The founders of the Church of Jedi were attacked byDarthVader. Were DarthRove orDarth Cheney in the area?????
Man Dressed as Darth Vader Attacks Jedi Church FoundersCreated: 5/13/2008 8:30:55 AMLast updated: 5/13/2008 8:31:10 AMHOLYHEAD, Wales (AP) — A man who dressed up as Darth Vader, wearing a garbage bag for a cape, and assaulted the founders of a group calling itself the Jedi church was given a suspended sentence Tuesday.Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, attacked Jedi church founder Barney Jones — aka Master Jonba Hehol — with a metal crutch, hitting him on the head, prosecutors told Holyhead Magistrates’ Court.
He also whacked Jones’ 18-year-old cousin, Michael Jones — known as Master Mormi Hehol — bruising his thigh in the March 25 incident, prosecutors said.
The two cousins and Barney Jones’ brother, Daniel, set up the Church of Jediism, Anglesey order, last year. Jedi is the faith followed by some of the central characters in the "Star Wars" films.
The group, which claims about 30 members, says on its Web site that it uses "insight and knowledge" from the films as "a guide to living a better and more worthwhile life."
"We all love the films and what they stand for. Obviously some people are going to laugh about it," the Wales on Sunday newspaper quoted Barney Jones as saying last month. "But a lot of people do take it seriously."
Unfortunately for Hughes, his March attack was recorded on a video camera that the cousins had set up to film themselves in a light saber battle.
"Darth Vader! Jedis!" Hughes shouted as he approached.
Hughes claimed he couldn’t remember the incident, having drunk the better part of a 2 1/2-gallon (10-liter) box of wine beforehand.
"He knows his behavior was wrong and didn’t want it to happen but he has no recollection of it," said Hughes’ lawyer, Frances Jones.
District Judge Andrew Shaw sentenced Hughes to two months in jail but suspended the sentence for one year. He also ordered Hughes to pay $195 to each of his victims and $117 in court costs.
In the 2001 United Kingdom census, 390,000 — 0.7 percent of the population — listed Jedi as their religion.
The travelling gnome is terrorizing locals in Argentina.
A TOWN in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a ‘creepy gnome’ that locals claim stalks the streets at night.
The midget – which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk – was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters.— TheSun
Or it could be Manbearpigs long lost son.
it also could be a Ewok. Maybe Rusty or one ofthe guys at The Jawa Report can give some incite.
Mnabearpig has put an end to Nessie the Lochness Monster, at least according to Robert Rines.
H/T to Moonbattery
…
Despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.
…
Now I definitely heard it all.
I found all that stuff confusing in college; dumbed down for a TV attack ad – I still don’t get it.
Just like our political climate today!!!!!
I lifted this from a posting at National Review On-Line, of course.
Julia
Scarey. I’ve flown into this airport and people do indeed gather at a bar on the beach and have fun with the planes flying low overhead. But it must be the weather – this guy even took out the fence.
Julia
Insane 747-400 Landing – Funny home videos are a click away
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Just for fun – the following have been making the rounds on the internet for sometime and are supposed to be actual exchanges in court. I don’t know about that, but they are funny.
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
Q: All your responses must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.
Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.
Q: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
Q: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practising law somewhere.
If these are real, the only explanation is that the lawyer was already thinking about what he was going to ask next or who he should call to the stand next instead of listening. Juggling thousands of things in your head at the same time during trial is not easy.
Julia
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Cool photo courtesy of The Times of London on-line edition:
This is the jackal-headed Egyptian ‘god of the dead’ making his triumphal entry into London before being put on exhibition as part of ‘Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs’.
Anubis, his Greek name, was the guardian of the dead and accompanied souls on their way to the underworld.
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Interesting article in The Times of London that gives some background on why the junta in Burma (now known as Myanmar) is so unfathomable. Turns out it was numerology that drove them to change the name of the country and astrology rules their strategy. It seems that many rulers over the centuries have turned to omens, stars, ghosts, and soothsayers.
The fate of the Burmese junta is written in the stars. That, at least, is what the Burmese junta believes. For one of the odder and most revealing aspects of the brutal military gang that rules Burma is its faith in astrology.
When the junta moved the capital from Rangoon to a malarial town deep in the jungle, it did so because an astrologer employed by Senior General Than Shwe had warned him of an impending catastrophe that could only be averted by moving the seat of government. The same astrologer asserted that the most auspicious moment for the move would be November 6, 2005, at 6.37 in the morning. Sure enough, at that precise hour on the ordained day, the bullet-proof limousines of Burma’s generals started to roll towards their new home on the road to Mandalay.
Burma’s intensely superstitious rulers have long been guided by a belief in portents and prophecies, cosmology, numerology and magic. The time and date of the ceremony marking independence from Britain was also chosen according to astrological dictates: 4.20am on January 4, 1948. General Ne Win was the mysticism-obsessed dictator who seized power in 1962 and steered Burma from prosperity to penury; in 1989 he introduced the 45-kyat and 90-kyat banknotes, for the simple but mind-bending reason that these were divisible by and added up to nine, his lucky number. He believed this move would also ensure he would live to the lucky age of 90. Ne Win, who insisted on walking backwards over bridges at night and other rituals to avoid bad luck, died in 2002, at the age of 92, which was either good luck or bad luck, depending on how you look at it. Even the decision to change the name of Burma to Myanmar was prompted by Ne Win’s soothsayer, and announced on May 27 (since 2 + 7 = 9).
Kipling once wrote: “This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know.” In its enduring fascination with superstition, Burma’s dictators seem like a throwback to another age. Each of the leading clans in the junta has a family astrologer. The army has its own zodiacal experts, but it is a dangerous job: astrologers who make negative predictions are liable to arrest and imprisonment.
The junta’s belief in astrology in part reflects the capricious weirdness of a peculiarly nasty regime, insulated from the rest of the world and divorced from reality. But the generals also follow a long tyrannical tradition: throughout history dictators have tended to put their faith in the occult, with unpredictable outcomes. An excessive belief in the supernatural is often the hallmark of a dying dictatorship.
Politicians in general have a peculiar weakness for astrology – Ronald and Nancy Reagan famously consulted an astrologer, as did both Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand. President Roosevelt would never travel on a Friday. Unelected politicians are more susceptible to superstition than democratic ones and, as a rule of thumb, the more authoritarian the regime, the more likely it is to seek explanations and omens in the stars.
Napoleon was said to fear black cats, and believed that a meal of chicken and crayfish would bring victory (and, presumably, indigestion). Leonid Brezhnev conferred with an astrologer named Dzhuna at key moments in the Cold War and was treated by a Georgian faith healer in his later years; Catherine de’ Medici consulted Nostradamus himself, while the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II had his horoscope cast by Johannes Kepler, the great German astronomer.
From the Roman emperors to the Nazis to the Burmese generals, tyrants need to feel that fate, rather then accident, has brought them to power and will keep them there. Since their own eminence is preordained, they seek to shape and predict the future. For most of us, the daily horoscope is a harmless, if pointless, pastime, but in the hands of a dictator it feeds easily into paranoia and megalomania.
Of no despot is this truer than Hitler, whose fascination with the occult shaped a regime that deliberately rejected rationalism in favour of mystical determinism. “We stand at the edge of the age of reason,” declared Hitler. “A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising.”
In July 1933, Berlin’s most famous clairvoyant. Erik Jan Hanussen, was summoned to read Hitler’s palm at the Hotel Kaiserhof. Like most mystics, he foretold exactly what the customer wanted to hear. “I see victory for you. It cannot be stopped,” he said. It did him no good, for the Jewish Hanussen could not predict his own unhappy fate: to be murdered by the SS, and dumped in a field.
During the war, British Intelligence tried to exploit Hitler’s fixation with astrology by planting fake predictions of his imminent death in newspapers around the globe, in the hope that this would destabilise him and the regime. The intelligence officer in charge of the plan wrote: “This is probably the most curious thing I have ever been asked to arrange, but nonetheless most important.”
He was right on both counts: like the Burmese junta, Hitler’s obsession with the supernatural was a mark of instability and vulnerability, and a window into his strange and tyrannical regime. Gilbert Murray once wrote: “The best seed ground for superstition is a society in which the fortunes of men seem to bear practically no relation to their merits or effort.” That was true of Nazi Germany and it is equally true of modern Burma, where the good suffer and only the oppressors flourish.
Two sets of beliefs are colliding today in Burma today. On one side the monks, devotees to an ancient creed, demanding democratic freedom and modern economic reform, and on the other a vicious modern military machine, adhering to a medieval code of prophecies, astral omens and superstitious symbolism.
You do not have to be clairvoyant to be able to predict which of these beliefs will triumph in the end.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article2547120.ece
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And then there is the famous Roman dictator Julius Caesar who did not heed the warnings of soothsayers and his wife – much to his detriment. The following are quotes from Shakespeare’s wonderful play of that name which Stix & I saw with family in Forest Park last summer.
1) First came the warning from the soothsayer and Caesar laughed him off.
Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March. (1.2.13)
2) And there are other characters who discuss the influence of the stars. Cassius, a nobleman, is speaking with his friend, Brutus, and trying to persuade him that, in the best interests of the public, Julius Caesar must be stopped from becoming monarch of Rome. He is assuring him that it is not fated that Caesar be dictator and rule over them.
Cassius: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.141)
3) Then Caesar’s wife Calpurnia had horrible nightmares that she took as bad omens for her husband and begged him to stay home on the Ides of March. He told her that the omens were for people in general and not specifically for him. She retorted that only great men get these warnings.
Calpurnia: When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. (2.2.30)
To please his wife he agreed to play sick and stay home to placate her, but one of the plotters came by to escort him to the Senate and convinced him that the people would think him a coward if he paid attention to such foolishness.
4) On the way to the Senate, Caesar spots the soothsayer and chides him for a false prediction.
Caesar: The ides of March are come.
Soothsayer: Ay, Caesar; but not gone. (3.1.1)
5) You know how it turns out . Just minutes later Caesar is killed by a bunch of traitors/patriots.
6) Caesar is dead, but his ghost appears to Brutus on the battlefield when things are not going well for the plotters who are trying to take over the empire.
Brutus: O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords In our own proper entrails. (5.4.95)
Julia BTW I’m not a member of the Julii family, but I do take an interest in its history.
Thanks to the Global Nerdy by way of National Review On-Line, I know what I’m going to be doing this week-end.
Don’t you hate discovering an interesting party just after you’ve confirmed your plans for the weekend?
Click to see the image on its original page.
This Saturday, the MurrFurr Furries will take on the USS Republic Klingons in their second annual bowling competition at Midtown Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia. Attendees are encouraged to come in their suits, whether furry or Klingon.
If only this were available on pay-per-view…
Julia
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At least that what some people are thinking in Texas.
Has a mythical beast turned up in Texas?
By ELIZABETH WHITE, Associated Press Writer
Sat Sep 1, 5:25 PM ET
CUERO, Texas – Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She’s been
a hunter all her life and has the mounted heads of a zebra and other
exotic animals in her house to prove it. But the roadkill she found
last month outside her ranch was a new one even for her, worth putting
in a freezer hidden from curious onlookers: Canion believes she may
have the head of the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra."It is one ugly creature," Canion said, holding the head of the
mammal, which has big ears, large fanged teeth and grayish-blue, mostly
hairless skin.Canion and some of her neighbors discovered the 40-pound bodies of
three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 80 miles southeast of San Antonio.
Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she can get to
get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it
for posterity.She suspects, as have many rural denizens over the years, that a
chupacabra may have killed as many as 26 of her chickens in the past
couple of years."I’ve seen a lot of nasty stuff. I’ve never seen anything like this," she said.
What tipped Canion to the possibility that this was no ugly coyote,
but perhaps the vampire-like beast, is that the chickens weren’t eaten
or carried off — all the blood was drained from them, she said.Chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico.
Canion thinks recent heavy rains ran them right out of their dens.
"I think it could have wolf in it," Canion said. "It has to be a cross between two or three different things."
She said the finding has captured the imagination of locals, just like purported sightings of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster have elsewhere.
But what folks are calling a chupacabra is probably just a strange
breed of dog, said veterinarian Travis Schaar of the Main Street Animal
Hospital in nearby Victoria."I’m not going to tell you that’s not a chupacabra. I just think in
my opinion a chupacabra is a dog," said Schaar, who has seen Canion’s
find.The "chupacabras" could have all been part of a mutated litter of dogs, or they may be a new kind of mutt, he said.
As for the bloodsucking, Schaar said that this particular canine may
simply have a preference for blood, letting its prey bleed out and
licking it up.Chupacabra or not, the discovery has spawned a local and
international craze. Canion has started selling T-shirts that read:
"2007, The Summer of the Chupacabra, Cuero, Texas,"
accompanied by a caricature of the creature. The $5 shirts have gone
all over the world, including Japan, Australia and Brunei. Schaar also
said he has one."If everyone has a fun time with it, we’ll keep doing it," she said. "It’s good for Cuero."
Yahoo News
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But we'd be happy if everyone just tried using his (or her) own
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process
“Every time I let the government make a choice for me, I give up a little more of my freedom. I become more dependent and reliant on government to manage my life. I am right where the Socialists want me to be – perpetually dependent on them.” -J.D. Pendry
Black & gay, young & conservative. A Southern gentleman writes about life and politics after Yale
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