Good ole Christian ethics again. What would Jesus do? He'd get wet and then cuss them out, that's what HE'D do!

"In order to prevent homeless people from sleeping outside of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the Archdiocese of San Francisco installed a system that dumps water onto the ground near its sheltered doorways, where people tend to rest at night.

On Wednesday, after facing substantial backlash for the deterrent, the archdiocese announced that the system will be removed “by the end of the day.”

In the statement, the archdiocese said it initially decided to install the controversial system “after learning from city resources” that similar deterrents were “commonly used in the Financial District” in San Francisco to “avoid the situation where needles, feces and other dangerous items were regularly being left in these hidden doorways.”

“The Archdiocese of San Francisco is, along with the Catholic St. Vincent de Paul Society, the largest supporter of services for the homeless in San Francisco,” the statement adds.

KCBS in San Francisco first reported on the water system and witnessed it at work:

“They actually have signs in there that say, ‘No Trespassing,’” said a homeless man named Robert.

But there are no signs warning the homeless about what happens in these doorways, at various times, all through the night. Water pours from a hole in the ceiling, about 30 feet above, drenching the alcove and anyone in it.

The shower ran for about 75 seconds, every 30 to 60 minutes while we were there, starting before sunset, simultaneously in all four doorways. KCBS witnessed it soak homeless people, and their belongings.

Archdiocese spokesman Chris Lyford told KCBS that he learned about the drenching deterrent from the station’s reporter, who showed him the system in action for the first time.

It looks like the system may be in violation of the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection. The department issued a notice of violation for “the unpermitted downspout,” department spokeswoman Lily Madjus told The Post in an email. The department’s chief plumbing inspector visited the site on Tuesday, following a complaint. The archdiocese has filed a permit to remove the system, Madjus added. They have 15 days to do so.

The archdiocese said that they have already started to remove the system from the cathedral."===http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-...-homeless/

We had another one of these last year. Speculation abounds. Missile tests? Meteorite? Electrical discharge?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dadm7XR8QrI

Self-driving cars have the potential to be so much safer than human-driven cars, that Elon Musk is predicting that manually driven "two-ton death machines" will someday be outlawed.

http://mashable.com/2015/03/17/elon-musk-nvidia/

"A crucial difference between healthy cells and cancerous cells may be the presence of fractal patterns. This is according to new observations courtesy of researchers at Tufts University and Clarkson University, who have been examining the surfaces of cervical epithelial cells at nanoscale resolutions using atomic force microscopy.

These cancer fractals are a new, never-seen-before observation at single-cell resolutions, and their presence hardly seems to be a coincidence. They may even point the way toward a better, deeper understanding of what cancer even is: chaos. That is, cancer is the name given to a cell (and then tissue) that’s gone off the rails, in a sense, where its complex machinery has become unbalanced and, indeed, chaotic in a scientific sense.

Previous studies had already found traces of fractal patterns in the biochemistry and mechanics of cancerous tissue, but never before on the surfaces of single, isolated cancer cells. And this is where cancer really becomes cancer—on the surfaces of cells—as it drives metastasis, e.g. when cancer cells leave their primary tumor homes and travel elsewhere in the body to set up shop, forming secondary tumors.

Recall that a fractal is basically an endless pattern. As you zoom in on it, the pattern continues to repeat at every new scale. We can say that they are “infinitely complex,” the very signatures of chaos itself. And so fractals are everywhere in nature, from coastlines (famously) to seashells to tropical storms to the large-scale structure of the universe..."====http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/w...out-cancer

"Have you ever been freaked out by a piece of music that sounded evil? Have you heard combinations of notes that were so dissonant that it made you tense and restless, but yet was strangely alluring? Well, you may have been placed under the spell of the Devil’s interval, known in music theory as the augmented 4th or flatted 5th.

Let me explain. Remember when Maria, the good Nun from “The Sound of Music”, taught the children how to sing, with the Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do song? That was the major scale on which most Western music is based. In the key of C, it would be all the white keys on the piano; ie, C, D, E, F, G, A B and C. Each note of the scale is assigned a number. In the key of C, C is 1, D is 2, E is 3, F is 4, G is 5, A is 6 and B is 7.

For some mysterious reason, the major scale is not symmetrical in its intervals. There are whole steps between C, D, and E, but a half step from E to F. There are whole steps between F, G, A and B, but a half step from B to C. Now, let’s create a more sinister sounding scale by eliminating the half steps and playing only whole steps. If you start with middle C, you would play C, D, E, F# (G flat), G# (A flat), A# (B flat), then C again. You have just played a scale based on the tri-tones, which is a scale of six different notes in equal intervals as opposed to seven notes found in the major scale.

Now this is where it gets freaky. Play the C and F# (or G flat) together. This is the interval known as the augmented 4th or flatted 5th. Play this over and over again. How does it make you feel? Now play C and G flat in alternating order, over and over again, one second apart. Do you recognize the opening guitar riff in Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjWfxhEfM6U Play it some more. Have you summoned the devil yet? Ok, that’s enough, Quit Now! Quit Now! Quit Now I say, before it’s too late!

OK. I may be exaggerating. However, this interval has been used by composers when they want to create an atmosphere of evil or dread. It is used extensively by heavy metal groups such as Black Sabbath, and classical compositions such as Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, Beethoven’s Fidelio. Also, it is found in modern compositions such as West Side Story, and the theme song of the Simpson’s.

It has been said that this interval was banned in the middle ages by the clergy. This may be more mythology than fact. Are there any musicologists out there who could shed some light on this issue?"

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2...z3UlV92g6D

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archi...lbeing.htm

"Being is the indeterminate immediate; it is free from determinateness in relation to essence and also from any which it can possess within itself. This reflectionless being is being as it is immediately in its own self alone.

§ 131

Because it is indeterminate being, it lacks all quality; but in itself, the character of indeterminateness attaches to it only in contrast to what is determinate or qualitative. But determinate being stands in contrast to being in general, so that the very indeterminateness of the latter constitutes its quality. It will therefore be shown that the first being is in itself determinate, and therefore, secondly, that it passes over into determinate being — is determinate being — but that this latter as finite being sublates itself and passes over into the infinite relation of being to its own self, that is, thirdly, into being-for-self.

Chapter 1 Being

A Being

§ 132

Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.

B Nothing

§ 133

Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content — undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.®

C Becoming

1. Unity of Being and Nothing

§ 134

Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being — does not pass over but has passed over — into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself."

Eastern philosophy seems to concur on this equivalence between Being and Nothing, the meditative union of the conscious self with the All at once establishing "everywhereness" yet "nowhereness". The dissolution of the self into pure unqualifiable Being/Nothing or presence/absence.

Yes folks..you saw it here first! lol!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC8wBrslDrA

"Easily the biggest round of applause at this weekend’s The Awakening conference in Orlando came when evangelist Franklin Graham walked on stage. Although the Religious Right event took place at a seemingly generationally and racially diverse megachurch, the attendees were largely older and white, and Graham — the son of evangelist royalty Billy Graham — represented a link to an era of a powerful, politically connected evangelical leaders.

Graham captured the spirit of the crowd when he railed against pastors and churches for giving up on condemning homosexuality and abortion for fear of offending congregants, telling the audience of activists that “God will bless you and he’ll honor you if you speak up and you tell the truth” about those issues.

“Let me tell you something. A lot of pastors have quit preaching against homosexuality. You know why? I’ll tell you why. Because they are afraid that there may be some man or woman in the congregation whose son or daughter is gay,” he said, lamenting that some pastors are tempted to “just shut up” about homosexuality.

“Don’t shut up, guys,” he said to wild applause. “You don’t shut up. If the people that are coming after you, ‘yak, yak, yak,’ and they want to run you out of church, then let them run you out of church. Go to another church, let them have that church. I’ll tell you what, God will bless you and he’ll honor you if you speak up and you tell the truth.”

He added that it was “the same with abortion”: "Don’t shut up. It’s a sin against God, okay? It’s murder.”

“Young people in the church today don’t know that homosexuality is wrong because pastors aren’t speaking up, but they go to school and teachers in the school tell them that it’s okay, that it’s all right, God made them that way, that’s the way they are and it’s a choice,” he warned.

- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fr...EPIfz.dpuf