such  a  walking  bundle  of  Nordic  chromosomes.

Relevant  to  this  article,    it  is  solidly  Caucasian,  all  of  the  way  back.  That  includes  some European  Jewish  stock,   some  European  Mediterranean  stock,    some  Finno-Ugric  stock  and  some   Turko-Caucasoids  from  the  Middle  East.

But  none  of  it  leads  to  Africa.

That's  on  the  PEDIGREE  chart --  the  chart  of  parents,   grand  parents,  great  (or  "G1")   grandparents,  G2  grandparents,  G3  grandparents,  and  so  on  back  into  the  mists  of  time.

However,   on  the  NON-PEDIGREE  FAMILY  chart  --  the  chart  showing  not  just  the  "lineals,"  the  line  of  direct  ancestors  who  gave  me  their  genes,   but  also  the  "non-lineal  consanguines,"   the  lines  of  those  humans  who  are  descendants   of  a  lineal  --   more  and  more  African  American   blood  cousins,  or  in  my  case  African  Americans   sharing  one  of  the  white  ancestors  in  my  pedigree  chart  as  one  of  his  or  her  ancestors,   are  showing  up.

Me

African-American  distant  cousin,

according  to  DNA  results

African-American  distant  cousin,

according  to  DNA  results

African-American  distant  cousin,

according  to  DNA  results

African-American  distant  cousin,

according  to  DNA  results

African-American  distant  cousin,

according  to  DNA  results

So  far,   Ancestry.com  is  showing  5  living  people  who  had  their  DNA  tested  who  are  African  American  and  my  distant  cousins.

And  if  5  are  actually  showing,  because  only  about  1  in  10   people  who  get  their  DNA  tested  post  their  photos  with  their  results   then  there  are  probably   about   50  within  the actual  results.

And  since  only  a  tiny  percentage  of  the  American  people  have  had  their  DNA  tested  by  Ancestry.com,  the  total   number  of  blacks  who  are  distant  blood  cousins   can  probably  safely  be  multiplied   by  100,  and  not  be  an  exaggeration  at  all.

In  other  words,   statistically,  I  and  my  brothers  and  sisters  probably  have  a  good  5,000  African  American  blood  cousins.

There  is  a  pattern  in  the  results.

Ancestry.com   restricts  all  such  cousins,  so  far,  to  the  5th-to-8th  cousin  level  of  relationship.

That  means  that  the  white  ancestor  which  I  and  my  African  American  cousin  have  in  common   was   a   G4  to  G7  grandparent.

At  least  two  of  the  families  who  comprise  "lineals"  in  my  pedigree  chart  were  "respectable  Southern  slave  owners"  --  the  Pitman's,  and  the  Snapp's,  all  of  them  G-4s,  G-5s,  G-6s  or  G-7s.

Members  of  one  of  both  of  those  families,  apparently,   engaged  in  sex  with  and  begot   cousins  with  slaves  or  with  emancipated  descendants  of  slaves.

One  of  my  African-American  cousins  pictured  above,  without  realizing  the  significance  of  his  action,   even  managed  to  connect  himself   as  a  matter  of  documentation  with  the  unusually-named  Snapp  line.

When  I  first  saw  this,  I  felt  good  about  my  connection  to  the  Family  of  Man  at  Large  via   my  African  American  cousins.  I  assumed  that  the  undeniable  sexual  connection  between  my  white  ancestor  and  a  slave  or  an  emancipated  slave  or  a  descendant  of  a  slave  was  consensual.

But,  today,  after  I  read  an  article  about  rape  by  soldiers  in  the  Civil  War ...

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/rape-and-justice-in-the-civil-war/

... it  suddenly  dawned  on  me  that  things  may  not  have  been  so  consensual  between  white  ancestor  and  African  American.

Hmmmmm.  Hmmmmm.

No  matter  what,   friends,  remember  that  God  doesn't  see  color  when  He  judges.

All  He  asks  is,  What  did  YOU  do  with  the  time   I  gave  you  on  Earth ?