NEWSFLASH
Da Vinci Code = Fiction
When people read it, they know what they're reading and are there for fluff and entertainment - I don't anticipate that people who read it actually think they are getting an historically accurate, theological lesson.
The Vatican has asked for a boycott of the Da Vinci Code movie. This, to me, is one step removed from the whackjobs who said that Harry Potter was inappropriate for Christian children, and this is equally insulting to my intelligence.
Don't get your panties in a bunch over a preposterous book that makes preposterous claims (albeit in a very entertaining and page-turning fashion). I love when people call for boycotts of books and movies...it really hurts your organizational credibility - what are the implications of a Catholic watching the Da Vinci Code? Most likely nothing. Perhaps uptight Catholics won't enjoy it because they'll be busy picking at the factual innaccuracies - watching it as a documentary as opposed to a light popcorn movie. Try to deconstruct another light popcorn movie - say X-Men 3 - the same way. You'll sound like a complete douchebag...which is exactly how you'll sound deconstructing the equally fictional Da Vinci Code.
Dan Brown = Tom Clancy = John Grisham. I don't really believe a lot of the claims and technologies discussed in Clancy's books, although there is a shred of reality to make the story realistic. One shouldn't believe a lot of the claims in Brown's books either, despite the fact that there are droplets of reality within the buckets of nonsense.
Apparently Vatican officials aren't the only ones who don't want you to see the film. I probably won't see the movie, and if I don't, it won't be because of a Vatican boycott.
posted by Tony @ 7:25 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hello Tony and all,
Pay close attention, profundity knocks at the door, listen for the key. Be Aware! Scoffing leads to blindness...
Here is the key to understanding what the Vatican/Papacy fears...
There's a bit more to the story of the Vatican's reaction than most are yet aware of. Read my missive below to understand what they truly fear. It's not the DaVinci Code or Gospel of Judas per se, but the fact that people have been motivated to seek out the unequivocal truth about an age of deception, exactly when they expect me to appear. The Gospel of Judas and DaVinci Code controversies are allowing people to take new stock of the Vatican/Papacy and the religions Rome spawned.
Remember, "I come as a thief..." ?
Yes, the DaVinci Code novel is better than the movie. Both are no more accurate as a literal version of history than is the New Testament. In other words, none of them is the literal truth, which is a key fact of the story and ancient history. The primary sub-plot is about purposeful symbology being used to encode hidden meanings, exactly like the Bible and related texts. Arguing about whether the DaVinci Code, Gospel of Judas, or the Bible are accurate history is a Machiavellian red herring designed to hide the truth by misdirecting your inquiry away from the heart of the matter.
Want to truly understand why we can't let the Vatican succeed at telling us what to think about ancient history? There is a foolproof way to verify the truth and expose centuries-old religious deceptions. It is also the common thread connecting why the ancient Hebrews, Yahad/Essene, Jews, Gnostics, Cathars, Templars, Dead Sea Scrolls, DaVinci Code, and others have all been targets of Rome’s ire and evil machinations. What the Vatican and its secret society cohorts don’t want you to understand is that the ancient Hebrew symbology in all of these texts purposely encodes and exposes the truth about them. Furthermore, the structure of ancient symbology verifiably encodes the rules to decode messages built with it. This is what they most fear you will discover.
If the Bible represented the literal truth or even accurate history, there would be no need for faith in the assertions of deceptive and duplicitous clergy and their ilk. Wisdom and faith are opposing concepts, because wisdom requires the unequivocal truth where faith obfuscates and opposes it. Religion is therefore the enemy of truth and wisdom.
It is undeniable the New Testament is framed by ancient Hebrew symbolism and allegory. The same is evidenced in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnostic texts, biblical apocrypha, DaVinci Code, and other related texts. All ancient religious, mystical, and wisdom texts have been shrouded in mystery for millennia for one primary reason: The ability to understand their widely evidenced symbology was lost in antiquity. How do we finally solve these ages-old mysteries? To recast an often-used political adage: It’s [the] symbology, stupid!
It is amazing the Vatican still tries to insist the Gospels are literal truth. It is beyond obvious they are replete with ancient Hebrew symbology. Every miracle purported for Jesus has multiple direct symbolic parallels in the Old Testament, Apocalypse, Dead Sea Scrolls, and other symbolic narratives and traditions. This is the secret held by the ancient Gnostics, Templars, and Cathars, which is presented with dramatic effect in the DaVinci Code. None of these narratives or stories were ever intended as the literal truth. That is a key fact to unraveling ages-old mysteries.
Likewise, the following Washington Post article (The Book of Bart) describes how many changes and embellishments were made to New Testament texts over the centuries, unequivocally demonstrating they are not original, infallible, or truthful.
It's no wonder the Vatican fears the truth more than anything else. Seek to understand the symbolic significance of my name (Seven Star Hand) and you will have proof beyond disproof that Jews, Christians, and Muslims have long been duped by the great deceivers I warned humanity about over the millennia. What then is the purpose of "faith" but to keep good people from seeking to understand truth and wisdom?
Now comes justice, hot on its heels... (symbolism...)
Not only do I talk the talk, I walk the walk...
Here is Wisdom!!
Revelations from the Apocalypse
That was a very complicated comment. I think your tinfoil hat needs adjusting.
Check out skepdic.com for more...but here is an excerpt on Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists (PCTs) like yourself:
Why?
To enter the world of the PCTs is to enter Bedlam. It would be pointless here to examine, much less attempt to refute, the delusions of people who think they have been turned into assassins by mind-control techniques so that they can carry out the will of inbred dynasties, that aliens are controlling the world, that none of the laws of science are actual, that the imagination and the thought of what is possible are better guides than the "physically manifested world," etc. A rational person might think many of the PCTs are joking. There are Internet sites that seem to be parody sites but it is difficult to tell, since there seems to be no belief, however inane or absurd, that the PCTs can't fit into their bizarre worldview. A rational person who never heard of Pat Robertson might well read his New World Order (Word Books, 1994) and think it must be a joke. Could anyone actually believe his rambling paranoia regarding Jewish bankers, Freemasons, Muslims, homosexuals, foreigners, etc.? Apparently so. Still, one wonders why PCTs exist and their numbers seem to be growing.
Of course, governments and some of the very rich have conspired to rule the world in one form or another. There are enough real conspiracies to satisfy even the greatest Pollyanna that one's government and the extremely rich and powerful don't play by the same rules, if they play by any rules at all, as decent folk. Those of us who have watched the U.S. government support one fascist dictator after another because he was "anti-communist" are uncomfortable to find that there are people who are so far to the right of the right-wing that they too want to expose the cover-ups. It is of no use to point out to the PCTs that our government led coups of democratically elected governments, assassinated leaders of nations and provided military and financial aid to thugs and murderers around the world, in a misguided belief that they were saving the world from communism, as well as opening up new markets for capitalist expansion. Many of the leaders and top agents in our government are and were evil and incompetent, but, as inept as they tend to be, even they would recognize the limits of their ambitions.
But, it is pointless to argue here because the PCTs are expert pseudohistorians: contradictory evidence is used to support rather than refute their notions. Does the U.S. Government go after the world's richest man, Bill Gates? Hah! It's a charade, aimed at getting us off the scent. Wasn't Hitler the one who thought he could rule the world and didn't the Allies stop him? Hitler was a dupe, used to advance the sinister plot to rule the world by the Illuminati.
some speculation
One can only speculate as to why PCTs exist. It is easy to explain their proliferation: modern mass communications has made it possible for anyone to become his or her own press and propaganda machine. But why PCTs in the first place? The only other experience I've had with such thinking was when I had to get involved with some mentally ill people. I am not joking here. A relative had a "psychotic break" and severe paranoia. We (a group of relatives) were all targets of assassination by some unknown evil people. They could be partially identified by their license plate numbers. If the number started with a "5" then they were evil. No amount of logic or reasoning as to the preposterousness of the notion that anyone would want to kill a person of absolutely no political significance was of any use. No amount of reasoning as to how license plate numbers are assigned was of any use. Phone calls could only be made from "secure" lines, which involved either going to the fire department or talking your way up through a series of supervisors until you got a "good one." Through my ill relative I met others who were also afflicted with delusions and incredibly faulty judgment. They did not lose their ability to reason--in fact, my relative seemed even more intelligent in some ways when manic--but their assumptions were taken from sources inaccessible to the ordinary mind. They put vast faith in their intuitions and thought their ideas were brilliant insights when they were little more than the fancies of diseased brains. When I compare reading the literature of the PCTs to entering Bedlam, I mean to be taken literally.
For example, many PCTs consider the Great Seal of the United States and the motto Novus Ordo Seclorum (new order of the ages) to be Masonic and to mean New World Order. These "facts" are considered evidence in the argument to prove the vast conspiracy of the Illuminati. It is useless to argue against these "facts" with PCTs. They consider us dupes who would note that the Latin is usually translated as New Order of the Ages and that the symbol of the eye in the pyramid relates to a poem in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.* Even granting that the Great Seal of the United States and the symbols on our dollar bill are Masonic (which they are not) and that novus ordo seculorum means New World Order (which it does not), nothing significant follows, certainly not that there is a vast conspiracy to take over the world.
That's what annoyed me about the first post, Caputo, people like you who need to wear tinfoil hats.
Time to debunk another myth:
Online poker rooms are rigged / deal too many pairs.
They're not rigged. Go to any credible website like twoplustwo.com and mention that they're rigged. You will be laughed at. Any gaming company's greatest asset is the perceived fairness of the games. There's too much money to be made honestly.
As for the seemingly high occurence of pocker pairs, I will defer to pokersafety.blogspot.com:
The Pair vs Pair Paradox
One of the most frustrating things in Hold 'Em is getting a good pocket pair, seeing all lower cards come on the board, and still losing at showdown to a higher pocket pair or a lower pocket pair that hit a set.
After a while it can seem odd. You don't get pairs that often, and when you do it seems that other players have pairs more often than what "feels right."
The odds you'll be dealt a pocket pair in Hold 'Em is once out of every 17 hands, or 5.8%. So you don't seem them that often.
Because you only see a pocket pair 5.8% of the time in your own hand, the mind naturally assumes since this is an infrequent event, you will not be likely to face another pair. Plus with any ten handed Hold 'Em hand, the odds that more than one player is dealt a pocket pair is 11.4%.
So -- the odds of you getting a pocket pair is 5.8% and the odds of more than one pocket pair on the table is only 11.4%. So why do you see opponents with pairs so often?
The simple reason is that it happens more often than you think it should. Once you receive your cards and see a pocket pair, the odds another player has a pocket pair are 42.5%.
You read that right. The odds of more than one player on a ten-handed Hold 'Em table receiving a pocket pair is 11.4%. But when YOU see your pocket pair, the odds of another player holding one is 42.5%
This is what we call the Pair vs. Pair Paradox. Its not really a paradox -- this is just how numbers work. And when these things happen, some players begin to suspect foul play or that the site is dealing rigged hands.
Lots of players who worry about a site dealing rigged hands typically complain that a site "doesn't feel right." As we've discussed, the evidence coming from people worried about poker sites cheating by scripting how the cards are dealt is scant. Most of the concern is based on "hunches." And "paradoxes" like this create those "hunches" and "feelings."
But the "feeling" that opponents too often have pairs the same time you do is wrong -- unless you "feel" that it should happen about 42% of the time -- typically far above what many would estimate.
The REASON for this is that once you look down at your pocket pair, we've already reached the first step in the probability equation that showed the 11.4% chance more than one player have pocket pairs. Once you see your pair, there is now a 100% chance that YOU have a pocket pair. And now there are nine other players who each individually have an approximate 5.8% of having one.
Think about it this way:
What are the chances of you flipping a coin HEADS three times in a row?
Simple answer: 50% * 50% * 50% = 12.5%
What are the chances of you flipping a coin HEADS three times in a row after you've already flipped HEADS twice in a row?
Simple answer: 100% * 100% * 50% = 50%
The bottom line: When you have a pocket pair in Hold 'Em, the chances another player on your 10-player table also has a pocket pair is over 42%. When you see those hands, don't think the site is rigging the deal to build pots. Think that this is how things work in a random system.
OK, 2 things just ruined my day with this post. The first is that I've already been working on a posting about the Da Vinci code movie and all its hype. By the way, I'm with you on that one - I think the Vatican is giving Hollywood TOO MUCH credit, and I'm sincerely hoping people aren't too stupid to realize its not historical FACT.
That, and the myth of poker sites being rigged... man, I can talk about that all day, and sadly, I get paid to do it...
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