Zeus

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/did-the-people-at-pompeii-get-what-they-deserved/408586/

The Atlantic

Pompeii and the Ancient Origins of Blaming the Victim

People have sought moral explanations for natural disasters since antiquity.

ADRIENNE LAFRANCE

OCT 2, 2015

When scientists recently re-examined the ancient remains of people killed in the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, they were surprised by two findings in particular. For one thing, the ancient people of Pompeii seemed to have had perfect teeth, perhaps a product of a healthy diet and the high-fluorine air and water of their environment.

And, for another, it seems they didn't die in the manner researchers long suspected. Instead of being choked by a sudden blanket of ash and hot gas, Pompeii’s doomed residents sustained fatal head injuries, likely from collapsing structures and volcanic rocks that rained from the sky.

How they died has long been a fascination among historians and archaeologists. This curiosity is understandable. The eruption of Vesuvius was so devastating it is practically unimaginable. (To the people who lived in Pompeii at the time, it must have been beyond stunning: The volcano had gone generations without so much as a puff of steam, and it was believed to be dead.)

The death toll is uncertain but scholars believe as many as 25,000 people were killed. “With the eruption of Vesuvius, scholars, thinkers, and moralizers for centuries have been scrutinizing the death of all those victims,” said Roger Macfarlane, a classics professor at Brigham Young University. And over the centuries, scholars have pieced together astounding details about the circumstances of their deaths. We know, from ancient documents, that some people tied pillows to their heads. Plaster body-casts of victims, their remains preserved in volcanic ash, reveal the outlines of tunic fabric covering mouths trying to escape the sulphuric air. But implicit, and sometimes explicit, in the search for answers over mass casualty, is a much more troublesome question: Why?

“Judgmental moralizers,” Macfarlane told me, “have had a heyday with Pompeii over the years.”

The idea that victims of natural disasters are to blame for their fate is common in the aftermath of any tragedy. This tendency often reveals ugly underlying prejudices. After a tsunami killed nearly 16,000 people in Japan in 2011, some Americans made headlines for shrugging off the enormity of the loss as karmic payback for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans in 2005, a congressman representing Baton Rouge was overheard telling lobbyists: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did.”

In the case of Pompeii, these sorts of projections span centuries. Comparisons to Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities God destroys in the book of Genesis, still come up frequently. The question of whether Pompeii’s destruction was divine punishment has been explored in paintings, plays, films, and novels. One such story is The Last Days of Pompeii, by the popular 19th-century writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Widely read in his time, Bulwer-Lytton is credited with bringing the story of Pompeii into mainstream Western culture, which underscores the prominence of the idea that Pompeii was cursed for the sins of its people.

“Edward Bulwer-Lytton was not the first thinker to explain how somehow the volcano destroyed a people that were ripened in iniquity,” Macfarlane said. “The Last Days of Pompeii features the melodramatically dastardly villain, Arbaces, who is essentially blown to smithereens in the eruption, even as the noble protagonist Glaucus survives. Likewise Robert Harris’s vulcanologically savvy (and highly readable) novel Pompeii (2003) rumbles up a good yarn until the exploding mountain blows away the highly deserving Ampliatus in an ‘incandescent sandstorm… blast[ing] him, burst[ing] his eardrums, ignit[ing] his hair, bl[owing] his clothes and shoes off, and whirl[ing] him upside down, slamming him against the side of a building.’ Harris gives this villain what the novel shows he deserves.”

As historians have pieced together a rich narrative of the real lives and deaths of those who lived at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, cultural narratives about why the disaster wiped out an entire people have persisted. Maybe, the idea seems to be, the inhabitants of Pompeii deserved the terror they experienced. “I honestly wonder about the sometimes pervasive human impulse to judge victims of natural disasters,” Macfarlane said. “Did they get what was coming to them? Many a moralizer has stated that the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum must have been steeped in wickedness to have been obliterated in such a horrifying instant.”

It is cruel to blame the victims of an epic volcanic eruption for their demise. But understandable, too. It is human nature, after all, to seek higher meaning, even justice, in events that are otherwise impossibly tragic—even though, and perhaps precisely because, it is rare to find it. There is fear in this way of thinking: Maybe if those people deserved to die, I will be safe.

“Such moralization heads to a set of questions we perhaps can never answer about the victims of Pompeii,” Macfarlane said. “Did innocence or guilt play any role in the natural selection of victims? Surely not. What, then, did determine the fatal choices of certain victims? Careful forensics will bring intriguing clues, to be sure. However, answers that depend upon interpretation of motive are always going to be the hardest to achieve.”








https://www.psychologistworld.com/superstition

Psychologist World

Superstition

How Skinner's pigeon experiment revealed signs of superstition in pigeons.

"They may seem unlikely candidates for psychological analysis, but pigeons have given a revealing insight into how animals, including humans, can be bound by superstition..."

The Superstition Experiment

In the Summer of 1947, renowned behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner published his study on a group of pigeons that showed even animals are susceptible to the human condition that is superstition.

Skinner conducted his research on a group of hungry pigeons whose body weights had been reduced to 75% of their normal weight when well-fed. For a few minutes each day, a mechanism fed the birds at regular intervals. What observers of the pigeons found showed the birds developing superstitious behavior, believing that by acting in a particular way, or committing a certain action, food would arrive.








https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/the-day-the-world-ended-lessons-from-pompeii

United Church of God

The Day the World Ended

Lessons From Pompeii

Posted on Dec 2, 2005 by Scott Ashley

Pompeii's ruins tell a stark and heartrending story. One day Pompeii was a thriving, lively city; the next it was a steaming mound of smoldering volcanic ash. Does Pompeii's tragic tale hold lessons for us today?

Warning signs had been building for some time. Streams and wells had suddenly dried up, particularly those near Mt. Vesuvius towering nearby.

Some of the farmers attributed the sudden disappearance of water to the hot late-August weather. They didn’t realize that not far beneath the earth’s surface the water was being vaporized by the steadily rising heat.

Out in the majestic Bay of Naples, the sea had mysteriously begun to boil in some places, the underground heat sending streams of bubbles gurgling to the surface. Fishermen puzzled at the curious sight and murmured among themselves.

Here and there even the ground had begun to rumble and quiver. Mt. Vesuvius itself appeared to moan and groan from time to time.

Ominously, many animals—dogs, cats, mice and rats—had begun abandoning the city of Pompeii. Something strange was happening. The people wondered what it could mean.

Unknown to them, a deadly monster was stirring.

A city built on rock

Centuries earlier, the settlers who first arrived in the area were glad to find such a pleasant site for a city.

The Bay of Naples, part of the Mediterranean Sea, provided an abundant harvest of fish. The soil of the area was rich and dark, promising plentiful crops, especially when coupled with the warm climate. A river, the Sarno, provided plenty of fresh water for drinking. A harbor provided ready access for ships and the growing trade network in the area.

A large mountain, later to be named Vesuvius, loomed nearby. Its pine-covered slopes offered plenty of timber for homes, shops and villas. A large rock plateau stretching toward the sea offered a spacious, level site with lots of room for a city to grow and plenty of stone for building.

Those early settlers who laid out their settlement on the plateau didn’t realize they were building their city atop an ancient lava flow that stretched all the way to towering Vesuvius, six miles away.

Prosperity rooted in past catastrophes

Over the next few centuries the city expanded out over the plateau. Changing hands over the years from the Greeks to the Etruscans to the Samnites, it finally came under Rome’s influence as an allied city late in the fourth century B.C.

After rebelling against Rome in 90 B.C., Pompeii became a colony of the growing Roman Empire and its people became citizens. The area blossomed both as a commercial and agricultural hub and as a resort.

The city boasted smooth stone-paved streets, an amphitheater large enough to seat 20,000 spectators for gladiatorial contests, two large theaters for plays and concerts, shops of all kinds, elaborate vineyards and gardens, an enormous forum and many multistoried buildings.

Pompeii’s many public fountains were fed by two large brick reservoirs, which in turn were supplied via an arched aqueduct stretching 18 miles to a mountain lake. As was the case with many Roman cities, its citizens relaxed in several large public baths. Quite ornate, the baths featured steamrooms and separate hot and cold pools for soaking as well as a large pool for swimming.

Much of the city’s wealth could be traced to the rich soil of the area, so fertile that three crops of grain could be grown in a single year. Rows of vines marching across the landscape supplied the grapes for the area’s noted wine production. On the lower slopes of Vesuvius, groves of olive trees produced tons of olives for food and oil. Lush fields outside the city supported large flocks of sheep and a thriving wool industry.

Pompeii’s inhabitants didn’t realize that the fertile soil on which so much of their prosperity depended was the result of Vesuvius’ past volcanic eruptions.

Enjoying the good life

For most, life was good in Pompeii. For many, it was quite luxurious. The great Roman orator Cicero had a villa in Pompeii; Julius Caesar’s father-in-law owned one in nearby Herculaneum. Some villas were so large they took up an entire city block.

Most villas were built surrounding an open central courtyard, often highlighted by a pool and sometimes a fountain. There wealthy Pompeians could relax on hot summer days surrounded by opulent colonnaded gardens featuring elegant statuary and beautiful mosaic floors. Inside, many villas were equally richly decorated with colorful frescoes depicting various aspects of daily life, history and the mythology and religious beliefs of Pompeii’s citizens.

The city’s wealth and favorable position drew visitors from all over the empire. Pompeii was quite cosmopolitan, showing influences from many regions and religions. Its people could worship at its many temples dedicated to the Roman pantheon—Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Venus, Isis, Minerva and others.

For those whose worship ran to the more mundane level, graffiti inscribed on Pompeii’s walls testified that successful gladiators were among the major celebrities of the day: “Celadus is the heartthrob of all the girls.” “Severus—55 fights—has just won again.” “The unbeaten Hermiscus was here.” “Crescens, the net fighter, holds the hearts of all the girls.” Other graffiti urged citizens to vote for this or that candidate.

Pompeii lay secure behind its massive defensive walls, which stood 20 feet thick and more than 30 feet high in some places. The hard stone for the walls, also used to pave the city’s streets, was basalt, quarried nearby. Pompeii’s builders didn’t know it, but the basalt was hardened lava from past volcanic eruptions that had engulfed the area.

Pompeii was so prosperous that, when many of its major buildings suffered considerable damage from an earthquake in A.D. 62, it refused Rome’s offers of assistance. Its citizens preferred to go it alone, confident that they could handle this and any other setback.

Even when aftershocks rattled the city off and on for several years, Pompeians remained largely unconcerned. They certainly didn’t connect them with Mt. Vesuvius, which, to their knowledge, had always been a peaceful mountain.

They failed to recognize the growing danger—that, six miles away, unimaginable pressures were building beneath Vesuvius as it began to awaken from its long sleep.

Hell comes to earth

In August of A.D. 79, the earthquake activity intensified. Then, on Aug. 24—ironically, the date of the Vulcanalia, a festival honoring Vulcan, the Roman god of fire—the world ended for Pompeii.

About noon that day, as thousands of Pompeians went about their daily activities of farming, fishing, buying, selling, eating and drinking, they were startled and shaken by a deafening roar.

The top of towering and vast Mt. Vesuvius vanished in a nuclear-scale explosion. Dust, red-hot pumice, ash and flames were blasted more than a dozen miles into the sky. Men, women and children gasped and screamed as bright midday suddenly turned black, illuminated only by flashes of lightning and fiery trails of burning rocks as they crashed to the ground among the teeming, terrified people.

A blanket of choking, gritty ash—a suffocating snowfall from hell—quickly began to cover the city. Panicked Pompeians hurried to find family members and flee, seeking safety outside the city. Others, terrified by the rain of burning ash and pumice, hurried inside, bolting doors and shutters behind them.

Eventually dusk fell, though few in the doomed city would have recognized the difference. By that time several feet of ash covered everything. A few stragglers lit torches and struggled through the ash, hoping to find safety at the port or via the roads leading out of the city—if they could find them.

As night came, roofs began to creak and collapse from the weight of the ash. Some, realizing they would suffocate or be buried alive by the growing ashfall, clambered out second-floor windows, gasping for breath in the ash-choked air. Others in their desperation chopped holes through the roofs and walls of their houses to escape. A few remained behind seeking shelter wherever they could.

At one residence, a dog chained in the yard climbed higher and higher as the level of ash continued to rise. Finally, as his chain ran out and he could climb no higher, the dog suffocated as the ash covered his nose and mouth.

By now the city contained only the dead and those who would die.

Throughout the night the rain of ash continued to fall. Three times during the night, avalanches of rocks, hot ash and poisonous gas surged down the mountain but fell short of enveloping Pompeii. Even so, by the time the sky lightened somewhat at dawn, seven feet of pumice and ash covered much of Pompeii.

The final blows

Early that morning Vesuvius delivered its final blows to the mortally wounded city. In less than an hour, three more superheated avalanches, accompanied by a rain of tons of very fine ash, swallowed the city. The first two choked Pompeii with another two feet of volcanic ash and debris; the third struck with such force that most of what still stood above the accumulated volcanic deposits was sheered off and carried away.

These scorching blasts, with their poisonous gases and fumes, killed everyone and everything that remained. A few Pompeians—husbands and wives, parents and children, longtime friends—comforted each other as they died, frozen in time in embraces that would last forever.

Over that day and the next, at least two more avalanches swept over the city, burying it even more deeply. When Vesuvius—now a shattered stump of a mountain—finally grew quiet, survivors in the surrounding towns and countryside stared out over a gray, ashen landscape that looked like the surface of the moon.

Gone were the lush fields and meadows, the trees, even the river. A few shattered trees poked up through the smoldering ash. The thriving city of Pompeii was no more; it had been transformed into a graveyard.

Some survivors went back to the large mound of ash and debris that had been their city. Here and there a rooftop or broken wall or column helped guide people to their buried homes. As the ash cooled, a few burrowed tunnels to retrieve valuables.

One person, likely a Jew or Christian, couldn’t escape the parallel with a biblical story. Tunneling in the ruins, he scribbled “Sodom and Gomorrah” on a wall.

Most of the survivors, however, simply abandoned the city for good. It wasn’t long before all who knew a city once lay there had died out. As the centuries passed, Vesuvius erupted time and time again, covering the buried city with more layers of ash, further sealing Pompeii within its cold gray tomb.

There it would lay, 20 feet underground—a first-century city frozen in time until its chance discovery and identification nearly 17 centuries later.

A sobering reminder of many things

Pompeii has proved to be a treasure trove to historians and archaeologists. The light it has shed on first-century life in the Roman world is profound. The amount of information it has provided to scholars of many fields is staggering.

Millions of visitors have come to walk its streets, to admire its delicate artwork and to peer into houses, stores and workshops still standing 2,000 years later and wonder what life was like back then.

One cannot go away from the place unmoved—at least I can’t imagine anyone doing so. Pompeii is a sobering reminder of so many things—of the fragility and fleetingness of our existence, of how entire cities and civilizations can vanish, of how there, but for the grace of God, go all of us.

Perhaps most of all, it’s a reminder of the folly of human beings in refusing to face up to unpleasant realities, of ignoring or misunderstanding the danger signs until it’s too late.

Rich and poor, free citizen and slave, young and old—all met the same fate in Pompeii. The only ones who escaped were those who recognized the growing danger. For those who lingered too long, denying the seriousness of their plight or hoping that conditions would somehow change, the city became their tomb.

The lesson of Sodom

One citizen of ancient Pompeii got one lesson right—the man who scribbled “Sodom and Gomorrah” on one of the city’s buried walls. His simple, three-word judgment says more about the city than many books that have been written about it.

A modern visitor to Pompeii doesn’t have to look very hard to see evidence of the moral climate of the city. Up to several dozen buildings have been identified as likely houses of prostitution. Some, due to the explicit wall paintings and graffiti found in them, leave no doubt as to their purpose.

Even in private homes, wall paintings and mosaics depict all kinds of sexual activity, and many common household objects such as lamps, dishes, vases and fountains have been found with sexual motifs. Recent excavations at one of Pompeii’s public baths indicate that one floor of the structure may have been a brothel.

Oversized representations of sex organs can be found built into the walls facing some streets, and in at least one case carved right in the street itself.

The Bible tells us that sexual perversion was rampant in the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1-13), which God destroyed by fire (verse 24). Their depravity was so great that they have become a byword for sin and God’s judgment.

Yet today many of our cities are no different from Sodom and Pompeii. Seldom mentioned in news coverage was the fact that the devastating December 2004 tsunami wiped out the portion of the Thai coast infamous for its child-sex trade, or that New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina five days before 100,000 gays and lesbians were to be welcomed into the city for its appropriately named “Southern Decadence” festival.

Will we ignore the lesson?

Does the catastrophe that befell Pompeii hold lessons for us today?

It certainly should. The story of Pompeii haunts our collective memory and fills us with a vague sense of unease. After all, if it could happen to them, an entire city …

In many ways our era is much like the time of Pompeii. Many of us surround ourselves with luxuries and conveniences. Life is good; we live in the wealthiest and most prosperous time in human history. Technology has given us so much, made life so comfortable.

Could it ever end? Your Bible says that it can—and that it will.

We live in a world as awash in sin as it is in material pleasures. “But know this,” said the apostle Paul, “that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1-4, emphasis added throughout).

While Paul was describing our day, he could just as well have been describing Pompeii. And like Pompeii, there will be a day of reckoning.

Prophecy after prophecy of the Bible foretells a time of global trouble that will be unlike anything human beings have ever experienced (Jeremiah 30:7; Daniel 12:1). Jesus Christ says of this time: “For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again” (Matthew 24:21, New International Version).

Can we even begin to comprehend that? What does it mean to have a time of terror and turmoil, chaos and catastrophe unlike anything witnessed in human history? Many of us sat glued to the TV as we watched coverage of last December’s tsunami and of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Were we seeing a glimpse of mankind’s future, not just for those areas but for the entire world?

As this year draws to a close, think back on the news that has dominated the headlines in recent months and years—terrible natural disasters, war, terrorism, wildfires, suicide bombings, corruption, bloody civil wars, terrorists trying to acquire nuclear weapons, drought, famines, disease outbreaks, failed peace efforts, hostility toward God and His truth. Read Matthew 24 and make your own checklist of Jesus Christ’s words.

As a thief in the night

Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6, wrote a warning that is far more applicable to our day than his own: “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, ‘Peace and safety!’ then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.

“But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober.”

Whenever I read this passage I think not only of our day, but of ancient Pompeii. One day Pompeii was a thriving, vibrant city, and the next it was a giant tomb. “Sudden destruction” takes on a whole new meaning as you stroll Pompeii’s long-dead streets and consider that you’re walking through a 2,000-year-old time capsule.

The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius happened at lunchtime, so life stopped before many Pompeians could finish their meal. Their food lay untouched for almost 2,000 years. Cooking pots still contained the bones of stews. One oven contained the remains of a pig that had been left roasting at the time the disaster struck. Bread, eggs, fish, nuts and dates lay undisturbed on tables until stunned excavators uncovered them.

Most haunting of all the sights in Pompeii are the casts of those who didn’t make it out of the doomed city. Their bodies, sealed in the hardening ash, eventually decayed to dust, leaving voids into which Pompeii’s excavators poured plaster and concrete almost 2,000 years later. The resulting ghostly images captured the citizens of Pompeii at the moment of their deaths.

We see plenty of warning signs around us. Do we understand them? Or do we willingly choose to misunderstand them, writing them off as passing inconveniences or temporary interruptions in the constantly improving flow of human progress?

Will we, like the doomed citizens of Pompeii, ignore the rumblings and tremors until it’s too late? Or will we heed the words of Jesus Christ’s warning in Luke 21:36: “Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”








http://hvom.blogspot.com/2018/09/star-trek-ncis.html

Posted by Kerry Burgess at 10:13 PM

Homeless Veteran Of Microsoft

I am Kerry Burgess. This is what I think.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2018

Star Trek: NCIS


The greatest LIARS in science-fiction are even in this modern day those scum-bags who preach their religions.

Liars. All of them.

How do you know when they're lying to you? They want to tell you about Jesus Christ. That's how you know they're a LIAR.








from my online journal as Kerry Burgess

6/26/2018 at 6:01 pm

Religion.

False Hope for cowards.

Cowards terrified of mortality.








from my online journal as Kerry Burgess

June 25, 2018 at 3:41 PM

You only care about that Jesus bible-thumper crap because you're SCARED.

You're scared because scam-artists convinced you the Bogey Man is real.

Now you're terrified of mortality and you NEED to do anything you can to kiss the ass of your imaginary God.








from my online journal as Kerry Burgess

Dec 16, 2017 7:01pm

Eventually their delusion will evolve, I'm sure.

Delusional people, such as all Jesus Christ bible-thumpers, will simply change their story when the facts prove they are wrong.

Million of monkey-men were wrong about Zeus so they simply invented a phony God easier to believe.








from my online journal as Kerry Burgess

Aug 18, 2018 1:21pm

Bible-thumpers are definitely *not* going to read this note.

As soon as they get the slightest glimmer of my rational, well thought out explanation for why they are cowardly terrified of mortality, then they just tune out. They're junkies addicted to a ridiculous fantasy.

I am definitely not talking in person to potentially psychotic persons about mortality.

And all bible-thumpers are potentially psychotic.

That's why they're bible-thumpers.

The real world is terrifying to them and they are on the borderline of hysteria.








From 3/7/1973 ( premiere US TV series pilot "The Six Million Dollar Man"::"The Moon and the Desert" ) To 7/27/1997 is 8908 days

8908 = 4454 + 4454

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 1/12/1978 ( premiere US TV series episode "In Search of..."::"Astrology" ) is 4454 days



From 4/23/1939 ( Lee Majors ) To 7/27/1997 is 21280 days

21280 = 10640 + 10640

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 12/20/1994 ( in Bosnia as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps captain this day is my United States Navy Cross medal date of record ) is 10640 days



From 1/30/1963 ( premiere US TV series episode "The Virginian"::"The Man Who Wouldn't Die" ) To 10/24/1994 ( premiere US film "Stargate" ) is 11590 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 7/27/1997 is 11590 days



From 3/16/1991 ( my first successful major test of my ultraspace matter transportation device as Kerry Wayne Burgess the successful Ph.D. graduate ) To 7/27/1997 is 2325 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 3/15/1972 ( premiere US film "Slaughterhouse-Five" ) is 2325 days



From 2/21/1997 ( the landing of the US space shuttle Discovery orbiter vehicle mission STS-82 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-82 pilot astronaut and my 4th official United States of America National Aeronautics Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall ) To 7/27/1997 is 156 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 4/7/1966 ( Lyndon Johnson - Remarks Upon Accepting the Special Albert Lasker Award for Leadership in Health ) is 156 days



Other posts by me on this topic includes: http://hvom.blogspot.com/2018/09/children-of-gods_27.html


http://www.tv.com/shows/stargate-sg-1/children-of-the-gods-1-7319/

tv.com

Stargate SG-1 Season 1 Episode 1

Children of the Gods (1)

AIRED: 7/27/97








Stargate SG-1 - Children of the Gods - television series premiere Season 1 Episode 1 - Sunday 27 July 1997

Episode Summary

The System Lord Apophis launches an attack through the Stargate, tucked away by the military after the events of the movie, and the SGC program is reactivated and given a new objective - seek out and find the alien invaders and defeat them. Jack O'Neill is called out of retirement and sent to locate Daniel Jackson on Abydos.

(from internet transcript of incomplete dialog)


United States Air Force major general HAMMOND: I'm assigning Sam Carter to this mission.

United States Air Force Colonel Jack O'NEILL (retired no longer): I'd prefer to put together my own team, sir.

HAMMOND: Not on this mission, sorry. Carter's our expert on the Stargate.

O'NEILL: (leaning over table to write down something) Where's he transferring from?

CARTER: (offscreen) *She* is transferring from the Pentagon.

Startled, O'Neill looks up as a blonde woman dressed in full dress blues, enters, walking over to stand by the vacant chair across from O'Neill.

CARTER: I take it you're Colonel O'Neill. (salutes) Captain Samantha Carter reporting, sir.

O'Neill, a bit surprised, returns the salute.

KAWALSKY: But of course you go by "Sam."

CARTER: (chuckles) You don't have to worry, Major. I played with dolls when I was a kid.

KAWALSKY: G.I. Joe?

CARTER: No. Major Matt Mason.

KAWALSKY: Oh... (to Ferretti) Who?

FERRETTI: Major Matt Mason, astronaut doll. Did you have that cool little backpack that made him fly?








Stargate SG-1 - Children of the Gods - television series premiere Season 1 Episode 1 - Sunday 27 July 1997

(from internet transcript of incomplete dialog)


O'NEILL: What's it a map of?

JACKSON: Well... the cartouches seem to be separated clearly into groupings. Each grouping is attached to the others by a series of lines, and each grouping contains seven symbols, so you can see where this is going, of course.

O'NEILL: Tell us anyway.








Stargate SG-1 - Children of the Gods - television series premiere Season 1 Episode 1 - Sunday 27 July 1997

(from internet transcript of incomplete dialog)


HAMMOND: Then who's coming through the Stargate?

JACKSON: (almost to himself) Gods.

Surprised, O'Neill and Carter turn to stare at Daniel. Hammond looks confused.

HAMMOND: What?








Stargate SG-1 - Children of the Gods - television series premiere Season 1 Episode 1 - Sunday 27 July 1997

(from internet transcript of incomplete dialog)


Apophis' dungeon, at the back of the chamber. O'Neill hoists himself up to a tiny window, peering out. There's no glass to shatter, but he's blocked by a metal lattice. He drops back down to the floor, where Skaara is standing, looking out in case any guards notice. Daniel and Carter watch from a distance.

CARTER: So Ra isn't dead after all.

JACKSON: It wasn't Ra. It was Apophis.

CARTER: Who?

JACKSON: Um... it's from Egyptian mythology. Ra was the sun god who ruled the day, Apophis was the serpent god, Ra's rival, who ruled the night. It's right out of the Book of the Dead. They're living it.








from my journal as Kerry Burgess

Tuesday, August 28, 2018 at 04:32 am (Pacific Time USA)

I wonder if that's the same day I remember graduating from United States Navy basic training in Orlando.

Must have been.

The uncertainty in my mind is because of vague memories I still have about those last days before we left.

I can still visualize that last day, had my seabag and sunglasses on and the company commander sending us off and I can visualize myself walking for the last time out the door of that barracks we had been in for 8 weeks.

I went across base to begin Basic Electricity and Electronics School for the Electronics Technician occupation rating, a rating I chose because it was one of only two ratings in the Advanced Electronics Field, along with Fire Controlman, and the ET rating required several more weeks of electronics training than FC and I found that appealing to me. Several weeks later, being completely unprepared for unhindered access to cheap alcohol, having been sheltered from alcohol and then on my own with no old woman screeching at me, with no closed door in her house I could ever escape to away from her, I let myself get kicked out of school and sent out to the fleet to work in the deck department as a non-rated sailor. Working my butt off, as since 14 years old, from my own personal initiative and with no personal role models in my past experience, I had become accustomed to regular employment, I was allowed to select a rating to aspire for and I chose the gun/missile Fire Controlman (FC) (in the last days of the Fire Control Technician Missiles (FTM) rating) and worked my way back up and my next fleet assignment was with a bunch of push-button technicians whose career track had been the same as my original aspirations with the ET rating. They went to school for several courses of instruction and were advanced to Petty Officer Third Class (E-4 paygrade after entering recruit training as E-3 paygrade) without ever working a day in the fleet. I had spent over a year - a total of 419 days to be exact - on a shakedown period for the USS Taylor FFG-50 where I had many responsibilities including being responsible for the boatswain locker, helmsman, lookout, repair locker personnel, damage control, others.

All I know for certain is my official military records tell me I was transferred from basic training by the United States Navy on Monday, July 16, 1984.

The previous Friday was the 13th.

The details I vaguely recall are about how my company, C155, finished the course of instruction several days before the other company's finished. The reason, I vaguely recall, is that several companies began the course of instruction during the same week but on different days of the week. So we started on a day before the others started and we finished a few days before the last company finished. If we started on a Monday then others started on Friday. So we finished on a Monday and they finished on a Friday. But we all graduated on the same day, which I believe was a Friday and I have reason to believe was the 13th. I can't imagine we were goofing off for over a week waiting for the other company to finish the course. K076 was the female company I remember starting with us on the same day and I think they were in the same large classroom with us for classroom instruction. I remember a vast number of sailors being on the field for graduation ceremony and my company was a large group of sailors.

The answer might be out there somewhere on the internet but I can't find it.








https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/releaseinfo

IMDb

The Last Starfighter (1984)

Release Info

USA 13 July 1984



https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/fullcredits

IMDb

The Last Starfighter (1984)

Full Cast & Crew

Lance Guest ... Alex Rogan / Beta Alex








https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/04/06/trump-rallies-crowd-15000-long-island/82731360/

USA TODAY

Trump rallies crowd of 15,000 on Long Island

Mark Lungariello, The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News Published 10:07 p.m. ET April 6, 2016 Updated 6:55 a.m. ET April 7, 2016

BETHPAGE, N.Y. — Donald J. Trump went early and often to his go-to refrain, telling a crowd of more than 15,000 supporters at Grumman Studios Wednesday that America would win again if he becomes president.

Speaking on Long Island just miles away from his Manhattan home, Trump said the country wasn’t winning in trade or the military, with the country’s armed forces depleted and not demanding the same respect it once did.

“We don’t fight like people from Long Island, we don’t fight like people from New York,” he said during a half-hour speech. “We are going to rebuild our military. It’s going to be bigger and better and stronger than ever before and nobody is going to mess with us.”








From 7/27/1997 ( premiere US TV series "Stargate SG-1"::series premiere episode "Children of the Gods" ) To 4/6/2016 is 6828 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 7/13/1984 ( premiere US film "The Last Starfighter" ) is 6828 days



https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/press-release-donald-j-trump-announces-new-york-state-campaign-leadership

The American Presidency Project

University of California

DONALD J. TRUMP

45th President of the United States: 2017 - 2021

Press Release - Donald J. Trump Announces New York State Campaign Leadership

(New York, NY) April 6th, 2016 – Today Donald J. Trump announced his New York State campaign organization, including Republican Party leaders in all 27 Congressional District across the state. The committee - comprised of GOP elected leaders, Republican county chairmen and other key party officials - represents the most powerful presidential campaign organization in the state.

Mr. Trump stated, "New York is my home and I am so proud to have been able to assemble such an incredible team. I have watched and known these people for so many years. They love New York and our country. Together we will Make America Great Again."

U.S. Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY), Honorary Co-chairman of the campaign in New York, said,"Donald Trump will bring back American jobs stolen by China, take on our enemies and help our children and grandchildren achieve the American Dream. If we want to deal with the grave issues threatening America's future, New York Republicans must reject the professional politicians. The American people want a Chief Executive in the White House, not a Chief Politician."








https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/quotes

IMDb

The Last Starfighter (1984)

Quotes

Alex Rogan: Listen, Centauri, I'm not any of those guys. I'm a kid from a trailer park.

Centauri: If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be!








https://hvom.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-race-for-double-helix.html

Posted by Kerry Burgess at 2:10 PM

Homeless Veteran Of Microsoft

I am Kerry Burgess. This is what I think.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2018

"The Race for the Double Helix"


I can pinpoint in my notes the precise instant all this stuff started. Before that, nothing. Nothing about all this stuff. ANYWHERE!


excerpt ends Posted by Kerry Burgess at 2:10 PM THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2018



- posted by Kerry Burgess 8:40 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Tuesday 23 October 2018