"What is history but a fable agreed upon?" --Napoleon
"PHI. The Divine Proportion. One-point-six-one-eight to one."
Ex: Spiraled pinecone petals, leaf arrangement on plant stalks, insect segmentation.
"...the distance from shoulder to fingertips, divided by the distance from elbow to fingertips. Or hip to floor divided by knee to floor."
"Draco--the ruthless seventh-century B.C politician"...
Draconian"The pentacle... is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship. The ancients envisioned their world in two halves--masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced, there was chaos."
"...the planet Venus traced a perfect pentacle across the ecliptic sky every eight years. So astonished were the ancients to observe this penomenon, that Venus and her pentacle became symbols of perfection, beauty, and the cyclic qualities of sexual love. As a tribute to the magic of Venus, the Greeks used her eight-year cycle to organize their Olympic Games. Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year schedule of modern Olympics still followed the half-cycles of Venus. Even fewer people knew that the five-pointed star had almost become the official Olympic seal but was modified at the last moment-it's five points exchanged for five intersecting rings to better reflect the games' spirit of inclusion and harmony."
Egyptian god Amon: god of fertility. Represented as a man with a man's head. His promiscuity and curved horns are related to our modern sexual slang,
horny.
The Egyptian goddess of fertility : Isis. Her ancient pictogram was once called L'ISA.
AMON L'ISA... MONA LISA
Longer-stemmed Latin cross: originated by Romans as a torture device. "Cross" and "crucifix" ... from Latin verb
cruciare--to torture.
Equal-armed crosses are considered peaceful crosses. Their square configurations make them impractical for use in crucifixion, and their balanced vertical and horizontal elements convey a natural union of male and female. (Flag of Switzerland).
"The Priory of Scion was founded in Jerusalem in 1099 by a French king named Godefroi de Bouillon, immediately after he had conquered the city."
THE DA VINCI CODE - DAN BROWN
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"You may have noticed that, in the media, UFO believers are usually referred to as
buffs, a term used to diminish and marginalize them by relegating them to the ranks of hobbyists and mere enthusiasts. They are made to seem like kooks and quaint dingbats who have the nerve to believe that, in an observable universe of trillions upon trillions of stars, and most likely many hundreds of billions of potentially inhabitable planets, some of those planets may have produced life-forms capable of doing things that we can't do.
"On the other hand those who believe in an eternal, all-powerful being, a being who demands to be loved and adored unconditionally and who punishes and rewards according to his whims are thought to be worthy, upright, credible people. This, in spite of the large numbers of believers who are clearly close-minded fanatics."
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"Here's all you need to know about men and women: Women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid... besides knowing that men are stupid, it's also important to remember that women are crazy. And if you don't think women are crazy, ask a man. That's the one thing men aren't stupid about; they know for sure, way down deep in their hearts, that women are straight-out fuckin' nuts."
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"If you have twins, a good idea is to sell one of them. What the hell, you've got two, why not pick up a few dollars?"
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"I don't know when the whole thing started, but I do know that at some point in my life,
toilet paper became
bathroom tissue. I wasn't consulted on this. I didn't get a postcard, I didn't get an e-mail, no one bothered to call. It just happened. One day, I simply found myself using bathroom tissue."
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"I'm never critical or judgmental about whether or not a movie is any good. The way I look at it, if several hundred people got together every day for a year or so--a number of them willing to put on heavy makeup, wear clothes that weren't their own and pretend to be people other than themselves--and their whole purpose for doing all this was to entertain me, then I'm not gonna start worrying about whether or not they did a good job. The effort alone was enough to make me happy."
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"Christians must be sick in the head. Only someone who hates himself could possibly think of the pleasures of masturbation as self-abuse."
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"If no one knows when a person is going to die, how can we say he died prematurely?"
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"Usually, when you go to someone's house they offer you coffee. They say, 'You want some coffee?' I tell them, 'No thanks, I have coffee at home. But I could use a little pancake mix.' I try to get things I need. If I don't need coffee, I'm usually prepared with options.."
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"An important factor to keep in mind with all of this restaurant and food talk is yuppie pretentiousness. I was in a Yuppie joint last year where the cover of the noontime menu, instead of saying
menu, actually had the words
lunch solutions. There I sat, unaware that I even had problems, and those nice folks were ready to provide solutions."
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"If I had been in charge of reorganizing the government's security agencies into a homeland defense organization, I would have divided the responsibilities into two agencies: The Bureau of What the Fuck Was That? and The Department of What the Fuck Are We Gonna Do Now?"
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"I recently called a friend who was staying at the Marriott. He was staying at the Marriott. I called him there--at the Marriott. I intentionally dialed the number of the Marriott, because that's where I expected him to be. The connection went through. Guess what the operator said? Right. 'Thank you for calling the Marriott.' Well, what did she think I was going to do? Call the Hyatt? He was staying at the Marriott. It would'nt do me much good to call the Hyatt."
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When will Jesus bring the pork chops? --George Carlin
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Downfall - a film by Oliver Hirschbiegel
A look at the last twelve days of Hitler's life.
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Documentary, Fog of war
"Never answer the question that's been asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you."
--Charles McNamara, Fog of War
"War is Cruelty"
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American Soldier by Tommy Franks
"I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come."
"It does a dog good to have a few fleas now and then. It keeps him from worrying so much about being a dog."
Martin Luther King Jr... shot by James Earl Ray
Robert Kennedy ... killed by the Arab, Sirhan Sirhan
Carl Sandburg:
"Tell him to be alone often and get at himself and, above all, tell himself no lies about himself...Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms... He will be lonely enough to have time for the work he knows as his own."
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AMERICAN SOLDIER
by General Tommy Franks, Commander in Chief, United States Central Command
"Operation Desert Storm marked the debut of precision guided munitions (PGM)--the so-called 'Smart bombs' that have revolutionalized modern warfare. But PGM's are clever, not actually smart: A Copperhead round will hit whatever target a laser illuminates, but human minds and hands must be there to lock the laser onto the target.
"'God fights on the side with the best artillery,' Napoleon said. And yet, going into Desert Storm, the Iraqi army had thousands of Soviet-built artillery pieces. They outgunned us by three to two. What doomed them was that they used those guns poorly. When their observation towers were destroyed and they lost their communication nets, they did not improvise and adapt. "
"Some wealthy members of the Saudi royal family funded Islamic schools (
madrasas) world-wide..." (pg. 205)
"We then discussed the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven small, immensely wealthy Gulf oil states that (along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) had extended diplomatic recognition and financial aid to the Taliban." (pg. 210)
"I've joked that I shipped out to Vietnam as a rookie of twenty-two and came home twelve months later a fifty-year-old veteran. "
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