- Jan 26, 2007
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no I am on episode 2.......months after watching episode 1. I think my buddy likes watching me squirm
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At least you get to watch all the seasons one after the other. Do you have any idea how frustrating it was for those of us who were hooked on Sherlock from the beginning, waiting years for each new season to come out?
I was off from work today..spent time putting rounds down range concerned about ISIS sorts of things...guess I'll be carrying "more" gun and rounds in the future.
Regardless of Fr. Damick's latest FB rant about Syrian refugees (yeah I'm more concerned about the influx than he is)...you packin' heat Gurney? Guess it's near impossible out in Cali but things are going to get a little...weird...in the next 6 months me thinks...
YOU SAID IT WAS "UNDERAILABLE"
Depends on what part of the state you live in. I live in the Central Valley where gun ownership and conservative old school values are still valued. It's easy to get a CCW license here. I carry a 9 mm Smith & Wesson M&P Shield. I also have a Springfield XD .45 on my CCW if I want to carry it but it's a touch big and heavy. Good winter gun. I always have an extra mag in the pocket, too!
Kate and I watched the first episode of Sherlock, found it exceedingly annoying, and never watched it again...
Well how cool is that? Our mentality here (where everyone has a CC license) is that Cali folks are unarmed and not allowed..glad to hear you're able and obviously have good taste in carry guns...only hear good stuff about M&P & XD...I'm a Beretta/S&W guy myself...
Well, CA is quickly becoming a commie state. They're chipping away at our rights right and left. But the Central Valley is more conservative than most folks could imagine!! Around here the 2nd amendment is actually appreciated! Lol
I go to the range a lot shooting pistol and rifle. I'm a true Orthodox Christian because I collect AK's!!! LOL!!!
Being an old Jarhead I was nursed on the AR platform....never fired an AK but would love to have one...it's a bit down on the list but sometime....even still, you may want to consider that future move a more conservative state before your little valley is surrounded!! I used to live in Wyoming, that's close to ya... but Pennsylvania is way more civilized
***wait, I just looked up "Central Valley CA"..you guys are big enough to be your own state
Being an old Jarhead I was nursed on the AR platform....never fired an AK but would love to have one...it's a bit down on the list but sometime....even still, you may want to consider that future move a more conservative state before your little valley is surrounded!! I used to live in Wyoming, that's close to ya... but Pennsylvania is way more civilized
***wait, I just looked up "Central Valley CA"..you guys are big enough to be your own state
I have cousins I've not seen in 35 years out in that valley...I had to look it up but they're in a town called Exeter near Visalia...
Nice AK....someday..even if I have to settle for a WASR..though I've read the quality of the imports are much better than past years (as in no canted front sights)...
I see lots of "restrictions" in various parts/ammo sales...are you able to get the good bulk ammo prices online there?
So you know @gurneyhalleck1 , from one Dune enthusiast to another, I have it in mind to write an SF novel set in either a recreated or historically undefeated Byzantine Empire, which would center around the struggle of a senior military commander with severe prelest, and an attempted subversive propagation of a Gnostic cult. I am somewhat inclined to set it on an agreeably interstellar scale and work with a cosmological model which discards causality (a neccessary and unexplored consequence of the FTL drives in Dune and most other space operas, for example, Star Trek and Star Wars). This lack of a coherent linear causality would make for an interesting story set amidst artifacts from partially collapsed timelines.
I also very much like the idea of a militarized regime existing on such a scale modelled directly on the old Byzantine Empire. Thoughts?
Sounds incredible
Well I have completed the prologue and hope to complete a bit more this evening. I have been working on this idea for some time; I suspect what drove me to want to complete this is the disagreeably humanist perspective in much mass market SF, and the disagreeable alternative of implied fascism we see from those following in the footsteps of Heinlein. The Federation of Starship Troopers was militaristic, but also shallow, and indeed the work almost begged for Paul Verhoven to recast it as a predoctable anti-fascist sort of allegory.
If one is to write SF involving a military power, this must be based on more than mere chauvinism in the manner of Heinlein; there must be some depth, and I think the long history of the Roman Empire, especially post Constantine, offers some enjoyable cultural context. I am inclined to view the ominous figure of Emperor Palpatine from the older SW films as being a thinly veiled caricature of either Emperor St. Constantine or the Pope (particularly with the red robed guards), yet Lucas, a self described Methodist Buddhist, manages to accidentally make the Galactic Empire seem rather more appealing to many viewers than the rather one-note rebels. Commercial SF of the sort one sees in film and on television makes the great mistake of having characters who in their apparent heroic attributes are actually rather shallow; its a bit like very early genre SF from the 1930s, pre-John Campbell, pre-Heinlein, pre-Asimov, yet with none of the charm. (the works of say, Edmond "Planet Buster" Hamilton or EE "Doc" Smith may in part seem laughaboe by contemporary standards, yet carry a rich imaginative thrust, and a certain sincere enthsusiasm that seems entirely lacking in recent fiom and television SF, at least since the early 1990s).
I'm sad to say, but I must concur. Science fiction is loaded to the hilt traditionally with skeptical atheists. Asimov, Heinlein like you said, Gene Roddenberry, H.G. Wells, and many others.
I've always been fascinated by the book, Dune. Many think it was a book promoting atheism because people in the book like the Bene Gesserit use religion as a type of social engineering and power-grabbing mechanism. But I think Dune went far beyond that. I do think the story is showing A false religion and a creation of myth but it seems like people miss the point to me.
What I see in Dune is much deeper than mere "anti-religion." For one thing, Dune focuses on Islamic type religion, not the more Christian type, but even then it goes past that. Dune is showing us a group of people using religion, yes, for their own gains. Paul and Jessica get caught in a situation where the Duke is dead and House Atreides is in chaos, Arrakis is again in Harkonnen hands, and all seems lost, so he and Jessica use the missionaria protectiva plans as a means to survive. They take advantage of a mythos, a story arc, a narrative, and they seek to become it. Paul becomes Usul, Muad'dib, the messiah of Dune, with the intent of using the position to achieve the political aims he finds important, not to legitimately fulfill a religious mandate that he really believes in. But what is fascinating is that between his jihad that we see happened between Dune and Dune Messiah, he is caught up in his prescience and realized power, his myth, his legend, his direction. He is in a web that he can't escape from and it's fascinating. Despite blindness from the stone-burner, he's still able to see and locked in the maddening prescience. I think it's interesting.
We find out in Children of Dune that Paul is "The Preacher" and that he is disappointed with what his religion has become, and feels powerless in it. Perhaps Paul is being used by God as he thinks he is god? Is that what is happening?
Did the pharaoh of Egypt know he was being used by God in Exodus?
Did Cyrus know God was using him to liberate the Jews and send them home to the Temple and Judah?
Did Nebuchadnezzer know his role?
Did each of these bums think they were nursing a legend and guiding history and shaping their agenda yet secretly, unbeknownst to them, a higher power was achieving an end game?
That is how I saw Dune. The missionaria protectiva is a type of, well, for lack of a better term, religious sleeper cell. It's meant for control and guile, but could it be actually playing out the course of real religion when it thinks it is playing a mere role to trick the populace?
I found that stuff interesting.
God Emperor of Dune was fascinating as well. That focused on evolution, and it almost shows a futility to it as Leto knows humanity will burn its spark out completely in the end. He tries to direct human traffic galactically and it just doesn't work. I found that book interesting because of the ideas of a collective storehouse of memories and personality and engrams of thought from all ancestors into a type of one thought genetically. Interesting idea if not pretty crazy. That "other memory" stuff from Children of Dune was essentially what I'm talking about.
Dune is cynical to be sure, but I'm not sure it's the anti-religious skeptical un-Christian satire some think it is. For me it is a book showing the ramifications of ecology, addiction, political intrigue, religious enigma, the different views of messiah, manipulation, dependence on a major resource (spice is akin to our oil dependency, etc.) to the detriment of others, memory and personality, and most importantly it's showing the role we play that we might find ourselves in control over, but in reality we're a puzzle piece in a larger game that only God can see.
That's just my feeble takes.
My latest political analysis...hard-hitting, impactful stuff.
Anyone seen Creepshow, the 1982 horror camp classic? Nathan Grantham, the crazy old man in the first story of the film, is killed by his daughter after harrassing her to death. He comes back to life wanting revenge.
My thought for the day---Bernie Sanders looks just like this crazy old Grantham dude from Creepshow...You be the judge!
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