This is the thread where everyone is random.

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

paper, rags and bones... and old men, apparently

a lovely collection of wartime posters

[MoJoRiSin]

if i remember correctly pierre took this with his own camera
~Pierre Assouline journalist Le Monde (France)

posted in May 2009

[Jack Flanders]

My 18 year old cat just peed in the toilet without spilling (better than my 15 yr old son) for the first time and probably the last (shit) oh heh! I tried to praise her for that beautiful, hygienic act but she thought I was coming to yell at her.

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

season's greetings to everyone!

The flu season is in full bloom over here.

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

[MoJoRiSin]

ARISTOCRATS, PATRISTOCRATS and XENOCRYPT SUBSTITUTIONS

1. Length:75-100 (85-120 for Xenos). Some Pats without tip may be
100-150.
2. No more than 4 singletons (letters used only once) should appear.
3. At least 18 different letters should be used in each problem.
4. Repeated consecutive plaintext should be avoided.
5. No more than 3 proper nouns should be used (indicated by *).
6. For Xenos languages normally are: Dutch, Esperanto, French, German,
Latin, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Others may be used as
Specials.

i was referred to this sight ::

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/crypto/crypto/.chap08.html

by a kind person over yahoo!group "Kryptos"

[MoJoRiSin]

^^ if you refer to the image of the magic sqare above j is the only capital letter that goes under the line
so to speak
here is something else sool about the letter j ::

http://ask.metafilter.com/35550/Why-A

^scroll about 1/3 of the way down until you see a white box then wait for the animation

note at what time in hi story the letter J was first used
long after James Joseph Jeremiah etc had come and gone : )

[brightpearl]

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

Instead of magical tales of Narnia, my hypochondriac grandmother would retell me prolongated tales of her hernia.

[MoJoRiSin]

Parable of the Prodigal Son
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Prodigal son" redirects here. For other uses, see The Prodigal Son.

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009)


The Return of the Prodigal Son (1773) by Pompeo Batoni
The Prodigal Son, also known as the Lost Son, is one of the best known parables of Jesus. It appears only in the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Bible. By tradition, it is usually read on the third Sunday of Lent. It is the third and final member of a trilogy, following the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin.

•
Overview
The story is found in Luke 15:11-32. Jesus tells the story of a man who has two sons. The younger demands his share of his inheritance while his father is still living, and goes off to a distant country where he "waste[s] his substance with riotous living" and eventually has to take work as a swineherd (clearly a low point, as swine are unclean in Judaism). There he comes to his senses and decides to return home and throw himself on his father's mercy, thinking that even if his father does disown him, being one of his servants is still far better than feeding pigs. But when he returns home, his father greets him with open arms and hardly gives him a chance to express his repentance. He kills a fatted calf to celebrate his return. The older brother resents the favored treatment of his faithless brother and complains of the lack of reward for his own faithfulness. But the father responds:
" 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'
– (Luke 15:31-32, NIV)
The Eastern Orthodox Church traditionally reads this story on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son,[1] which in their liturgical year is the Sunday before Meatfare Sunday and about two weeks before the beginning of Great Lent. One common kontakion hymn of the occasion reads,
I have recklessly forgotten Your glory, O Father;
And among sinners I have scattered the riches which You gave to me.
And now I cry to You as the Prodigal:
I have sinned before You, O merciful Father;
Receive me as a penitent and make me as one of Your hired servants.
Pope John Paul II explored the issues raised by this parable in his second encyclical Dives in Misericordia (Latin for "Rich in Mercy") issued in 1980.
[edit]
The dual challenge
Within the context of Luke 15, these three parables — the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son — make up a dual plea for repentance to the audience of Publicans and sinners and a rebuttal to the listening Pharisees, according to I. Howard Marshall.[2] The pharisees criticize Jesus for welcoming sinners and having fellowship with them, and Jesus gives anecdotal teaching to justify his attitude. The parable emphasizes the joy experienced by a person who recovers what he has lost.[3]

In the arts


Hans Sebald Beham, 1538, engraving


Gerard van Honthorst, 1623, like many works of the period, allows a genre scene with moral content.


Rembrandt, Return of the Prodigal Son, 1662, (Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg)
[edit]
Art
Of the thirty or so parables in the canonical Gospels, it was one of the four that were shown in medieval art almost to the exclusion of the others, but not mixed in with the narrative scenes of the Life of Christ (the others were the Wise and Foolish Virgins, Dives and Lazarus, and the Good Samaritan.[4] The Labourers in the Vineyard also appears in Early Medieval works). From the Renaissance the numbers shown widened slightly, and the various scenes - the high living, herding the pigs, and the return - of the Prodigal Son became the clear favourite. Albrecht Dürer made a famous engraving of the Prodigal Son amongst the pigs (1496), a popular subject in the Northern Renaissance, and Rembrandt depicted the story several times, although at least one of his works, The Prodigal Son in the Tavern, a portrait of himself as the Son, revelling with his wife, is like many artists' depictions, a way of dignifying a genre tavern scene - if the title was indeed the original intention of the artist. His late Return of the Prodigal Son (1662, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) is one of his most popular works.

Stage
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the theme was a sufficiently popular subject that the Prodigal Son Play can be seen as a sub-genre of the English morality play. Examples include The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, The Disobedient Child, and Acolastus. [5]
Notable adaptations for performance include a 1929 ballet choreographed by George Balanchine to music written by Sergei Prokofiev and an 1869 oratorio by Arthur Sullivan. Many of these adaptations considerably added to the Biblical material to lengthen the story; for example, the 1955 film The Prodigal took considerable liberties, such as adding a temptress priestess of Astarte to the tale.

Popular music
The parable is referenced in the traditional Irish folk tune "The Wild Rover".
Oblique adaptations include that by the Reverend Robert Wilkins, who told the story of this parable in the song "Prodigal Son", which is probably best known as a cover version by the Rolling Stones on their 1968 album Beggar's Banquet. In 1978, reggae band Steel Pulse recorded a song "Prodigal Son"; this transposes the story of the prodigal onto the slave trade, and suggests that their real "homecoming" was in fact to be spiritual rather than physical, a "homecoming" through religion (Rastafari). The British heavy metal band Iron Maiden recorded a song titled "Prodigal Son", based on the parable of the same name, which appeared on their second release, Killers, in 1981. Detroit musician, Kid Rock, also recorded a song titled "Prodigal Son" which appeared on his second album The Polyfuze Method, in 1993. Kid Rock later re-recorded the track for his 2000 album The History of Rock. "Prodigal Blues" is a song by Billy Idol that compares the singer's struggles with drug addiction to the parable, and the musical Godspell, which re-enacts the Prodigal Son story as a Western film. Bono, the vocalist of the Irish band U2, wrote the song "The First Time" based on this parable. The Christian Rock trio BarlowGirl recorded the song "She Walked Away" as part of their 2004 self-titled album. The scripture from Luke is quoted during an instrumental section of the song. Musician Dustin Kensrue wrote a song about the Prodigal Son entitled "Please Come Home" on the album of the same name released in 2007. The song "Find Your Way Home" by Texas rocker Kanude from his 2008 self-titled debut is based on the parable. "Juan en la Ciudad" (John in the City), a salsa-merengue fusion that describes the parable in condensed terms, was Richie Ray's and Bobby Cruz's most popular hit ever, in 1977.
The song "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas is widely considered to refer to the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
The Prodigal Son is the first posthumous release by piano player and gospel singer Keith Green.
[edit]
Literature
Another literary tribute to this parable is Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen's 1992 book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, A Story of Homecoming, in which he describes his own spiritual journey infused with understanding based on an encounter with Rembrandt's painting of the return of the Prodigal. He shows how the story is illuminated by the painting and is really about three personages: the younger, prodigal son; the self-righteous, resentful older son; and the compassionate father. Nouwen describes how all Christians—himself included—struggle to free themselves from the weaknesses inherent in both brothers and are destined to find themselves becoming the all-giving, all-forgiving, sacrificial father.
Another, earlier and similar work is Le retour de l'enfant prodigue (The Return of the Prodigal Son), a short story by André Gide, who infuses his own story with that of the parable.

[Frieda]

a hobbit! there's a hobbit in the NL Popstars this year!

here look:

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

The end of the year party at work turned out to be a good one, in spite of my usual fears. I usually feel like sheet with an eye, too many people, too close, too much noise, too many flashing light effects, too much drunk hugging and smooches (well, I'm a bit crazy and not very social), but I really enjoyed it and even danced with my colleagues. Um, I dance like Ze, only worse.

I think everyone was happy because this year we have long winter holidays again. I don't start until the 11th.

[Jack Flanders]

Hopefully by leaving tomorrow morning at 6 am we'll get ahead of the snow storm that's headed up the east coast. We'll get to Indiana in time for some good lake effect snow storms on Sunday ...

[YsaPur EsChomuw]

make your own snowflake

[MoJoRiSin]

or maybe this should be entitled
"how to sure domestic ugliness?"
(well, i meant SOLVE but somehow i typed "sure"...
the typo remains)

The life of a Spartan male was a life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity. The Spartans viewed themselves as the true inheritors of the Greek tradition. They did not surround themselves with luxuries, expensive foods, or opportunities for leisure. And this, I think, is the key to understanding the Spartans. While the Athenians and many others thought the Spartans were insane, the life of the Spartans seemed to hark back to a more basic way of life. Discipline, simplicity, and self-denial always remained ideals in the Greek and Roman worlds; civilization was often seen as bringing disorder, ennervation, weakness, and a decline in moral values. The Spartan, however, could point to Spartan society and argue that moral values and human courage and strength was as great as it was before civilization. Spartan society, then, exercised a profound pull on the surrounding city-states who admired the simplicity, discipline, and order of Spartan life.

The ideology of Sparta was oriented around the state. The individual lived (and died) for the state. Their lives were designed to serve the state from their beginning to the age of sixty. The combination of this ideology, the education of Spartan males, and the disciplined maintenance of a standing army gave the Spartans the stability that had been threatened so dramatically in the Messenean revolt.

Paradoxically, this soldier-centered state was the most liberal state in regards to the status of women. While women did not go through military training, they were required to be educated along similar lines. The Spartans were the only Greeks not only to take seriously the education of women, they instituted it as state policy. This was not, however, an academic education (just as the education of males was not an academic education); it was a physical education which could be grueling. Infant girls were also exposed to die if they were judged to be weak; they were later subject to physical and gymnastics training. This education also involved teaching women that their lives should be dedicated to the state. In most Greek states, women were required to stay indoors at all times (though only the upper classes could afford to observe this custom); Spartan women, however, were free to move about, and had an unusual amount of domestic freedom for their husbands, after all, didn't live at home.

source:: http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/SPARTA.HTM