The Year of Jubilee

You know, I wish I could bottle Joel Olsteen's sermon this morning and play it back to myself as a subliminal tape like Homer Simpson did last night, to sort of reprogram my mind. The day of Jubilee in ancient Hebrew was a year every fiftieth year where all property would revert back to its original owner. In Jewish tradition they had a great belief in "Rightful Inheritance" and the idea of restoring one of his rightful place was paramount. If we carried this philosophy to Jehovah Himself we might infer that every human is born with an ideal divine legasy of what he would be if he lived a sinless life, just as the Jewish property owner would have his title restored after fifty years even if he was guilty of bad judgement along the way. Some scollars say that AD 35 was a Jubilee year and this was the "favorible year of the Lord" that Jesus referred to in his ministry. In Joel's sermon there was talk of people receiving their physical healing, or getting out of debt or conquering an addiction, or finding a mate, or getting that long due promotion. Joel Olsteen spoke of God "Accelerating the time table" to speed up what to mortal would seem to require a long time to accomplish. What Olsteen hit on here is indeed the central message of Christianity, in that it is a message of "loosing from one's bonds" and of liberation. In the story of the protigal son it says that he was not only forgiven for his sin, as if it had never happened, but this man was to be honored with a robe placed on him and a royal ring placed on his finger. I don't know about you but I know it's a rare day when I think such a story could be about ME. I always see someone else in that exaulted roll. And this is no wonder. Certainly with Jesus of KFI on the radio there is this "addiction" to viewing people as trapped in their roles. So the alcholic and the mental patient alike are not only seen as hopeless, but people whom you should shun and by the way they will "manipulate you" if they ever get the chance. Black people are seen "with people with a lot of excess emotional baggage". And if you think you're in love with someone of either sex, you are sadly informed "They have too much emotional baggage to investment, and you are better off spending your years alone". And these people remind us that the church itself is after all just a "business" like any other business relationship. If you attend and you don't pony up the money you are "stealing" from them. And also in terms of theology the question isn't to ask yourself "Am I free from the bonds of sin?" but rather is "What is my position on the Trinity. If my doctrine of the trinity is correct I can do all the raping and pillaging I want to in war time". And of course when of course it comes to "whitnessing" to the Islamic believers among us- - I remember as a kid our family used to drive along Slaucen and how when you passed the steel plant you could feel the heat of the hot steel. I imagine that even from here Islamists can feel the white heat of rage that Christians feel for them. Obama is trying to reach out to the Islamic culture and give them a new beginning, which is what Christianity used to be all about. (Though in practice this was seldom the case) But now the nay sayers are out against Obama telling him that speaking what he perceives to be the Truth is dangerous and shows signs of weakness. These people would say "Israel does well to have hardness of heart". And "We all know that Jesus is coming back anyhow in the last days to Nuke the Islamo-fasciests, so why even try and "Give Peace a Chance"? Many will say that if the region were meant to have Peace, it would have been reached already because there have been many leaders of Israel and many leaders of the United States, and one would suppose that some combination of leaders would have worked in the past. We need to find out what the motivation is of the Palistinians is, of course. But sometimes I get the feeling that Israel doesn't "Really" want them to have any autonomy at all. Just as with many Christians out there- - a lot of them are saying "Even if that so & so finds salvation he'll ALWAYS be way inferior to Us True Believers, and then go on to innumerate the ways that the people they witness to aren't even fully human to begin with.

And now I would like to turn to what may be unpleasent duty, in that I am forced to recant and retract a few erronious statements I have made. One of them involves two ecclipses of the sun, in December 13th. of 1974 and on March 6th. of 1989. Wolframalpha.com says these two eclipses never happened. We have shall we say a "disagreement" as to history. I remember both eclipses clearly but wolframalpha.com doesn't seem to. Another area is in the real of "Kurtosis". I see that in Excel they have a zero based Kurtosis number and not a three based number. But not only this but the means of calculation is different so that even with the correction of three points, you won't get the same number. My own Kurtosis rating is the best. In my reading of the number it should be base one, not zero or three, and it should then be the square of the ratio between the crest of a bell curve, and where the "hash marks" of standard deviation lines hit the curve. This method would simplify the whole process. In another area there is an alternate method of computing the Golden Mean. It's one half plus the square root of five divided by two. This formula doesn't sound like it would work, but it does. It's my contention that the square root of five should be the basis of wide screen movie screens. The actual number is very close to this but not the same. These are the only issues that are on my mind right now. Sometimes it can be quite a while before a Real News story hits.

I dredged up the following illustration from a mailing to help clarify a mathematical point. Here it is. If you want to appear really smart at a party, here is the whole hyperbolic trig thing in a nutshell. Picture an X and Y graph with 0,0 in the center. Now picture a freeway on ramp going from the eastbound freeway hanging a left to the northbound freeway. Now picture another on ramp going from the west bound freeway hanging a left and going south. These two on ramps just touch each other at the zero zero point. Now picture a third on-ramp from the northbound freeway just to the west hanging a U turn to the right and reaching its southern most point when it crosses the 0 and 1 axis and hanging a U turn and going north again. This is hyperbolic trig in a nutshell.