Birding in Dorset
We took another trip south in September. Stayed some way inland in the historic town of Corfe Castle but couldn’t keep away from the coast and visited RSPB Arne, RSPB Lodmoor, RSPB Radipole Pond, NT Studland, and took a boat trip in Poole Harbour up the Wareham Channel, and a train journey from Corfe to Swanage where we were plagued by Geography Fieldtrips measuring the groynes on the beach.
White-tailed Eagle
RSPB Arne is the English homeland of the Dartford Warbler and plenty of other wildlife, although we saw very little of it on our visit for some reason, apart from some “wild” pigs and distant waders...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 26, 2022 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Birds Source Type: blogs
The Macro View – Health, Economics, and Politics and the Big Picture. What I Am Watching Here And Abroad.
September 22, 2022 Edition-----We will see the closure on the Mourning Period for QE!! In Australia tomorrow, We can then move on to the next big issue, which will surely be the progress in the Russo-Ukrainian war and the associated issues with China and Russia.The US seems – with the rest of the world – to be moving into recession.King Charles has now been to all his UK Realms and will now quietly let PM Trass get back to running the UK. God help her …In Australia we have to now get on with life and the economic disaster we seem to be facing.-----Major Issues.-----https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/oddly-enough-th...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - September 22, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: More names
Chapter 2 focuses on the genealogy of the tribe of Judah, the kingdom of Judah being, as it will emerge, the Chroniclers main focus. Some of these names are taken from the Torah, the Deuteronomist History, and the Book of Ruth, but most of them are not found elsewhere in extant sources. Whether the Chronicler made them up or found them somewhere is unknown, but remember that at least up until David, the history was largely fictitious and these are presumably fictitious characters. Note that in verse 7, he makes a pun. He refers to " Achar, the troubler of Israel . . . " but this man is called Achan in the book of Josh...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 31, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Zzzzzzzzzz
Chronicles is without a doubt that most boring book in the Bible. It is actually the last book of the Tanakh, but in the protestant Old Testament it comes after Kings and that ' s the order we ' re using. It is generally thought to be the work of a single individual, presumably a Levite priest. Some believe he was also the author of Ezrah and Nehemiah, but this is disputed. Because it concludes with the ascendance of Cyrus the Great to the throne of Persia, the earliest possible date is 539 B.C., and the latest possible date is the creation of the Septuagint around 350 B.C. Chronicles selectively recapitulates the his...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 28, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The End
This is the last chapter of the Book of Kings, and the conclusion of the Deuteronomic History. It describes the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple. As far as historical accuracy, the only important quibble would be the number of captives taken to Babylon. Most likely it was not in the thousands, but more like the dozens. In essence, Nebuchadnezzar wanted to remove the literate priests and scribes -- what we might call he intelligentsia in a modern context -- and any military leaders or aristocrats who could challenge Babylonian rule. This chapter describes the massacre of some of them, but apparently...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 24, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: The fall of Judah
The last two chapters of the Book of Kings are more or less historically accurate, although the story is a bit muddled in that Judah appears to be conquered twice, first in this chapter and again in the next. It is true that Judah was for a time a vassal kingdom, then it rebelled and Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and took its leading citizens into captivity in Babylon, but the story seems to be duplicated. Maybe there ' s some historical accuracy to this, or maybe it ' s just the usual two versions of the same story phenomenon. In case you ' re wondering what happened to Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar conquered it, and also ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 21, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Yahweh cleans up
Having " discovered " the book of the law they had just written, Josiah and his priests set out to establish worship of Yahweh according to the Torah law as the sole religious practice in Judah, and to cleanse the kingdom of all traces of worship of other gods. This involves, as usual, slaughtering a lot of people, but that ' s righteousness in Yahweh ' s world. I can ' t prove it, but I believe this was supposed to end with verse 25, with the panegyric to King Josiah.. There may have been a closing statement, which has been replaced. That would be the appropriate denouement to the entire plot, and explain why Josiah had t...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 17, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Macro View – Health, Economics, and Politics and the Big Picture. What I Am Watching Here And Abroad.
August 11, 2022 Edition-----It is hard to go past just how bad the level strategic stability in the world seems to have gone backwards with the war hardly stopping, Nancy Pelosi poking Chinese bears. The UK imploding economically and Europe on the brink of collapse.I have never seen it this bas and many senior commentators agree. Really very worrying!-----Major Issues.-----https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/newspoll-record-electoral-satisfaction-rating-for-anthony-albanese/news-story/6ad1f681586961423e3eb75a05b99949Newspoll: Record electoral satisfaction rating for Anthony AlbaneseSimon BensonJuly 31, 2022Anthony Alba...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - August 11, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Some serious backsliding
I suspect that much or all of Chapter 21 was a later interpolation. It ' s part of the explanation for why Judah fell to Babylon, even though Josiah (coming soon) restored Torah-based orthodoxy, which was supposed to be the original point of the whole thing. So they inserted the absolutely worst possible king, so that no matter what Josiah did, he couldn ' t make up for it. (BTW Mademoiselle Hephzibah is the name of the French skunk who was Pogo Possum ' s occasional love interest.)21 Manas ′seh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Heph′...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 10, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Plagiarism
It ' s a bit puzzling, but 2 kings 19 and Isaiah 37 are essentially identical. Isaiah is a bit player here, but he gets a whole book later on, and this chapter is in it. I ' m not into the weeds of biblical scholarship, but as I understand it the Book of Isaiah is cobbled together, apparently by three different authors, and one of them lifted this. As I said last time, there is no historical record of an outright defeat of Sennacherib in his Levantine campaign, but there is some indication that sickness in his camp may have discouraged him from actually entering Jerusalem. Just a reminder that until the last few chapters, ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 3, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Survivor
Chapter 18 and the following chapter tell the story of the siege of Jerusalem bySennach ′erib of Assyria. Judah is caught between great empires, andSennach ′erib, the son of Sargon who conquered Samaria, is still bent on conquest. Judah is in dire straits against a far more powerful adversary; Hezekiah relies on diplomacy to try to survive, through an alliance with Egypt. He also tries to buy off the attackers. All of this is consistent with the hist orical record. At the conclusion of the story in the following chapter, Yahweh kills the besieging Assyrian army. Other contemporary records, however, do not record an our...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 31, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Shit gets really real
Ch. 17 tells of the conquest of Israel -- the northern kingdom, aka Samaria -- by the Assyrian empire. Yes, this definitely happened. And it was indeed the practice of the Assyrians to deport at least part of the population of conquered territories. In the biblical account, essentially all of the population was removed and replaced by people from elsewhere. The deportees became known as the ten Lost Tribes of Israel. (The tribe of Dan had joined Judah earlier, so those two tribes survived) Historians dispute whether the deportation was really total, however. Nevertheless whatever Israelite population remained was diluted, ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 27, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
On Free Speech, “Lady of Heaven,” and Sectarianism
Mustafa AkyolIn the past few weeks, some Britons had a sense of déjà vu, reminding them the censorship campaign against Salman Rushdie’s blasphemous novel “The Satanic Verses” some thirty‐five years ago. This time, the center of angst was a movie titled, “Lady of Heaven, ” which glorified the story of Lady Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. Yet, in an unmistakably sectarian tone, the movie also demonized some of the most revered figures of Sunni Islam.Hence came protests organized by some Sunni groups, fromBradford to London, in front of movie theaters. There was no violence, but the heated r...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 22, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Mustafa Akyol Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: What's wrong with this story?
As you may recall from last time, the Syrians are besieging Samaria (the northern kingdom) and the people are eating their children. Yeah, bummer. So Elisha predicts that by the next morning, the famine will be over and food will be cheap. A high ranking officer scoffs at this so Elisha tells him, it will happen but he won ' t get to eat any of it.We then return to the new-found focus on lepers, four of whom discover that God has sent the Syrians an auditory hallucination of an attack, causing them to flee. Strangely, however, they don ' t ride away on their horses, they leave their horses tied up and apparently flee on fo...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 22, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
A “No” To Mandatory Voting
Walter OlsonAustralia andsome other countries make voting compulsory by law, a perennial ideare ‐floated two years ago in this country by a working group convened by the Brookings Institution and the Harvard Kennedy School ’s Ash Center and now by E.J. Dionne Jr. of Brookings and Miles Rapoport of the Ash Centerin a book. But as I argue in a newpiece in theNew York Post as well as a newCato podcast, the right answer remains “no way.”The Brookings/ Ash Center group — which deserves due credit for honesty on this point — acknowledges that when they polled about the idea, they f...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 17, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
