#its a term i can use and most NTs will understand what i mean

[psychiatricwarfare]

i dont understand why people yell at me when i say im slow (mentally), i mean it. its not derogatory or offensive unless YOU use it that way. i am slow. it takes me longer to understand and process things than most do, thats literally what being mentally slow means

[dirk-has-rabies]

Gender variance and it's link with neurodivergency

Okay so this is it going to be another long one

All quotes will be sourced with a link to the scientific journal I took it from

Okay Tumblr, let's talk gender (I know, your favorite topic) my preface on why this topic matters to me is: I'm autistic ( diagnosed moderate to severe autism) I'm nonbinary trans ( in a way that most non-autistic people don't understand and actually look down on)  and I went to college for gender study ( Mostly for intersex studies but a lot of my research was around non-binary and trans identities) I will be using the term autism as pants when I have experience with however when ADHD is part of the study I will use ND which stands for neurodivergent and yes this is going to be about xenogenders and neopronouns.

autism can affect gender the same way autism can affect literally every part of an identity. a big thing about having autism is the fact that it completely can change how you view personhood and time and object permanence and gender and literally all types of socially constructed ideas. let me also say hear that just because Society creates and enforces an idea does it mean that it doesn't exist to all people it just me that there is no nature law saying that it's real and the “rules” for these ideas can change and delete and create as time and Society evolves and changes.  gender is one of those constructs.

Now I'll take it by you reading this you know what transgender people are  (if you don't understand what a trans person is send me an ask and I'll type you up a pretty little essay lmao,  or Google it but that's a scary thought sense literally any Source or website can come up on Google including biased websites so be careful I guess LOL) anyway to be super basic trans people are anyone who doesn't identify as the gender they were assigned at Birth (yes that includes non-binary people I could do a whole nother essay about that shit how y'all keep spreading trying to separate non-binary people from the trans umbrella)  some people don't like to use the label and that is totally fine by the way.

now autistic people to view the world in a way differently than allistic (neurotypical) ppl do.  we don't take everything people teach us at 100% fact and we tend to question everything and demand proof and evidence for things before we can set it as a fact in our brains. This leads to why a lot of autistic people are atheist (although a lot of religions and this is not bashing on religious people at all I am actually a Jewish convert)  this questioning leads to a lot of social constructs being ignored or not understood At All by a lot of autistic people and personally I think that's a good thing.  allistics take everything their parents and teachers and schools teach them as fact until someone else says something and then they pick which ones to believe. autistic people study and research and learn about a topic before forming an opinion and while this may lead to them studying and believing very biased material and spitting it out as fact it can also lead them to try and Discover it is real by themselves.

because of this autistic people are more question their gender or not fall in a binary way at all as the concept of gender makes no sense to a lot of us. “ if gender is a construct then autistic people who are less aware of social norms are less likely to develop a typical gender identity”

no really look: “ children and teens with autism spectrum disorder ASD or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder ADHD  are much more likely to express a wish to be the opposite sex compared with their typical developing peers” That was posted in 2014. we have been saying this stuff forever but no one wants to listen. the thing is gender variance (being not cisgender or at least questioning it)  has always been closely hand-in-hand with autistic and ADHD people I'm even the doctor who did that study understood right away that it all made sense the whole time: “ Dr. Strang said they were initially surprised to find an overrepresentation of gender variance among children with ADHD. However, they later realized that prior studies have shown increased levels of disruptive behavior and other behavioral problems among young people with gender variance”  SEE YOURE NOT WEIRD YOURE JUST YOU AND YOURE NOT ALONE IN THIS!!

5% autistic people who did the study were trans or questioning. it was also equal between the Sexes fun fact. that may not seem like a lot till you realize that the national average is only .7% that's literally over 700% higher than the national average. That's so many! and that's just in America.

 in Holland there was a study in 2010 “ nearly 8% of the more than 200 Children and adolescents referred to a clinic for gender dysphoria also came up positive on a assessment for ASD” they weren't even testing for ADHD so the numbers could be even higher!

now I want to talk about a  certain section of the trans umbrella that a lot of autistic people fall under called the non-binary umbrella. non-binary means anything that isn't just male or just female. it is not one third gender and non-binary doesn't mean that you don't have a gender. just clearing that up since cis people keep spreading that. non-binary is an umbrella term for any of the infinite genders you could use or create. now this is where I'm going to lose a bunch of you and that's okay because you don't have to understand our brains or emotions To respect us as real people. not many allistics can understand how we see and think and relate to things and that's okay you don't have to understand everything but just reading about this could be so much closer to respecting us for Who We Are from you've ever been and that's better than being against us just for existing.

now you might have heard of my Mutual Lars who was harassed  by transmeds for using the term Autigender (I was going to link them but if it gets traction I don't want them to get any hate)  since a lot of people roll their eyes at that  and treated them disgustingly for using a term that 100% applied correctly.  Autigender  is described as " a neurogender which can only be understood in the context of being autistic or when one's autism greatly affects one's gender or how one experiences gender. Autigender is not autism as a gender, but rather is a gender that is so heavily influenced by autism that one's autism and one's experience of gender cannot be unlinked.” Now tell me that doesn't sound a lot like this entire essay I've been working on with full sources…..

xenogenders and neopronouns are a big argument point on whether or not people “believe” in non binary genders but a big part of those genders is that they originated from ND communities and are ways that we can try to describe what gender means us in a way that cis or even allistic trans people just can't comprehend or ever understand. Same with MOGAI genders or sexualities. A lot of these are created as a way to somehow describe an indescribable relationship with gender that is so personal you really cant explain it to anyone who isnt literally the same as you.

Even in studies done with trans autistic people a large amount of them dont even fall on a yes or no of having a gender at all and fall in some weird inbetween where you KINDA have a gender but its not a gender in the sense that others say it is but its also too much of a gender so say youre agender. And this is the kind of stuff that confuses allistic trans people and makes them think nonbinary genders are making stuff up for attention, which isnt true at all we just cant explain what it feels like to BE a trans autistic person to anyone who doesnt ALREADY know how it feels.

In this study out of the ppl questioned almost HALF of the autistic trans individuals had a “Sense of identity revolving around interests” meaning their gender and identity was more based off what they liked rather than boy or girl. That makes ppl with stuff like vampgender or pupgender make a lot more sense now doesnt it? We see that even in the study: “My sense of identity is fluid, just as my sense of gender is fluid […] The only constant identity that runs through my life as a thread is ‘dancer.’ This is more important to me than gender, name or any other identifying features… even more important than mother. I wouldn't admit that in the NT world as when I have, I have been corrected (after all Mother is supposed to be my primary identification, right?!) but I feel that I can admit that here. (Taylor)” and an agreement from another saying “Mine is Artist. Thank you, Taylor. (Jessie)” now dont you think if they grew up with terms like artistgender or dancergender they would just YOINK those up right away????

In fact “An absence of a sense of gender or being unsure of how their gender should “feel” was another common report” because as ive said before in this post AUTISTIC PEOPLE DONT SEE GENDER THE WAY ALLISTIC PEOPLE SEE IT. therefore we wont use the same terms or have the same identities nor could we explain it to anyone who doesnt already understand or question the same way! Participants even offered up quotes such as “As a child and even now, I don't ‘feel’ like a gender, I feel like myself and for the most part I am constantly trying to figure out what that means for me (Betty)” and also “I don't feel like a particular gender I'm not even sure what a gender should feel like (Helen)”

Now i know this isnt going to change everyones minds on this stuff but i can only hope that it at least helped people feel like theyre not broken and not alone in their feelings about this. You dont have to follow allistic rules. You dont have to stop searching inside for who you really wanna be. And you dont have to pick or choose terms forever because just as you grow and evolve so may your terms. Its okay to not know what or who you are and its okay to identify as nonhuman things or as your interests because what you love and what you do is a big part of who you are and shapes you everyday. Its not a bad thing! Just please everyone, treat ppl with respect and if you dont understand something that doesnt make it bad or wrong it just means its not for you. And thats okay.

[bestcloudcomputingcompany]

What is cloud computing and why is it important ?

Cloud computing is the latest and greatest thing, and being that it is the latest and greatest thing, marketers for lots of big companies are all using cloud computing terms in their marketing campaigns to make them seem impressive so that they can get clients and get customers and get money out of your pockets you know right now in December of 2010. Microsoft is running a new ad campaign into the cloud where somebody sits down at their computer, and there's a whole flashy thing. Then they go into the cloud, and it's cool and fancy; the problem is most people don't understand what cloud computing is an overall philosophy and design concept. It's much more complicated and yet much simpler than people give it credit for, so this class introduction to cloud computing will be talking about the technologies involved with cloud computing.

The first thing that you should understand with cloud computing is the basic concept; the underlying concept is that with cloud computing, you're trying to separate the applications from the operating systems from the hardware that runs everything, so what do I mean by this well back in the day back when I started in computers if you had an email service for your company what that meant was you had server hardware sitting somewhere in your company. Hence, you had a server with a CPU and RAM and hard drive and power supply, and all that on that hardware, you installed a server operating system.

So you had the server hardware and then you installed Windows NT 4 back in the day then on top of Windows NT 4 operating system you installed Microsoft Exchange Server so now in order to provide email services to all the people in your company you had Microsoft Exchange Server in installed on Microsoft nt4 server operating system installed on server hardware all of that was a bundle the problem with this is that Exchange Server is now dependent on everything below it so if there is a problem in the operating system if the operating system gets a virus if a hard drive gets clogged up with too much information if there is an error etc your exchange server which means your email services all come to a halt you no longer get your email services because the operating system has failed for whatever reason again just like that with the server hardware if the CPU fan stops if your CPU burns out or if the hard drive fails or if the power supply fails etc that then of course shuts down the operating system with you then of course shuts down your email server which shuts down these services email services for all the people on the network so in the old days email services or whatever network services were reliant on everything below them so you had the service in the application installed on the operating system installed on hardware if the hardware failed your service went down if the operating system failed your service went down well the idea of cloud computing is you are trying to disconnect the application the operating system and the hardware from from themselves so you may have heard of virtual computing what virtual computing does is it it could makes the the operating system it puts it in its own like little container I guess you could say and that container is then running on hardware but what you can do in the virtual world is if something fails and the particular hardware it's on you can have that that instance of that operating system automatically migrated to another piece of hardware another server system and keep going.

If you have a redundancy using virtualization, you can have three physical servers lined up. Hence, you have one server here you know CPU Ram drive one serve here CPU RAM hard drive you to install this virtualization software on to all three of those servers when everything is running properly let's say that operating system that server operating system is running on server one over here now through the power of virtualization through the power of cloud computing let's say the power supply in this first server fails it dies well through virtualization what will happen is the audit of the operating system automatically transfers to the next server in this little cluster so if this hard drive fails the operating system and everything migrates over.

Everything keeps running, so the services for your network keep running so back in the day. If the power supply failed on an email server then all the email stopped working until you fix the problem now the entire operating system and everything can migrate to a new piece of hardware and everything stays up and running so that is what I mean by separating the applications from the operating systems from the hardware now they can in cloud computing those can be their own separate components and can migrate as nearby so this class is going to be on cloud computing and the underlying concepts around it the one thing I will warn you I know going into cloud computing probably the first thing you are thinking about is what I just talked about virtual computer computers people you know think virtual computers equals cloud computing the main thing to realize as we go into this class so so so that you know where I'm coming from is that virtual computers virtual computing is a component of cloud computing but cloud computing is far more than simple virtual computers so virtual computers is a component of cloud computing but cloud computing encompasses a lot more different types of technologies.

Hosted solution public versus private clouds and give you some final thoughts and how these things come together, so this is an introduction to cloud computing, and we'll dive into this class. Hence, the first thing we need to talk about when we're discussing cloud computing is the simplest form of cloud computing: web applications. What web applications are these are applications that you use that have been created using the standard world wide web technologies, so basically their applications that have been created using HTML Javascript XML PHP etc. now why these are a form of cloud computing is because when you use these web applications you are accessing applications that are sitting on another server using the web browser that is installed on your computer so this is like like if you're looking at Google Docs. Google Docs is a classic web application, so you sit down at your computer open up a web browser. Then you go to the Google Docs website, log into your account, and then you can start writing documents basically as if the application was installed on your computer so again talking about separating applications from operating systems from hardware why this is cloud computing is because now that office software that you are using is no longer installed on your computer.

So if your computer fails for whatever reason you can step to the side go to your neighbor's computer get on and finish whatever paperwork that you were trying to do the basic thing to understand with most web applications is again these are these are created or written in standard web programming languages again like I say JavaScript XML etc these are pretty simple pieces of software you know you're looking at Google Docs you know Google Excel spreadsheet there's a Zen I think is one of the Zen works is one of those things but basically you're doing relatively simple things of QuickBooks Online is is a web application the idea behind these again is if your operating system fails if your computer fails etc you can still ax all of your data and complete your work simply by going to another computer so that's the basic concept with app web applications again we're gonna be talking about application servers in a minute but these are web applications than there are different now the next thing that we need to talk about when we're talking about cloud computing is clustering or clusters of computers what does this mean clusters of computers is when you set up multiple different servers so let's say we have four servers here on these servers you install the operating system and then on top of the operating system you install an application that can be clustered so most of the applications that can be clustered are database applications so databases.

If you're working in the windows world you may have heard of Active Directory clusters if you're dealing with web programming you may have heard of my sequel clusters well what you would do let's say if you have a my sequel cluster is you install my sequel database on each of the computers that are in the cluster you then however you do it in the piece of software that you're using you know Microsoft or Active Directory it's all different is you then set up the cluster so you then you connect all these servers with the my sequel database into a cluster you tell each computer about the other one what happens in this cluster is that replication occurs so that every single database in these servers in this cluster contain the same information now this is very important because what's going to happen is when somebody let's say from the internet is coming to Access database off of one of these clusters they will hit the cluster the cluster figures out which server this person should be directed to so let's say a lot of people are trying to access a particular database on the internet and that database is in a cluster what's going to happen is they're going to come from the internet and they're going to come to this cluster.

Cluster is going to say  this computer right here already has enough connections the hardware is already being being spiked out it can't deal with any more connections so when you come in from the internet instead of hitting this server you will automatically get rerouted to this server now again as I talked about with clustering all of these computers in the cluster will replicate information so they will all have the same information on them so when the person from the internet comes in instead of going to this server it will go to this server because this server has less activity on it than this one now let's say this gets fold up everybody is going to this different now when somebody comes in from the internet they will be directed to a different server in the cluster this is something called load balancing so basically if if you want to give the best performance possible to your users that are coming in to use the database you use this load balancing than the cluster and the cluster will automatically direct incoming user to whatever server has the least load on it now with this you also have the ability that if one of these servers fails then the cluster realizes the server fail and will not send users to that server so what this does is it means you can have four servers sitting in a cluster and now you don't have to worry if one of your servers fail because if one of your servers fails you still have three other servers that are functioning completely fine that your users can go to again this is very important like with Active Directory clusters in a Windows world you know in order to be able to log in to a Windows domain you have to be able to connect to an Active Directory controller if you only have one active directory controller and that fails then when you try to authenticate nothing can happen if you haven't packed the directory cluster if that one server fails then the system will just route you to another.

Active Directory server that is still up and running and can authenticate you again these clusters are normally used in database environments and this is very important especially in the web world we just talked about web applications most web applications store their data in databases nowadays generally my sequel databases so you know when you create a document or you create a blog post like if you use WordPress and you create a blog post that blog post the information it's actually stored in a database so so normally it gets stored into a database and if that is only on one server and that one server fails you're done for nothing happens but if you have a my sequel cluster if one server fails your blog stays up and running because the information will be pulled from a different server within the cluster so this is clustering basically what clustering is again you can have different types of hardware so this can be a Z on processor there's gonna be a Pentium processor that's gonna be a Celeron processor and this can be an AMD processor these do not have to be the same hardware you can have different operating systems depending on what your clustering.

You can have Windows you know two thousand eight here Windows 2003 here Windows 2000 here and some version of Linux here depending again on what your clustering the main thing is the application that is installed on the operating system so again my sequel so my sequel is installed on a Windows 2000 server which is installed on some AMD processor with a gig of ram now within my sequel you will create a configuration to create this cluster and to create replication again replication is when these different databases talk to each other and basically copy and paste or exchange information so if a record is changed in this my sequel database the replication is when it then sends that change out to all the other databases within the cluster so that so that's clustering is a very important concept when you're talking about cloud computing like I say because you may not realize that the average person may not realize it but a lot of the stuff you do online probably 90% of the stuff that you do online has some component that is date that that that puts data or has data in a database so all the data that's stored you know it's best if you put it into one of these cloud environments there are these a cluster environments so now we need to talk about terminal services so as they say you know what is old will be new again so back in the 60s and 70s you used to have something called mainframes and dumb terminals so what that was is you had a mainframe and this was a very very impressive computer this might have had 256 K of RAM it was it was a very very powerful computer then connected off of this computer or this mainframe where something called dumb terminal so you could have you know anywhere between five to a hundred and fifty or a thousand dumb terminals these dumb terminals all they were where they were simple little devices that allowed you to plug in a monitor a keyboard and a mouse.

If you had one so these dumb terminals the only intelligence they had in them was the ability to connect back to the mainframe so in the mainframe environment all the processing everything happened on the mainframe itself the dumb terminal that you sat down and interacted with had no intelligence it basically sent all your little keystrokes and your mouse strokes back to the mainframe the mainframe processed all the information and then sent the output to your monitor or the printer etc so so basically think of the old mainframes think about if you could plug in a hundred different different sets of monitors keyboards and mice to one the single computer and then everybody could use you know their their own dumb terminals at the same time that that was the old mainframe environment now what the mainframe environment did is this server this mainframe had a certain amount of processing power so so the processor you know it would be however big it was you know wasn't a Xeon at the time whatever the processors were called so what it would do is in order to give all these dumb terminals access to the mainframe so none of them got shut out is it gave every single dumb terminal on the mainframe a sliver of time so basically out of all the processing cycles it had it would say okay I give half a millisecond to dumb terminal one then I give half a millisecond to dump terminal 2 terminal 3 dumb terminal 4 dumb terminal 5 dump turn 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 so what would happen is the cpu it would have a certain amount of time that it would a lot and then it will give a little portion that time to the first dump terminal then low portion of time to the second dump terminal then low portion of time the third etc etc etc this meant that every dumb terminal that was connected into this mainframe got a little CPU time so so with these mainframes they only had one CPU or one little CPU cluster and it shared out the power of that CPU by giving each dumb terminal that was connected its own little sliver of time so when we come to terminal services you basically have the same thing going on except nowadays we change the terminology a little bit so now instead of having a mainframe server you have a terminal services server now this terminal services server most likely.

Nowadays Installed Windows 2008 server so they have Terminal Services for Windows servers this came out with Windows NT 4.5 way back like like 12 years ago now what that does is that allows Terminal Services clients to get little slivers of time from the processor on this terminal server now instead of calling these Terminal Services clients dumb terminals we call them thin clients so you can have either hardware or software thin clients now what this means is this means that basically you either have a piece of hardware or you have a piece of software that is installed on your computer that can connect to this terminal services server a window opens up and then you get your own little desktop environment with your applications whatever your going to be using and you can you can go and you can work within that Terminal Services environment just as if everything is installed on the computer in front of you so with this Terminal Services server all the processing all the RAM all the hard drive everything resides on this Terminal Services server you connect to the Terminal Services server with something called a thin client and then you can basically sit down at a desktop and like I say if office is installed you can write a word document well the nice part where this is you can have a thin client and be working on a word document somebody else can have a thin client be working on an Excel document another person can have something and be working on Adobe Photoshop another can be checking their email so basically all the processing for all the thin clients that are connected to the terminal services server happen on the Terminal Services server now with the thin clients you know as I just said you can either have what are called software or Hardware thin clients now software thin clients all this is is a little application that you're going to install onto your computer it's maybe an application to install into a Windows computer onto a Linux computer onto a Mac computer this application what will happen is it will go from your computer it will connect to the Terminal Services server and then on your computer you will have a little window that opens up and gives you whatever applications that this terminal services server is providing so again if you're dealing with a Windows 2008 Terminal Services server you connect using a Terminal Services thin client to the server when you connect a window opens up you're looking at something that looks like a normal Windows desktop the great part about this is is that desktop that you're looking at does not reside on your computer it resides on this Terminal Services server.

So if your little computer here dies your data doesn't go away your applications don't go away you can simply go up to somebody else's thin-client access the Terminal Services server and get back and finish doing your your applications or whatever you're doing now that is for software thin-client now you will hear of hardware thin Cline's basically all Hardware thin clients are is that they're there they're very small very low powered computer devices that basically all they do is they have the thin client application installed on them so that they are simply they're just powerful enough to be able to access a Terminal Services server and no more powerful so so with a hardware thin client you know you would not install office on to it you would not install Adobe on to it it is a little computer unto itself but the only thing it has installed is this thin client software so it can connect back to a terminal services service so if you ever see one of these Hardware thin clients are actually pretty cool because they're really small I mean you can get them there like like that big you can literally like velcro them to the back of a monitor I mean you could do that like ten years ago they were so small and the reason was is because they have very little power the only power that they have is enough power to connect back to this Terminal Services server so this is what Terminal Services is again you know like I say you're probably using if you use like Windows Server 2008 you can use Terminal Services this Terminal Service is set up in such a way that it provides the application the operating system and everything to whatever thin client is connected to it again if you're connecting to a Windows terminal services server when you open up the thin client you will see what looks to be a normal Windows desktop so there will be a little start icon there'll be a little icon you know it's nothing nothing nothing fancy you're crazy but this is what Terminal Services are they're based on the old mainframe system the important thing to remember is all the processing happens on the Terminal Services server none of the processing happens out on these thin clients so we've talked about web applications we've talked about database clustering and we talked about Terminal Services the next thing that goes with Terminal Services is what are called application servers so what application servers are is they are built upon Terminal Services.

You know some very smart people sat down they looked at Terminal Services and they took a looked at the Windows Terminal Services environment and they said ok you use a thin client to connect to a Windows Server Terminal Service environment and you know you get a full desktop you get to Start menu all that well what if we didn't want to do that what if all we wanted to do is give somebody access to an application so let's say I wanted all the people in my office to have access to Adobe Photoshop but I didn't actually have to want to install Adobe Photoshop onto all the different computers on the network so I'm fine with paying the licensing and all that I just simply don't want to install Photoshop onto each and every computer that people need well what they came up with is something called application servers so with application servers you go back to the Terminal Services environment so you have the big uber powerful Terminal Services server so this is the TS server on top of this you install your application server components again depending on what you're using or depend on what you install on here but what happens now is when you have thin clients connect to this Terminal Services server when they connect instead of accessing you know a full Windows environment when the window opens up all it will open up to is a photo shop so they can use the little thin client application connect to the Terminal Services server when they open it up they will be sitting and they will be looking at the application Photoshop QuickBooks etc so that's what the application server is again so when you connect with a thin client instead of getting the full desktop the full full power of the computer only the applet that you were trying to use opens up a few used years ago this used to be a prominent thing that was used in the accounting industry now in 2010 QuickBooks is putting out all of these online editions so people can can use QuickBooks Online well about five years ago there were a lot of people that outsource their accounting work to accountants and the accountants would create application servers so that their clients .

QuickBooks application was actually on the accountants server sitting off in California so sitting off on the web what would happen is you know the secretary or whatever for the company would use their thin client to connect to that application server and then they would use QuickBooks you know whatever version of QuickBooks they were using QuickBooks contract reversion cookbooks whatever why the reason is is because the accountant always needed access to the information in the accounting software and there was no web version of QuickBooks at the time so what they did is they installed QuickBooks onto a Windows terminal services application server and then any of their clients could access that QuickBooks program simply by using a Terminal Services client so they would open up the Terminal Services client it would pop open and they would be looking at the QuickBooks screen now remember all the processing power happen on the Terminal Services server that was sitting wherever on the web all that happened with the thin client is the keyboard strokes and the mouse strokes got sent to the application server and then the application server would send back pictures on the screen so that's what happens with an application server so these are not web applications web applications are applications that are Beit created using standard web programming languages PHP HTML XML etc an application server is where you actually have real applications Photoshop hat autocad office etc that is actually installed on the server and then when the thin client connects basically the window opens up and they are sitting and the thin client is sitting there looking straight at the application and can access the application as if it is installed on their computer so that's what application servers are so now we get to the topic that everybody you know thinks of when they think about cloud computing and that is virtualization ization or virtual computers what this is is basically you are able to separate the operating system from the hardware that runs the operating system what this means is you can then transfer the entire operating system with applications settings etc from one piece of hardware server hardware to another piece of server hardware and everything stays intact so in the bad old days before virtualization if I wanted to migrate my server operating system from one piece of physical hardware to another piece of physical hardware I would have to do a backup of all the data to make sure I got all the data I would have to then migrate the operating system reinstall the operating system onto the new piece of hardware I would then have to reinstall all the applications onto the operating system that was installed on that piece of hardware.

I would then have to recover all the data that I had backed up from the first piece of physical Hardware onto that new server and then 24 hours later if you were lucky you now had your server running on this new piece of hardware again this was just horrible and tedious there's a lot of money you know if you're if you're getting paid hourly it was great but otherwise it was just horrible because literally in order to transfer an operating system you know let's say an office got bigger they need to need more resources so they needed a server with a bigger CPU more RAM better hard drive etc I mean you had to go through this horrible process like I say and normally transferring from one server to another if you're dealing with a real server was about a 24 hour straight process well now using virtualization the operating system actually sits above the hardware and you can just take the entire operating system again with all the applications that are installed on it all the settings etc and you can just basically copy and paste it to a new piece of our hardware and be on your way so a migration that may have taken you 24 hours in the past now depending on how much data you're transferring might take an hour how that happens is through the use of virtualization software so virtualization software comes in two flavors the first where is client installed a virtualization software and then the second way is hypervisor software now this client installed what this means is that you install you have a piece of hardware and then you install a normal operating system onto that piece of hardware you install windows or you install you know Mac or you install Linux then on top of the ad operating system that you have just installed you install client virtualization software that then allows you to install another operating system on top of the operating system that you have just installed so you have the hardware then you install an operating system then you install this client of virtualization software and then onto that client virtualization software you can now create what is called an instance so every time you create a new operating system in a virtual environment that is called an instance so you can create now create a new instance of a Windows.

Let's say XP desktop computer on the same computer you can then create another instance of a Linux computer and then a instance of a 2008 server all of those operating systems that you just created are installed on the first operating system so like I say you can use this with Windows or Linux etc if you want to play around with this there's a piece of software called VirtualBox it's completely free and you can play around with this so basically what happens is you have the operating system you install something like VirtualBox and then VirtualBox allows you to install different operating systems within their own little world and they open up like windows on the computer nowadays you've probably seen this most often with Mac computer so a lot of people love Mac's but they still need to run some type of Windows software well what you can do is you can buy a Mac computer you can buy a piece of software like VMware fusion and then within VMware fusion you can still install Windows 7 so then if you need to use Windows 7 on a Mac computer you can just double click on VMware fusion and windows 7 opens up and it looks just like another application so you literally have Windows 7 sitting in a window just like any other application on the Mac computer and then you can go through and then you can use whatever applications that you want so this is the first way that you can do virtualization on the computer now again what is nice with this is if you need to transfer one of these operating systems to another server all you do is you cut and you paste it to the other server and now you can have this operating system running on the other server so again especially when you Duke really doing like real IT stuff like like I do you know if you create low DHCP servers DNS servers FTP servers web servers now you can basically just copy web servers.

You know copy and paste them to wherever they need to go but that is using the client OS installed virtualization software now the other way to do virtualization is using something called a hypervisor hypervisors are much more powerful than than client installed a virtualization software and they're not too complicated use so with hypervisors basically what happens is you have two pieces of software that you are going to need to deal with in this virtualized environment the first is the hypervisor and the hypervisor is a up basically kind of like an operating system that you install on the hardware that you want to run your virtual computers on so you don't install you don't you don't you don't install windows you don't install Mac OS you don't install Linux what you do is you install the hyper vizor so if we're talking about vmware and vmware is somebody that creates a lot of virtual computing stuff so they're hypervisor is something called e sx i so what you do is you install ESX i onto the hardware where you want your virtual computers to run now follow me here because this is very important now when you install ESXi onto that hardware you're going to go through you're going to go through a normal install process basically like you'd install any operating system you know NAT.

Basically when you're done then you're going to get this screen and it's going to be very disappointing because all this screen is going to say is it's going to give you like an IP address it might give you a computer me name it may give you a few bits of information but otherwise it doesn't allow you to do anything so you know you install this hypervisor onto your hardware and now you know its IP address but that's about it well the reason is is because when you're dealing with hypervisors you do not manage your virtual computers directly through the hypervisor you use a piece of management software so the management software if we are talking about the VMware world they call it vSphere vSphere you install on to whatever computer you are going to use in order to administer your virtual computer so basically like with me here you have your virtual server sitting down in your server room you install ESXi the hypervisor onto that piece of hardware right then you go to whatever computer you're going to do the administration through so I go to my desktop computer sitting up in my office and I install vSphere onto my computer sitting up in my office now what happens is vSphere connects through the network to the hypervisor in the server room and then it gives you a nice little graphical environment to create all the virtual computers that you want to create so the main thing with these hypervisor czar when you install a hypervisor you I mean you're going to install it and then you're gonna know what the IP address is that's about it you need the management software the management software is what will connect the hypervisor and through that you will be able to go in you will be able to create different virtual disks you'll be able to create environments for different virtual computers and you will be able to set up your virtual computers that way so through the vSphere I could connect to the hypervisor and I could say I want to Windows 2008 server and so what I would do is using vSphere I would create a hard drive partition I would allocate the amount of RAM that I want this Windows 2008 server to use and then through the vSphere management software I would then install the Windows 2008 server so basically sitting there .

I install the Windows 2008 server when the installation process gets done that Windows 2008 server is now sitting in its own little bubble on that hardware now depending on what management software you're using you can then transfer if you want this little Windows 2008 server to any other server on your network that's run in the ESXi hypervisor now why this is very powerful to use these hypervisors as I said you know hypervisors are more powerful than the client installed of virtualization software is because the management software can do a lot of a fault tolerance for you so let's say you are running servers and you need the services on those servers to always be there so let's say you're running an exchange server you always need your email to work what you can do is let's say you get three pieces of server hardware so you have three physical and I'm saying physical servers right now on each of these three physical servers you install ESX I right so you installed a hypervisor onto each of these physical servers now on one of these physical servers you then create your Windows 2008 server virtual server in the virtual environment with Exchange Server and then all this is connected to your management software well the management software can now look and see the phys the status of the physical Hardware for all of your servers so it sees that this heart this disk server is going find the servers don't find this servers doing fine well let's say the power supply fails on this server so this Hardware physically dies this management software can then just pull this virtual computer down to the next server that's in this little virtual environment and now all of that those email services are still provided to the client computers it is absolutely seamless to all the people trying to connect so back in the bad old days if the power supply failed on a server that had the service then the service died right well now what happens is if the power supply fails on this server this management software can literally transfer the operating system the application and everything to the next piece of physical hardware if this one fails it can transfer it to the next piece of physical hardware so you know this is better than raid is better than redundant power supplies that this is just an amazing thing and that's what this management software does so now you know when you're going out and we're going to be looking to use virtualization software on your own.

You will notice that most hypervisor software now is completely free whether you use VMware Citrix there's a whole bunch of stuff out there and there's a it's it's either free and open source or at least it's free like ESXi from vmware is free well what they want you to pay for is this management software so you can use ESXi for free from vmware and they give you a basic version of vSphere just to be able to create your little virtual Computers well if you want all this fault tolerance built-in that's when you have to buy like vSphere advanced Edition for $3,000 and then they give you all of these additional features so that's what you have to understand with the hypervisor virtualization software again hypervisor it's like a player very slim operating system you install on to the hardware and then the management software is then what actually controls that hypervisor so that's what virtualization is we're going to have more classes on virtualization so if this isn't enough don't worry a lot of classes on virtualization but this is the basic idea of how virtualization works virtualization is when you separate the operating system from the underlying hardware that means you can transfer an entire operating system just like you would copy copy and paste a file in the normal world now once people figured out that you could separate the operating system from the underlying hardware a lot of the big technology companies out there realized that they could sell instances of operating system up on their data centers in virtual environments at commodity prices so basically they would offer their clients they would say instead of buying you know server hardware on your own you can just create an instance of your operating system up in our virtual environment and then use it for whatever you need Amazon was the first one to really push us out with something called elastic computing and what they did is they said you only have to pay for what you use so let's say you need a small little server to do basic tasks for your company well you can go to the elastic computing site or AWS on Amazon and you can say I want to create a server that has one gig of data storage let's say this is a little Linux server I need to have the equivalent of 256 Meg's of RAM and I don't know any one gig of transfer per month you can create an instance for your operating system with this configuration and then you only pay for it so you know one gig I don't know maybe you pay a buck a month 256 Meg's maybe you pay another dollar a month and then one gig you pay another dollar month so you now pay three dollars a month for an instance of this virtual computer to be sitting up on Amazon's EC it's called ec2 ECC to environment now once you create this instance you can then upload an image of your operating system into their virtual cloud infrastructure configure it properly and now it is sitting on the internet to do whatever it is you need to do so if you need one gig of space you know you pay a certain amount if you need a hundred gig of data storage you pay a different amount so basically with these hosted instance instances from either Amazon AWS Microsoft e the new as your platform you pay for what you need and essentially all it is is it's just like that that virtual environment I was talking about before but somebody else is hosting it so this is all that hosted instances is now what you have to realize with these hosted instances is that you're going to pay for them based upon

Let's say GoDaddy or one in one's virtual service server services for $30 a month or $50 a month or $100 a month you can create an account and in half an hour or an hour you will have a virtual Linux server or a virtual Windows 2008 server sitting up on the internet and you will have the ability to configure it however you want to configure it if you want to configure it as a web server a backup server whatever you want to configure it as you can configure it just as if it was a normal computer now for that $30 or $50 or $100 a month they will tell you what you get for that price you will get a Windows 2008 server with 10 gigs of space I don't know 100 gigs of transfer and you know 500 megabytes of RAM so they'll tell you now if you go with Amazon if you go with Microsoft's as your you will pay simply based upon what you need so that can get a little expensive at depending on what you're trying to do like if you're if you're doing content delivery like I do basically they're just going to keep charging your credit card based on on on how much you actually use if you go over what you plan to use well a tough lock they're still going to charge your credit card on that the next thing to understand when you're dealing with these hosted instances is something called edge location or edge servers so this is especially true of Amazon and it will be more true as all these services get pushed out is when you upload your image of your server to their services you will upload that to a server you know to their main server wherever that main server is stored in some some bunker somewhere you upload your image to this server now what Amazon does is they have in the United States 9 what are called edge servers the idea is is that you know it physically takes time for a computer on the East Coast to connect to a server on the west coast the closer the client computer is to the actual server that is providing services the faster the communication will be it really is true especially once you start nearly voice-over-ip real-time communications that kind of stuff the distance from where you are sitting using the internet and whatever server you're connecting to actually matters so what they do is they they put these edge servers edge data centers in the United States you know in position so everybody could get the best access possible to all the server images that have been uploaded to their system now what happens though is if you have a computer down here and let's say the computer is in Baltimore and the person at this computer is trying to access your server well using clustering using virtualization using a lot of these technologies what will happen is this this computer will go and it will talk to the main Amazon server the main Amazon server will see where this computer is located and then it will transfer as much data as it thinks you're going to need down to this edge server now this user here will then connect to this edge server and the performance because they're connecting to this edge server will be very very very high now.

If you have somebody up here, let's say in Boston. They try to access your service through again go to the main server will figure out the closest edge server transfer as much data as they're going to need to this edge server. Then this person will be able to access the information here why this can be important and why I learned this the hard way is as we talked about with this commodity pricing is you are going to pay based on what you use right well once you start dealing with really big files so so with every man IT we're dealing with video files that are a where anywhere between 100 megabytes to 3 gigabytes in size well what we were running into is not only did we have to pay for the transfer here so you know from the edge server to the computer you know you're going to have to pay for this transfer here right well what I didn't realize is I would also have to pay for the transfer to the edge servers themselves.

So if somebody is trying to access our video from Baltimore the entire video gets transferred to this edge server near Baltimore you I have to pay for that and then when the video gets streamed from the edge server to the user in Baltimore I have to pay for that well if somebody in Boston clicks on the exact same video that exact same video gets pushed out to the edge server up here in Boston I have to pay for that and then comes down to them and I have to pay for that so you're now so for one video you're paying for the entire thing gets transferred to the edge server and then to get transferred from from the edge server to the actual user why this gets really painful sometimes is like when you're dealing with content delivery if you've noticed if you look at our videos you can watch our videos and the quality gets either better or worse depending on the speed of the connection you were using to connect to our web site that is something called dynamic bitrate switching what that means is there are four or five copies of all of our videos that are used and depending upon the speed that your interconnection internet connection is you will connect to one of those copies so so if you have a you know a 10 megabit per second connection you will go to our highest quality copy that maybe a gig in size if you have the worst connection you may go to our lowest quality copy which is a hundred mega son size but there's five different versions of every single video now imagine down here when this person has a flaky speed so if if he this person has a normal 10 megabyte speed right when he connects to this main server then this main server will send down the entire one gig file so I will be charged one gig for the transfer right here well what if this person has a flaky speed so it fluctuates from 10 Meg's all the way down to 500 kill kilobytes per second well when he connects at 10 Meg's I will get charged for the entire one gig version to get transferred to the edge server when the speed fluctuates so we can no longer watch the the one gig version then the 750 megabyte version will get downloaded to the edge server if it goes if his speed goes down again then let's say the 200 megabyte version goes to unite server so now not only have I paid one gift for 1 gigabyte of transfer down to the edge server I've actually ended up getting charged for 2 gigs of transfer for everything getting transferred to the edge server this gets a little complicated but but try to follow me in this mess a little bit to kind of understand how this works edge servers are very very very good amazingly good especially for small websites if you have if you don't have a lot of data because again everything that your user is going to need gets transferred to a server that is physically closest to them which means the performance of the website works very well at the proper performance of the server works very well the problem is is if you're dealing with large files like everyman IT does every person who connects to one of those edge servers all that data you're going to get charged for when it connects when it gets transferred to the edge server and that can get expensive really really really stupidly quick so this is a basic overview of hosted instances again your sites like I said with virtual computers will have more classes on it but this is kind of just a vague idea of how all this works so now we've talking about hosted instances then one of the final things we need to talk about our hosted solution.

So you will hear this term hosted solutions well basically what hosted solutions are are applications or services that are hosted by a company that provides you the service so you know way back in the day the original host services really were things like hotmail or Gmail your email accounts were completely hosted not only the Gmail or Google a route your email but they also gave you an interface to be able to read your email they give you an interface to be able to write emails they gave you an interface to be able to add contacts etc so that is a hosted service well now as we go more and more into this this this this cloud computing world there are more and more of these hosted solutions out there so nowadays you know we talked about Microsoft Exchange before you can now actually pay for hosted Microsoft exchange instead of having to buy a physical server and an operating system and Microsoft Exchange server and client access licenses and set all that mess up now you can go to GoDaddy or one in one or one of these other providers you can go in and for $7.00 a month they will create a hosted exchange server account for you you get all the functionality that you will get out of a normal exchange server but you don't have to worry about buying hardware you don't have to worry about power supplies done you don't have to worry about any of that now hosted solutions basically you know when you ask you know what's hosted solutions are out there well sky's the limit really some of these these hosted solutions used web applications some use databases some use like say email all that kind of stuff you can look at what Salesforce is a contact management or sales management system is a hosted solution Adobe is planning to move all of its products to being hosted solution so we talked about the application servers before so what adobe wants to do is they want Photoshop premiere After Effects you know they got a hundred different products at some point in time instead of buying those products instead of spending $1,300 and buying Creative Suite you know five hundred and twelve you will simply buy a membership - whatever Adobe products you want and you will access them through the web so you will pay $50 a month and you will get all the Creative Suite that you need so instead of installing the software onto your computer it is all just hosted up on the Internet so that's what hosted solutions are like I said before hosted instances are where you create your own servers you know these are server images they have the applications and services and configurations already installed and you put them up on the amazon's cloud or up on the Microsoft cloud etc hosted solutions are where people have already created these services and then you just rent the services as you need them this really is where the world is going to be going so it's something you should look at like I say I can't say enough about Microsoft hosted exchange and a lot of these other things out there but hosted solutions when somebody talks about that it's about a service that's hosted for your company on the internet again.

You just pay a monthly or a yearly fee and you get access to the services email backup systems etc but that's what hosted solutions are so now the final terms that we kind of need to talk about that that are out there in the common vernacular right at the moment is what are called public versus private clouds so so we've been talking about cloud computing this entire time and you know as you should understand at this point cloud computing is not simply virtual computing the idea about cloud computing is separating the application from the operating system from the hardware so these are all separate components and can be tossed around as need be you know the application is no longer dependent upon the power supply on the hardware work if the power supply fails the application just can automatically migrate off and be somewhere else so this software again as we talked about you can have hosted instances and the hosted instances are in something called the public cloud so the public cloud are all of the cloud computing infrastructure that's up on the internet that basically anybody can get access to so this would be you know like say Amazon's ec2 service that is up on the cloud that is actually sitting within the internet Gmail is sitting on the Internet all of these solutions are sitting on the Internet well as we talked about with virtualization and this clustering you may want the power of virtualization but you may want the control of having it in-house having it in your own server room so you can use these same technologies in your own server room to provide to improve reliability etc without actually using any services out on the web so you can set up your own little virtual cluster of computers sitting in your own server room and that is what would be called a private cloud so if you set up a cluster of database servers in a virtual environment and that is all sitting in your server room not often like not not up on the internet in your server room that is a private cloud so a lot of people now especially you hear about the government or large corporations they are using cloud computing but they're creating private clouds and that's all it means so you know when you're using all these tools the difference between public cloud and private cloud is public cloud is actually sitting up on the internet with one of these hosted services providers you know hackers can get to it anybody can get to it the actual hardware is not sitting in your premises a private cloud is that the hardware is actually sitting in your premises and with a private cloud you may be using you know the same technology all these big companies are using again the hardware is just sitting in your premises versus out on the Internet so that was a class introduction to cloud computing you know as we've gone over at this point cloud computing is more than simple virtual computers cloud computing separating the application from the operating system from the hardware if the the hardware dies you know the application of the service keeps running we talked about web based applications again web based applications these are these are normally fairly simple applications and they are used creating normal web programming languages HTML javascript PHP my sequel etc.

Basically they you just create this low application and you host it on a website just like you would host any other web page that's basically how Google Docs you know Google Apps was created the main thing with that is that when you go to write a document using Google Docs nothing is installed on your computer you're simply going to a website through a web browser and then type in your document if the power supply on your computer fails the operating system gets a virus anything happens to your computer you just go over to your neighbor's computer open up Google premier Apps and get back to work so that's where the application has been separated from the operating system and from the hardware we talk about clustering this is normally used in databases that's where you put multiple servers into a cluster this is done for a load balancing and redundancy so basically if any one of the servers is getting too much traffic traffic will automatically be routed to another server or if one of the servers in the cluster fails the cluster realizes that and it will not try to send traffic to that server that has failed again this is normally big with databases especially with Active Directory windows security databases so you know if people are trying to log into the network and one of the Active Directory servers fails in the cluster one of the other Active Directory servers will still authenticate users but this is Dawne used by saying Active Directory or in my sequel we talked about Terminal Services what is old is new again so back in the old days you used mainframes and dumb terminals all the power was in the mainframe and then the dumb terminal only had enough intelligence to connect back back to that mainframe you know everything was actually done on the mainframe itself nowadays you have what are called Terminal Services servers and thin clients thin clients can either be hardware or software so you can have a normal computer normal Windows computer another Mac computer with a terminal services client installed you double-click on the icon for the Terminal Services client it will connect to the Terminal Services server and then it will open up a window into the Terminal Services server now like I says if you will use a Windows 2008 Terminal Services server when you open up that thin client window you will be looking at what looks like a Windows desktop you have folders you'll have a Start menu etc when you go to type or when you go to do any of the work all that work is actually happening on that terminal surface server it's not happening on your computer so if your computer you know gets hit by a meteor you just go over to another computer with the thin client application installed and go back to work because everything is installed on that Terminal Services syrup.

We talked about then the application service application service or Terminal Services service but instead of when that thin client opens up instead of seeing the entire desktop you only see the application that you have been given access to so let's say you know Photoshop or as I talked about QuickBooks you connect to the server and then QuickBooks opens up you can do all the stuff you want on QuickBooks you close QuickBooks everything happened over on that application server nothing actually happened on your computer we then talked about virtualization again virtualization is what everybody you know thinks of when they're thinking about cloud computing but it is only one component of cloud computing we talked about you know basically what you're doing is you're separating the operating system from the hardware you do that in one of two ways you either have client software installed this is where you have Windows or Mac OS X or Linux installed on the computer you then install another piece of software like for toolbox or VMware fusion and then into that virtualization software you then install the operating system so into VMware fusion you would then install you know Windows XP or Windows 7 or Server 2008 in this way you can have multi full operating systems running on the exact same computer again as I said most people have seen this in the Mac world so people buy Mac computers but they still need to use some Windows software they use VMware fusion they just double click on the VMware fusion icon and window 7 opens up in a little window and then you can do all your stuff and then you can close the window that's how the client installed a virtualization works again if you want to move the entire operating system you can basically just copy and paste the entire operating system to another computer start it up on another computer and away you go you don't have to do any major migration now the other way the way that professionals do this or if you're dealing with infrastructure environments is using hypervisors hypervisors are basically you know operating systems unto themselves that all they do is they just host virtual computers so you install a hypervisor onto the physical server hardware you then use a piece of management software so you know if we're talking about the VM world it's the hypervisor is ESXi and the management software is vSphere so once you've installed ESXi onto the hardware you then use vSphere to connect to the ESXi hypervisor and then you're able to install operating systems as you want so you know that one piece of server software or hardware you can now install you know ten different operating systems on that if you want to now we're the management software you know really becomes powerful is you know as I said most of the hypervisor software and the basic management software is now free well what you pay for is all the advanced functionality so what you can have is you can have that management software if you pay like $3,000 to VMware that can manage multiple physical servers and move around server operating systems as need be so so one of these things that I saw with a company called virtual ire in awhile ago was you could have five physical servers set up in this little virtual cluster as people started using more of the virtual computers the the virtual iron could actually turn on the physical servers and turn them off as neaby so let's say you're getting a lot of activity off the web to your website and you know one server physical server couldn't keep up with all that activity this virtual iron would actually turn on another physical server move you know some of the information to that virtual server and then be able to load balance of the information all the data going through so that's one of the things you get with this a mandamus software again depending upon what management software you use it depends on what you get how much you pay talking about hosted instances is where you're dealing with Amazon you know elastic cloud computing Microsoft has your etc again you're only going to pay pay for youth for hosted instances.

So you say I need one gig of storage I need so much bandwidth so much ram etc you then create your account you then upload an image of your operating system up into their environment and then your server is sitting up in Amazon world and everybody can connect to it through the internet we we then talked about edge locations and again edge locations is something to be careful about that's where like I say all of your data or your server is stored on a main system like I say with Amazon then to make things work faster they have edge servers you know nine throughout the United States if somebody in California tries to access your website it'll move your entire website to the closest edge server to them and that they'll they'll be able to use your website faster there's somebody in lanta tries to get to your website it'll move the entire thing to the edge server over there the problem is is that you're going to be paying for the transfer out to those edge servers again if you're dealing small servers no big deal if you're like me trying to do videos oh it gets expensive just retardedly quick then we talked about hosted solutions this is basically you know whether your web applications Terminal Services application servers etc basically companies can now sell you services the services that you used to have installed on servers sitting in your building so now if you want hosted exchange instead of buying a two thousand dollar server and by fifteen hundred dollars with software and buying client access like and then paying somebody like me stupid amount of money to set it all up you can now go to 1 & 1 & GoDaddy and for $7 a month you can just buy one hosted exchange account you get all your emails you get all the functionality of exchange but instead of buying all of that equipment you just pay the seven dollars a month you know there's a lot of different services out there email services office services.

QuickBooks backup services just about anything you can think now is getting hosted up on the internet so so that is the idea of cloud computing now two things that you just have to think about before we close out of this class is the first one is you are going to have to worry if you're going to start using a lot of this cloud computing you were going to have to start worrying about your network connections now with cloud computing a lot more data goes over the network then in normal computing environments because remember in normal computing environments all the processing essentially happens on the computer that you're sitting at and then the data that gets transferred back and forth will only be the email that gets sent out or maybe you send a file or maybe you send a print job to the printer that's the only dead data that gets sent well in most of these cloud computing environments all the processing happens somewhere else and then the results of that processing get sent to your individual computer now if you're dealing with one computer on a network or two computers on a network or five computers on a network it probably doesn't matter once you start getting to hundreds or thousands of computers on the network that extra increased network bandwidth can really matter especially or even on local network so you may say hey I have a hundred mega bit you know Cisco switch what does it matter well if you have a hundred or thousand users all pushing and pulling lots and lots of network traffic it can matter even with small offices something that you have to be very careful about is what your internet connection speed is so if you decide you're going to be hosting you know you know online backup and online email and all that make sure you know what your upload and download speed is and probably one of the more important things you have to worry about is what your upload speed.

When I was transferring clients over these hosted solutions the initial migration could be really really really horrible speeds have gotten a lot better in the last two years now in Baltimore I can get like 50 Meg down 20 up for a hundred and eighty bucks a month for a business but you know even two years ago you could not get those speeds so I had some clients you know one megabit connection up you set up online backup and you do hosted exchange and you do a few of other things and it may take a week or two for all of that data to finally get pushed up onto the internet you do have to worry about your internet connection speeds you know especially if you're if you're putting stuff up on the Internet itself even if you're doing the private cloud computing on your own network remember there's going to be a lot of increased network traffic so you know all that fancy Cisco equipment you have might not actually be fast enough so it's just something to think about it may be fine may be fine but it may not be the final thing to think about is you know when you start talking about cloud computing especially actually putting all this stuff up on the internet everybody worries about security everybody's again worried about hackers and you know and etc when I was making the decision to start pushing my clients over to cloud computing you know I have a lot of long talks with my clients long talks and my employees and what we realize is frankly most of our clients systems were not really that secure to begin with the reason is is because especially with most small businesses small business clients don't want to pay for good security you know when a computer crashes they'll pay you 100 bucks an hour to go out and fix the computer they don't necessarily want to be out spending $100 an hour to make sure firewall settings are perfect - to set up group policies for 30 computers on their network etc so what we did is we realized most of our clients had servers that were facing the Internet so they were actually connected to the Internet we looked at their internal IT security what they were doing and realized that frankly it was probably more secure to put everything out on the Internet the reason is is because they weren't paying us they weren't going to pay us for good security that's just how it was so at least if they put this all on the Internet you know Amazon and one in one and GoDaddy and all that they have real security people and they at least can do a better job of trying to make sure all of that data is secure again well .

I say for some reason everybody thinks that if a server is sitting in their building versus being out on the internet it is more secure and the reality is if it's connected to the internet in any way shape or form hackers can get to it whether it's on Amazon's elastic computing or whether it's sitting in your basement if it's connected to the Internet hackers need it to it not only that but again you know especially live in Baltimore you know we have a hell of a crime rate if the server is sitting in your building it could get stolen big problem here there could be a flood there could be physical damage to the equipment there could you know the building could burn down an employee could kick it so when you actually look at the real security environment for most companies especially small companies it is actually more secure to put their systems out on the internet because like I say put it out on the internet you know a fire is not going to destroy it if you're here in Baltimore somebody is not going to be able to physically pick up that computer and walk out the door with it which is something that we actually had to worry about so that's something to think about with security I know I say we sat down we looked at it a lot a lot of the cloud computer security is not the best in the world but if you're going to be honest if you honestly look at yourself you honestly look at your own service if you honestly look at your client systems I'm betting you that the security over there is probably better than what you already have set up sad but true but yeah so so that was a class introduction to cloud computing.

I hope you understand cloud computing now you know have a better idea of it; remember you're pulling the application from the operating system from the hardware you're separating those things, and the old days they were all one unit if anyone component failed, they all failed now they're all separate units if a power supply fails everything keeps rocking the computer gets a virus the application keeps working no you're just separating all these different components so as you know.Contact us today if you are looking for a holistic roadmap that puts the customer experience at the core. Cloud now offers services like Cloud Advisory Services, Cloud Managed Services, Cloud Migration & Deployment Services, Application Development & Modernization Services, GCP Managed Services.

[christianstevefinnell]

"THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: WHAT DO THEY TELL US?" by David Vaughn Elliott A young Bedouin shepherd scrambled up the cliffs above the Dead Sea searching for a lost goat. When he spotted a cave and tossed in a rock, he heard earthenware shatter. Inside the cave he found jars containing ancient scrolls. It was 1947. By 1956, eleven caves had yielded thousands of parchments from small fragments to entire scrolls. Scholars dated them from about 250 B.C. to A.D. 70. Why Was This Significant? Included among some 800 Hebrew manuscripts are portions of every Old Testament book except Esther. Before that, the oldest Hebrew OT manuscripts known to scholars were copied about A.D. 900. With the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries, scholars had before their eyes copies of OT books that were copied before the birth of Jesus. Naturally, everyone was interested to learn how much difference there was between the Dead Sea Scrolls and our current Bibles. The accusation is often made that we cannot trust the Bible because we do not possess the original manuscripts. It is pointed out correctly that men made copies of copies of copies. How do we know they didn't make mistakes or even make changes on purpose? A fair question. Before the invention of the printing press, everything had to be laboriously copied by hand. That was wide open for mistakes and even for making changes. Thanks to the Hebrew scrolls found by the Dead Sea, scholars had the opportunity to compare the oldest copies they already had with these copies that were made one thousand years earlier – made before Jesus came to earth. Were differences found? How many changes took place in one thousand years of copying? Let's start with one example. Arguably, the most amazing find was a virtually complete copy of the book of Isaiah dated about 125 B.C. At the time the scroll was made available, scholars were working on the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. As a result of the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah, translators made only thirteen changes in the entire sixty-six chapters of Isaiah – all tiny, technical changes that most of us would not even notice. Some critics claim that early Christians altered the Old Testament in order to fit their ideas of Jesus. What does the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah tell us? Keep in mind that Isaiah offers so many predictions of Jesus that he is often called the Messianic prophet. Now we have proof that the book of Isaiah in our Bibles is substantially the same as the book of Isaiah copied a century before Jesus. The early Christians did not alter Isaiah to fit the facts of Jesus' life. Rather, the Old Testament was written by men who had supernatural foreknowledge. Scholars Speak James C. VanderKam, professor emeritus of Hebrew Scripture of the University of Notre Dame, was a member of an editorial committee that prepared Dead Sea Scrolls for publication. In his prize-winning book, Professor VanderKam wrote: "Once scholars had had opportunity to study the great Isaiah scroll from Cave 1 (1QIsaa, copied in approximately 100 B.C.) and to compare it with the Masoretic [Hebrew] Text, they were impressed with the results. Despite the fact that the Isaiah scroll was about a thousand years older than the earliest surviving copy of the Masoretic version of Isaiah, the two were usually in very close agreement except for small details that rarely affect the meaning of the text... Many of the new scrolls do belong to the same textual tradition as the Masoretic Text. They are, however, centuries older and thus demonstrate in a forceful way how carefully the Jewish scribes transmitted that text across the years" (The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, Second Edition, James C. VanderKam, 2010, page 162). Note: "Masoretic Text" is the term scholars use for the traditional Hebrew OT. The term comes from a group of Jewish scholars known as the Masoretes, who were the ones who produced the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the OT available to us before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.   Theodor H. Gaster, a Hebrew scholar, was a professor and lecturer in various colleges and universities. Gaster published the first English translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in which he omitted the Bible scrolls. In his Preface he explained why: "The purpose of this book is to provide a complete and reliable translation of the celebrated Dead Sea Scrolls, insofar as the original Hebrew texts have yet been published... no translation is provided of the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah or of the other more fragmentarily preserved Biblical manuscripts. The contents of the Bible are readily available in English, and the special contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls in this field is of interest only to scholars" (The Dead Sea Scriptures, Theodor H. Gaster, 1956-76; Preface, page xi). Amazing! "Of interest only to scholars." What does that mean? It means that during one thousand years of copying, there were no great differences between the manuscripts before and after the thousand years. Can't trust copies of copies of copies? The hard facts prove that idea to be fiction. Some differences? Of course. But nothing to change the basic truths of our Bibles. The Septuagint The Dead Sea Scrolls are also important for what they tell us about the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew OT into Greek, which was made in the third and second centuries before Christ. Scholars and some of us Bible students have long been aware that there are some differences between the Hebrew OT and the Greek Septuagint. This explains why some NT quotations of the OT don't quite match up with our OT, which is basically a translation from the Masoretic Hebrew. The NT quotations are most often in agreement with the Septuagint text. If you have a Bible with extensive footnotes, you will sometimes notice a variant reading found in the "LXX." That's the Roman numeral for "seventy." It's the common abbreviated way to identify the Septuagint. One very significant discovery is that, although the Dead Sea Scrolls are usually in harmony with the Masoretic Hebrew OT, sometimes the Dead Sea Scrolls are more in agreement with the Septuagint. Before the discovery and translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars often looked at the Septuagint as an inferior translation, which sometimes paraphrased and sometimes was just plain wrong. However, inasmuch as some of the Dead Sea Scrolls agree with the Septuagint in places where it differs from the Masoretic text, scholars have had to realign their assessment of the Septuagint. Rather than it being a loose translation, as was thought, the evidence now is that the Septuagint was a careful translation based on a Hebrew text slightly different from the Masoretic. Bear in mind that, for the most part, we are talking about differences that the majority of us would never even notice. We are talking mainly of details, just like the details you may have noticed between, for example, the New King James Version and the New American Standard Version or the New International Version. Even though the Septuagint is a translation (just as our various English versions are), the Dead Sea Scrolls have proven that the Septuagint is a better translation than was previously thought. And since NT quotes of the OT are usually from the Septuagint, this is an additional reason to deeply appreciate the discovery and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Evidence Is In For some people all this evidence makes little difference. Mark Twain once said: "It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." Often people doubt the Bible, not because there is a lack of evidence for its trustworthiness and divine inspiration, but rather because it judges the way we behave. If we go by the available facts, there is no evidence the Bible was substantially altered when it was copied through the ages. All the evidence points in the opposite direction. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in modern times is one of the most, if not the most, dramatic proof ever. The evidence tells us that the Bible has been faithfully copied through the years so that we can trust it. The Anvil of God's Word attributed to John Clifford (1836 - 1923) Last eve I paused beside a blacksmith’s door And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime; Then, looking in, I saw upon the floor Old hammers worn with beating years of time. "How many anvils have you had?" said I, "To wear and batter all these hammers so?" "Just one,” said he, and then with twinkling eye, "The anvil wears the hammers out, you know." And so, thought I, the anvil of God’s Word For ages skeptic blows have beat upon; Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard, The Anvil is unharmed – the hammers gone! _________________________________________ For a former Insight on the Dead Sea Isaiah Scroll: http://insight2bp.homestead.com/186.html

[douchebagbrainwaves]

JOE KRAUS

I was a whiz at it. Will technology increase the gap between rich and poor evaporate.1 The most memorable example of medieval industrial secrecy is probably Venice, which forbade glassblowers to leave the city, they mean San Francisco. I'd never once done that thing in my life.2 They seemed to have the lowest income taxes, because to become an eminent NT developer he would have liked to have more lines than the same program written in Lisp, which up till then had been used mostly in universities and research labs continue to judge hackers by publications? Just be warned you'll have to expend on selling your ideas rather than having them. Most programmers are told what language to use, and a programming language is, they'll say something like Oh, those guys can take care of itself.3

Betting on people over ideas saved me countless times as an investor. That is in fact all jobs are some percentage school. The structure of large organizations sets an upper bound.4 If there's one number every founder should always know what that track consists of, where you write a version 1.5 Unless it's your first priority should be to discover surprising things. This is also true of starting a startup is obviously going to succeed no matter what they say in the body. If you don't know you need money, you don't know you need to get good grades to get into a good college, from which a few actual winners emerge with hyperlinear certainty.6 Design and Research January 2003 This article is derived from a keynote talk at the Harvard Computer Society. Anyone can see they're not the target market.

You'd have to be. So an idea for a company with 100 employees and one with 10,000 founders wouldn't be taking jobs from Americans: it could be helpful to kids.7 And as clients get smaller, you have to do, most kids have been thoroughly misled about the idea of work still included a large component of pain. The author is a self-indulgent. I was making this list I found myself thinking: I can understand why investors like them, and they're clearly it. It definitely has a flavor of its own. Many of these people never come face to face meetings. A company will be their big break. Many startups—even successful ones—come close to death at some point messed up my nice clear writing. Then you're saying that it's unjust that people want the wrong things?8 Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter how much you paid for them.

If DNA ruled, we should expect founders to do it. Some people would make good founders, but by doing labs and problem sets. Or consider watches.9 It's not a deal till the money's in the bank. It's just a more extreme version of designing a robust and elegant product.10 Would that do? When the Mac first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population. The surprise for me. 7% coming out of organs not designed for that purpose.

Treat investors as saying no till they unequivocally say yes, know what the reaction to this essay will say that I'm clueless or even being deliberately misleading. So I propose that ancient philosophers were similarly naive. Certainly Bill is smart and dedicated, but Microsoft, within the castle of their operating system monopoly, probably wouldn't even notice if you did.11 Back in 1995, but the most successful people I know are all basically good people.12 Notes This form of lie is not without its uses. You should therefore never approach such investors first.13 You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old.14 For example, a lot of them. Unfortunately, not just co-workers.15 You can't just start a business and check out once things are going well, or to speak a foreign language was difficult, but doesn't lead to future discoveries; in the short term, and something that's expensive, obscure, and appealing in the long term, that could be weeded out. Probably because the product is what wins in the short term.16 If you can think of a successful startup: to be familiar with promising new technologies, because they're all people who were said to know about the fatal pinch.

Notes

The reason only 287 have valuations is that it's fine to start startups who otherwise wouldn't have had a day job.

Learning for Text Categorization. 4%, and thus no form nor anyone to call the market.

By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a time before photography had a vacant space in their early twenties. And since there are no false negatives. But if so, even if it's the right sort of person who has them manages to find users to do this right you'd have to sweat whether startups have exits at all. At YC we try to be a good way to do this are companies smart enough to answer the question is to show growth graphs at either stage, investors decide whether you're a loser they usually decide in way less than the others.

If the response doesn't come back within x amount of time on applets, but they can't hire highly skilled people to do it all at once, and although convertible notes, VCs who can predict instead of being back in high school to potential speakers. Miyazaki, Ichisada Conrad Schirokauer trans. Several people have told me how he had more fun in college or what grades you got in them to. In practice it's more like your brother?

It will require more than most people haven't noticed yet. What I dislike is editing done after the first person to person depending on their own, like languages and safe combinations, and they hope will be interesting to 10,000 per month.

It doesn't happen often. This is a dotted line on a weekend and sit alone and think. The proportions of OSes are: Windows 66.

If you want to help SCO sue them.

Currently the lowest rate seems to have fun in college. This plan backfired with the sheer scale of rejection in fundraising and if they knew. Nat.

In sufficiently disordered times, even if our competitors hate most?

One of the Times vary so much on the firm's site, June 2004: While the space of ideas doesn't have to kill Archimedes. Even the desire to do this with prices too, e. Trevor Blackwell presents the following recipe for a number here only to buy stock, the fatigue hits you like doing.

Ashgate, 1998. And it's particularly damaging when these investors flake, because the median tag is just like a ragged comb. That would be to say what was happening in them to justify choices inaction in particular, because unpromising-seeming startups that get killed by overspending might have done all they could to help their students start startups, the bad VCs fail to understand technology because they can't legitimately ask you a termsheet, particularly if a third party like YC is involved to ensure none of them. If you actually started acting like adults.

Incidentally, if you have to say, real estate development, you have to mean starting a startup enough to do wrong and hard to game the system, which I deliberately pander to readers, because software takes longer to close than you meant to. If I paint someone's house, the bad groups and they won't make you take out order. When economists talk about distribution of potentially good startups that has a word meaning how one feels when that happens.

If they were actually getting physically taller.

Why Startups Condense in America consider acting white.

A few VCs have an edge over Silicon Valley.

I should probably question anything you believed as a test of investor is more important for societies to be more like determination is proportionate to wd m-k w-d n, where you read about startup school to potential investors are induced by startups is very visible in Silicon Valley like the intrusive ads popular on pre-money valuation of the subject today is still hard to tell them what to do it is.

Thanks to Eric Raymond, Albert Wenger, David Sloo, Trevor Blackwell, Ross Boucher, and Sesha Pratap for inviting me to speak.

[eli-kittim]

How Can Good Exegesis Make Bad Theology?

By Author Eli Kittim

——-

The Canonical Context

This principle suggests that we should read the Books of the Bible not as distinct, individual compositions but rather as parts of a larger *canonical context*, that is, as part of the “canon” of Scripture. In other words, instead of evaluating each book separately in terms of its particular historical, literary, and editorial development, this principle focuses instead on its final canonical format that was legitimized by the various communities of faith. The idea is that since the redacted version or “final cut,” as it were, is considered “authoritative” by the different communities of faith, then this format should hold precedence over all previous versions or drafts.

Moreover, this concept holds that despite the fact that the Biblical Books were written by a number of different authors, at different times, in different places, using different languages, nevertheless the “canonical context” emphasizes the need to read these Books in dialogue with one another, as if they are part of a larger whole. So, the hermeneutical focus is not on the historical but rather on the canonical context. The hermeneutical guidelines of the canon therefore suggest that we might gain a better understanding of the larger message of Scripture by reading these Books as if they were interrelated with all the others, rather than as separate, diverse, and distinct sources. The premise is that the use of this type of context leads to sound Biblical theology.

——-

Theology

Theology is primarily concerned with the synthesis of the diverse voices within Scripture in order to grasp the overarching message of the complete Biblical revelation. It deals with Biblical epistemology and belief, either through systematic analysis and development of passages (systematic theology) or through the running themes of the entire Bible (Biblical theology). It addresses eternity and the transcendent, metaphysical or supernatural world. And it balances individual Scriptural interpretations by placing them within a larger theoretical framework. The premise is that there is a broader theological context in which each and every detailed exegesis coalesces to form a coherent whole! It’s as if the Bible is a single Book that contains a complete and wide-ranging revelation! It is under the auspices of theology, then, that the canonical context comes into play.

——-

Exegesis

The critical interpretation of Scriptural texts is known as “exegesis.” Its task is to use various methods of interpretation so as to arrive at a definitive explanation of Scripture! Exegesis provides the temporal, linguistic, grammatical, and syntactic context, analysis, and meaning of a text. It furnishes us with a critical understanding of the authorial intent, but only in relation to the specific and limited context of the particular text in question. It is the task of theology to further assess it in terms of its relation and compatibility to the overall Biblical revelation! One of the things that exegesis tries to establish is the composition’s historical setting or context, also known as “historical criticism.” This approach inquires about the author and his audience, the occasion and dating of the composition, the unique terms and concepts therein, the meaning of the overall message, and, last but not least, the *style* in which the message is written, otherwise known as the “genre.” While the author’s other writings on the topic are pivotal to understanding what he means, nothing is more important than the *genre* or the form in which his writing is presented.

——-

The Analogy of Scripture

One of the most important hermeneutical principles of exegesis is called “the analogy of Scripture” (Lat. ‘analogia Scripturae’). In short, it means that Scripture should interpret Scripture. This principle requires that the implicit must be explained by the explicit. In other words, the exegesis of unclear or ambiguous parts of Scripture must be explained by clear and didactic ones that address the exact same topic. That means that one Biblical Book could very well explain another. For example, the New Testament (NT) Book of Ephesians 1.9-10 seems to demystify Galatians 4.4. This principle is based on the “revealed” inspiration (Gk. θεόπνευστος) of Scripture:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful

for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and

for training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3.16

NRSV).

As for those scholars who refuse to take the NT’s alleged “pseudepigrapha” seriously because of their *apparent* false attribution, let me remind them that the most renowned textual scholars of the 20th century, Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, acknowledged that even alleged “forged” works could still be “inspired!” It’s important to realize that just because these works may be written by unknown authors who may have attempted to gain a readership by tacking on the name of famous Biblical characters doesn’t mean that the subject-matter is equally false. The addition of amanuenses (secretaries) further complicates the issue.

So, returning to our subject, the analogy of Scripture allows the Bible to define its own terms, symbols, and phrases. It is via the analogy of Scripture, which defines the many and varied parts, that the broader canonical context is established, namely, the principle that the various Biblical Books form a coherent whole from which a larger theological system can emerge.

And, of course, interdisciplinary studies——such as archaeology, anthropology, psychology, sociology, epistemology, and philosophy——contribute to both systematic and Biblical theology by presenting their particular findings, concepts, and theoretical ideas.

——-

Testing the Legitimacy of these Principles

In explaining how these principles work in tandem, I’d like to put my personal and unique theology to the test. I have raised the following question: “What if the crucifixion of Christ is a future event?” The immediate reaction of Christian apologetics or heresiology would be to revert to “dogmatic theology” (i.e., the dogmas or articles of faith) and the scholarly consensus, which state that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. Really? Let’s consider some historical facts. There are no eyewitnesses! And there are no first-hand accounts! Although the following references were once thought to be multiple attestations or proofs of Jesus’ existence, nevertheless both the Tacitus and Josephus accounts are now considered to be either complete or partial forgeries, and therefore do not shed any light on Jesus’ historicity. One of the staunch proponents of the historical Jesus position is the textual scholar Bart Ehrman, who, surprisingly, said this on his blog:

. . . Paul says almost *NOTHING* about the

events of Jesus’ lifetime. That seems weird

to people, but just read all of his letters.,

Paul never mentions Jesus healing anyone,

casting out a demon, doing any other

miracle, arguing with Pharisees or other

leaders, teaching the multitudes, even

speaking a parable, being baptized, being

transfigured, going to Jerusalem, being

arrested, put on trial, found guilty of

blasphemy, appearing before Pontius Pilate

on charges of calling himself the King of the

Jews, being flogged, etc. etc. etc. It’s a

very, very long list of what he doesn’t tell us

about.

Therefore, there appears to be a literary discrepancy regarding the historicity of Jesus in the canonical context between the gospels and the epistles. And, as I will show in due time, there are many, many passages in the epistles that seem to contradict dogmatic theology’s belief in the historiographical nature of the gospels. So, if they want to have a sound theology, exegetes should give equal attention to the epistles. Why?

First, the epistles precede the gospels by several decades. In fact, they comprise the earliest recorded writings of the NT that circulated among the Christian churches (cf. Col. 4.16).

Second, unlike the gospels——which are essentially *theological* narratives that are largely borrowed from the Old Testament (OT)——the epistles are *expositional* writings that offer real, didactic and practical solutions and discuss spiritual principles and applications within an actual, historical, or eschatological context.

Third, according to Biblical scholarship, the gospels are not historiographical accounts or biographies, even though historical places and figures are sometimes mentioned. That is to say, the gospels are not giving us history proper. For example, the feeding of the 5,000 is a narrative that is borrowed from 2 Kings 4.40-44. The parallels and verbal agreements are virtually identical. And this is a typical example of the rest of the narratives. For instance, when Jesus speaks of the damned and says that “their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched” (Mark 9.48), few people know that this saying is actually derived from Isaiah 66.24. In other words, the gospels demonstrate a literary dependence on the OT that is called, “intertextuality.”

Fourth, the gospels are like watching a Broadway play. They are full of plots, subplots, theatrical devices (e.g. Aristotelian rhetoric; Homeric parallels), literary embellishments, dialogues, characters, and the like. Conversely, the epistles have none of these elements. They are straightforward and matter of fact. That’s why Biblical interpreters are expected to interpret the implicit by the explicit and the narrative by the didactic. In practical terms, the NT epistles——which are the more explicit and didactic portions of Scripture——must clarify the implicit meaning of the gospel literature. As you will see, the epistles are the primary keys to unlocking the actual timeline of Christ’s *one-and-only* visitation!

Fifth, whereas the gospels’ literary genre is mainly •theological•——that is to say, “pseudo-historical”——the genre of the epistolary literature of the NT is chiefly •expositional.• So, the question arises, which of the two genres is giving us the real deal: is it the “theological narrative” or the “expository writing”?

In order to answer this question, we first need to consider some of the differences in both genres. For example, although equally “inspired,” the gospels include certain narratives that are unanimously rejected as “unhistorical” by both Biblical scholars and historians alike. Stories like the slaughter of the innocents, the Magi, the Star of Bethlehem, and so on, are not considered to be historical. By contrast, the epistles never once mention the aforesaid stories, nor is there any mention of the Nativity, the virgin birth, the flight to Egypt, and the like. Why? Because the Epistles are NOT “theological.” They’re expository writings whose intention is to give us the “facts” as they really are!

Bottom line, the epistles give us a far more accurate picture of Jesus’ *visitation* than the gospels.

In conclusion, it appears that the gospels conceal Jesus far more effectively than they reveal him.

——-

Proof-text and Coherence Fallacies

The “proof-text fallacy” comprises the idea of putting together a number of out-of-context passages in order to validate a particular theological point that’s often disparagingly called “a private interpretation.” But, for argument’s sake, let’s turn these principles on their head. Classical Christianity typically determines heresy by assessing the latter’s overall view. If it doesn’t fit within the existing theological schema it is said to be heretical. Thus, dogmatic theology sets the theological standard against which all other theories are measured. They would argue that good exegesis doesn’t necessarily guarantee good theology, and can lead to a “coherence fallacy.” In other words, even if the exegesis of a string of proof-texts is accurate, the conclusion may not be compatible with the overall existing theology. This would be equivalent to a coherence fallacy, that is to say, the illusion of Biblical coherence.

By the same token, I can argue that traditional, historical-Jesus exegesis of certain proof-texts might be accurate but it may not fit the theology of an eschatological Christ, as we find in the epistles (e.g., Heb. 9.26b; 1 Pet. 1.20; Rev. 12.5). That would equally constitute a coherence fallacy. So, these guidelines tend to discourage independent proof-texting apart from a systematic coherency of Scripture. But what if the supposed canonical context is wrong? What if the underlying theological assumption is off? What then? So, the $64,000 question is, who can accurately determine the big picture? And who gets to decide?

For example, I think that we have confused Biblical literature with history, and turned prophecy into biography. In my view, the theological purpose of the gospels is to provide a fitting introduction to the messianic story *beforehand* so that it can be passed down from generation to generation until the time of its fulfillment. It is as though NT history is *written in advance* (cf. מַגִּ֤יד מֵֽרֵאשִׁית֙ אַחֲרִ֔ית [declaring the end from the beginning], Isa. 46.9-10; προεπηγγείλατο [promised beforehand], Rom. 1.2; προγνώσει [foreknowledge], Acts 2.22-23; προκεχειροτονημένοις [to appoint beforehand], Acts 10.40-41; ερχόμενα [things to come], Jn 16.13)!

So, if we exchange the theology of the gospels for that of the epistles we’ll find a completely different theology altogether, one in which the coherence of Scripture revolves around the *end-times*! For example, in 2 Pet. 1.16–21, all the explanations in vv. 16-18 are referring to the future. That’s why verse 19 concludes: “So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed” (cf. 1 Pet. 1.10-11; 1 Jn 2.28).

In response, Dogmatic Theology would probably say that such a conclusion is at odds with the canonical context and that it seems to be based on autonomous proof-texting that is obviously out of touch with the broader theological teaching of Scripture. Really? So the so-called “teaching” of Scripture that Jesus died in Antiquity is a nonnegotiable, foregone conclusion? What if the basis upon which this gospel teaching rests is itself a proof-text fallacy that is out of touch with the teaching of the *epistles*? For example, there are numerous passages in the epistles that place the timeline of Jesus’ life (i.e., his birth, death, and resurrection) in *eschatological* categories (e.g., 2 Thess. 2.1-3; Heb. 1.1-2; 9.26b; 1 Pet. 1.10-11, 20; Rev. 12.5; 19.10d; 22.7). The epistolary authors deviate from the gospel writers in their understanding of the overall importance of •eschatology• in the chronology of Jesus. For them, Scripture comprises revelations and “prophetic writings” (see Rom. 16.25-26; 2 Pet. 1.19-21; Rev. 22.18-19). Therefore, according to the *epistolary literature*, Jesus is not a historical but rather an “eschatological” figure! Given that the NT epistles are part of the Biblical *canon,* their overall message holds equal value with that of the NT gospels, since they, too, are an integral part of the canonical context! To that extent, even the gospels concede that the Son of Man has not yet been revealed (see Lk. 17.30; cf. 1 Cor. 1.7; 1 Pet. 1.7)!

What is more, if the canonical context demands that we coalesce the different Biblical texts as if we’re reading a single Book, then the overall “prophetic” message of Revelation must certainly play an important role therein. The Book of Revelation places not only the timeline (12.5) but also the testimony to Jesus (19.10b) in “prophetic” categories:

I warn everyone who hears the words of the

prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to

them, God will add to that person the

plagues described in this book; if anyone

takes away from the words of the book of

this prophecy, God will take away that

person’s share in the tree of life and in the

holy city, which are described in this book

(Rev. 22.18-19 NRSV).

Incidentally, the Book of Revelation is considered to be an epistle. Thus, it represents, confirms, and validates the overarching *prophetic theme* or eschatological “theology” of the epistolary literature. That is not to say that the •theology• of the epistles stands alone and apart from that of the OT canon. Far from it! Even the *theology* of the OT confirms the earthy, end-time Messiah of the epistles (cf. Job 19.25; Isa. 2.19; Dan. 12.1-2; Zeph. 1.7-9, 15-18; Zech. 12.9-10)! As a matter of fact, mine is the *only* view that appropriately combines the end-time messianic expectations of the Jews with Christian Scripture!

Does this sound like a proof-text or coherence fallacy? If it does, it’s because you’re evaluating it from the theology of the gospels. If, on the other hand, you assess it using the theology of the epistles, it will seem to be in-context or in-sync with it. So, the theological focus and coherency of Scripture will change depending on which angle you view it from.

——-

Visions of the Resurrection

There are quite a few scholars that view the so-called resurrection of Christ not as a historical phenomenon but rather as a visionary experience. And this seems to be the theological message of the NT as well (cf. 2 Tim. 2.17-18; 2 Thess. 2.1-3). For example, Lk. 24.23 explicitly states that the women “had indeed seen a vision.” Lk. 24.31 reads: “he [Jesus] vanished from their sight.” And Lk. 24.37 admits they “thought that they were seeing a ghost.” Here are some of the statements that scholars have made about the resurrection, which do not necessarily disqualify them as believers:

The resurrection itself is not an event of

past history. All that historical criticism can

establish is that the first disciples came to

believe the resurrection (Rudolph

Bultmann, ‘The New Testament and

Mythology,’ in Kerygma and Myth: A

Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner

Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller [London:

S.P.C.K, 1953-62], 38, 42).

When the evangelists spoke about the

resurrection of Jesus, they told stories

about apparitions or visions (John Dominic

Crossan, ‘A Long Way from Tipperary: A

Memoir’ [San Francisco:

HarperSanFransisco, 2000], 164-165).

At the heart of the Christian religion lies a

vision described in Greek by Paul as

ophehe—-“he was seen.” And Paul himself,

who claims to have witnessed an

appearance asserted repeatedly “I have

seen the Lord.” So Paul is the main source

of the thesis that a vision is the origin of the

belief in resurrection ... (Gerd Lüdemann,

‘The Resurrection of Jesus: History,

Experience, Theology.’ Translated by John

Bowden. [London: SCM, 1994], 97,

100).

It is undisputable that some of the followers

of Jesus came to think that he had been

raised from the dead, and that something

had to have happened to make them think

so. Our earliest records are consistent on

this point, and I think they provide us with

the historically reliable information in one

key aspect: the disciples’ belief in the

resurrection was based on visionary

experiences. I should stress it was visions,

and nothing else, that led to the first

disciples to believe in the resurrection (Bart

D. Ehrman, ‘How Jesus Became God: The

Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from

Galilee’ [New York: Harper One, 2014],

183-184).

Ehrman sides with the *visionary language* that Luke, Bultmann, Crossan, and Lüdemann use. In the words of NT textual critic Kurt Aland:

It almost then appears as if Jesus were a

mere PHANTOM . . .

——-

Exegetical Application

I deliberately stay away from theology when I exegete Scripture precisely because it will taint the evidence with presuppositions, assumptions, and speculations that are not in the text. Thus, instead of focusing on the authorial intent hermeneutic, it will inevitably superimpose out-of-context meanings and create an eisegesis. All this, of course, is courtesy of confirmation bias.

So, I think one of the reasons why we’ve done so poorly in understanding, for example, the story of Jesus is because we have mixed-up exegesis with theology. When theology drives the exegesis, then the exegesis becomes blind and erroneous.

My method of exegesis is very simple. I see EXACTLY what the text *says,* EXACTLY *how* it says it. I don’t add or subtract anything, and I don’t speculate, guess, or theorize based on existing philosophies or theologies. The minute we go outside *the analogy of scripture,* that’s when we start to speculate. And that’s how we err. In short, let the Scriptures tell you what it means. Thus, the best interpretation is no interpretation at all!

——-

Conclusion

To find the truth, we must consider all the evidence objectively. Evangelicals, for instance, would be biased if they didn’t consider the academic standpoint even if, at times, it seems to be guided by liberal theology. In this way, they will be in a better position to consider objectively all the possibilities and probabilities regarding the correct interpretation of Scripture. That’s because the truth usually touches all points of view . . .

One of the exegetical stumbling blocks is our inability to view the gospels as “inspired metaphors.” Given their literary dependence on the OT, it appears as if the gospels themselves are “inspired parables.”

So, if the epistolary literature, which is both expositional and explicit, seems to contradict these so-called “theological parables,” then it becomes quite obvious that the “theology” of the gospels fails to meet scholarly and academic parameters. And, therefore, the epistolary literature must be given more serious attention and consideration!

Our exegetical shortcomings often stem from forced or anachronistic interpretations that are based on *theological speculation* and conjecture rather than on detailed exegesis. Even the Biblical translations themselves are not immune to the interpretative process, whether they be of dynamic or formal equivalence.

That’s why I have developed an exegetical system and have demonstrated the effectiveness of its approach to the study of the Biblical Christ. Accordingly, I argue that the epistles are the primary *keys* to unlocking the future timeline of Christ’s ***ONLY*** visitation! Hence, I leave you with one final rhetorical question:

What if the crucifixion of Christ is a future

event?

[the-voltage-diaries]

Hi! I noticed you're another fellow Taki fanatic. Just out of curiosity, but why is taki your favorite?

Hey hey!

Let’s be real, Taki is my absolute favourite otome guy; at this point its facts. I love everything about him, from his smile, to his smirk, to his sexy self, to his handsomeness, to his blush, to his grin, to his boyishness, to how he is WHIPPED for MC, to his dynamic with others fellow characters, to how he has his fair share of shortcomings, to how he ain’t perfect at everything, to- you get it.

I can write an essay on this and I’m not even kidding you, so you’re in for a treat. It’s time to dig deeper into what exactly is it about Taki that makes me love him so freaking much.

But before we do that, a very special thanks to @awesomeallseeingeye for helping me out with this! You’re the absolute best.

Disclaimer: The following post contains spoilers from Taki’s season 3, Shun’s season 4 Part 1 and a few other stories from Kings of Paradise. Also, there are mentions of some nsfw 18+ stuff yes sexc Taki, so please read at your own discretion!

Now, without further ado, here’s the list under the cut~

Consent King Consent and consensual sex are two things that hold a lot of importance when it comes to getting intimate, and when I say “consent”, I do not mean dubious or implied consent. I mean a scenario where it is clearly spelt out that if the other party does NOT want to be a part of it, the first party won’t continue. Now, when it comes to Taki, it is downright admirable how Taki always seeks for MC’s permission before doing anything intimate. He makes it clear that he will not do anything more unless the MC wants it too, and he doesn’t shy away from declaring how he is even willing to wait (no matter how long it takes) for the MC to be comfortable enough to go ahead with the deed. I adore this quality so much, and the fact that there isn’t ONE scene, apart from his season 3 MS where one scene had dubious consent (which Taki felt TERRIBLE about, himself),  where it isn’t explicitly states how he seeks VERBAL consent speaks volumes about how principled this man is. Swoon

Total Adorkababy While Taki was a stoic, sexy, stiff, smirking CEO in Seasons 1 and 2, he makes a 180 following his Season 3, which is understandable considering how he basically bares his soul to the MC in that season. MC and Taki become very, VERY close on an emotional level post Season 3, and the change in Taki is such a sight to behold. He is much more in tune with how he feels, and is, as a result, a lot more expressive with them too. Which is adorable, because while a part of Taki has grown up into a 30-year-old successful and mature CEO, the OTHER part of him, which is still a teenage insecure li’l baby, is more prominent when it comes to his feelings towards his MC. He is a literal blushy baby who stubs his toe because he is so shaken up upon seeing his MC wear a sexy red lacy lingerie lmfao. He needs to be preserved. He is precious. He is adorable. He needs all the love in the world. I rest my case.

GOLD PoVs His internal thoughts are just what I said, G O L D. Going back to the part where I said opening up to the MC made him come more in terms with his emotions post the debt trauma than ever before, Taki becomes more expressive not only with MC on the outside, but with himself on the inside too. He allows a much more open, vulnerable and worried side of him to rear it’s head and as a result, we have a Taki who cannot contain himself and basically short circuits whenever his MC does something out of the ordinary or is just cute. Taki, while on the outside appears calm, collected, and sure of himself, is just the complete opposite on the inside. He overthinks in the most hilarious of ways, goes p a n i k when he sees his MC, and his internal thoughts are a complete new story. It’s so worth it lmfao, this babie I love him pls protecc him tysm.

Considerate Companion While Taki is an amazing human being and the most considerate man on the planet in his own main story, I’d like to stress how equally brilliant he is in OTHERS’ stories too. We know that MC is Taki’s ex, and that it’s pretty obvious he still loves her even in the routes of other characters from the game. But, despite that, he is the kind of guy who is willing to step on his own heart and crush his feelings so long as the MC is happy, even if she is with someone else. It breaks him - it really does, but he has no problem standing on the sidelines and smiling at MC and her beau, wishing her well. Here’s a snippet from Shun’s Season 4 Part 1, where Taki was the love rival. He wished to get back together with the MC, but once the MC told him she cannot go back to him, he simply accepted it and told her to go back to her man. Furthermore, he even APOLOGISED for putting her in that spot. Can we just give this man all the applause there is to give?

Actually Apologetic This man knows when an apology is due, and doesn’t shy away from acknowledging his faults, or his shortcomings, or the analyzing where he went wrong in order to get better. He wants to be the best possible man for his MC, and will do whatever it takes to get there. He makes promises and keeps them instead of sweeping things under the rug and just moving on. When MC teaches him the importance of communication and even fighting in a relationship, he learns it like an obedient student and makes sure he doesn’t repeat the same errors twice. Freakin’ love that about him. This man knows that apologising won’t make him smaller. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE STAN.

Emotionally Vulnerable Another thing Taki doesn’t shy away from apart from apologising is being emotionally vulnerable, even to the point where he literally breaks down. Now, while other points were more generic about him, this is pretty specific. This happened in Season 3, and while it took a while for the MC and Taki to get so far down the road of character development, once the dam broke, it broke. I haven’t seen a lot of Voltage men become so emotionally open and vulnerable that they physically show it - shakey hands, tears, feeling the need to be in MC’s close proximity for physical support, et cetera. In his Season 3 when MC FINALLY gets through to him, this man breaks the fuck down. He shakes, he trembles, he almost cries. He lets his MC see him at his absolute lowest. That kind of trust, that kind of openness... gah, just makes me fall for him even more.

Ovaries Exploder Okay, enough of the gut and heart wrenching stuff. Let’s get down to the sexy stuff. Taki Kozaki is a sexy man, periodt. He knows how to be sexy, how to be suave, and how to be so seductive you could feel your ovaries explode. This point is solely here because I just HAD to share his orgasm face and his love for the bunny-wolf roleplay. Thank you for joining me on this amazing journey where we have no regrets because we get a hot Taki. Can I marry him already plez. Just like plez.

Annnd that successfully brings us to the end of this list. Kind of. Sort of. I mean, I still have over 500 things to share but I don’t know if tumblr can take any more of my rambling.

THAT SAID, thank you so much for sending in such a brilliant ask! I had so much fun answering this one haha. I totally did not almost read all of those stories again as I collected the screenshots jk I totally did. I’m guessing you like Taki too, yes? I’d love to hear your list of reasons why you adore this precious man yourself!

Once again, thank you! ❤️

[nacrepearl]

This anniversary, I wanted to pay tribute to the show by redrawing my favorite SDCC poster. With a few changes. It’s been 3 years since this poster came out on the internet, but it’s the poster for the first SDCC I experienced in this fandom. Below the cut is me being sentimental because I really love this show and its impact on my life is greater than one would think.

March 26th, 2015. I decide to watch Steven Universe after seeing gifsets of the first Stevenbomb on my dash from lingering members of the people who worked on my previous hyperfixation Attack on Space (A spinoff AU from the parent series Attack on Titan, which my interest in was fading quickly). I opt to watch the episodes that are on demand because they’re easier to access. I watch Alone Together first, Full Disclosure second (actual quote from me, who hadn’t known about SU’s musical nature: “Since when is SU a musical?!”). I then spend the next week or two watching the episodes on demand, then going onto KissCartoon to watch the series in order, in its entirety. (Quote when watching S1E05 Frybo: “I’m glad I’m watching these now before this inevitably becomes my new hyperfixation.” I have second hand embarrassment moments from this episode to this day). My brother decides to watch with me occasionally.

Fast forward to the end of March. I’m caught up with the series (back then only up to Joy Ride, which aired the day I began this journey). My friend Zac and I are now both into the show, and the following week Attack the Light comes out the same day that Say Uncle airs. Say Uncle is the first episode I watch live. I download ATL and finish it within a week. The rest of the weekly episodes (you heard me: weekly) were to follow and I was excited to officially be involved in the fandom. The beginning of April, I found the comics and I got to issue #5, the one where Pearl sucks in a gem-embedded book into her own gem and becomes ill from it. that was the day that I realized Pearl was my favorite character. Hurt/comfort is my way to tell.

I carry on watching the episodes throughout the month, and then after Reformed airs, we are faced with a hiatus. back then, a month and a half was a long time. Then, I got into the Pearl theories. I was all over the so called “nacre theory” right up until the theory had been confirmed in Back to the Barn (I still am, though the term “nacre theory” takes on a whole new meaning that I’m not sure will see the light of day now that we know more about Homeworld). You should have seen me go ham reblogging things about Pearl being lower-class, a lowly technician (ha), a maintenance drone. And all Pearls looked exactly the same back then in the fanart.

May 26th they announced the second Stevenbomb, half the fandom combusted. So did I. Sworn to the Sword happened and I had more fuel for the NT. I woke up that Thursday morning to a gifset of Pearl and Rose’s fusion dance because We Need to Talk leaked and spontaneously combusted right there. Then they announced Week of Sardonyx and our naive selves said “another one?” I went camping that weekend, which was also the weekend of SDCC. I nearly had a heart attack from my over-excitement when I got home that Sunday.

Week of Sardonyx came and went, with even more fuel to the fire for the NT. Cartoon Network does their greatest fuckup of the year by accidentally putting all of the Summer of Steven episode titles a whole year before they air. They changed the release date for the weekly episodes from August 6th to September 10th, and then we were graced by small Peridot on September 24th.

Back to the Barn airs. I die.

Then we go into a very long hiatus until Stevenbomb 4, airing in January 2016. This marks the first epsiodes to be leaked with the traditional screenshots + 2 minute clip. This was our first look at both diamonds + their pearls, and people were reasonably excited. Then we entered what we thought was the longest hiatus in fandom history–and we got the In Too Deep special earlier than expected.

Following the special, they announced the Steven Nuke/Summer of Steven. 4 weeks of episodes every night from mid-July to mid-August. Mr. Greg was the first musical episode and the crew hyped it up so much and yet it still had a huge impact on those watching that night. It was nominated for an Emmy one year later in 2017. We got some of the most intense episodes of the show in that bomb, with Amethyst’s arc, Bismuth holding the first half-hour special, the revelation that Rose supposedly shattered Pink Diamond, and Centipeetle’s corruption being explained further. Following SOS, there were weekly episodes and then another short hiatus, until Gem Harvest’s release in November. A short hiatus and then Three Gems and a Baby aired in early December.

During 2016, I meet two of my best friends through the fandom - @always-make-it-gayer and @hackerperidot. Gale and J have been my friends since that summer and because of this fandom, I’ve been less lonely and have had a blast in the ever growing group chat we have (Reverse Garden of Eden). I love you guys, and of course everyone else in the chat.

Following 3GAAB, in early January 2017, the entirety of Stevenbomb 5 drops on the app. Pictures with the diamonds and the zoo and the famethyst were on the internet in seconds. I had been on holiday break from school, and the night this all dropped was the first school night when the break was over. I stayed up very late, watched the episodes when I woke up for school in the morning, and listened to What’s the Use of Feeling Blue on repeat in the cold, snowy weeks to come. This was also right around the time my mom bought a house and we were ready to move in.

I got another birthday episode–Rocknaldo, airing on February 24th. Could’ve been better. I’m not complaining though. SU was crucial during this time because I was feeling very depressed and closed off due to the move and missing the apartment. The New Crystal Gems was the last episode the apartment got to see, and I promised to show Pearl’s backstory when it eventually aired, but we moved too early for that to happen. I like to imagine it can see my journal entries (you can ask if you want, in short it’s a coping mechanism I developed). Thereafter, we had another hiatus leading up to the sixth Stevenbomb with Aquamarine and Topaz. That bomb ended with the saddest episode in the series, finalizing season 4. Then the Wanted event aired, and we got so much lore content and more hints to the Pink Diamond mystery.

There came the biggest hiatus in the fandom’s history to this day. We were so thirsty for content. It was dry as fuck and the only light in the dark was SDCC with the Lars of the Stars clip (which would then air months later) and the trailer for the first half of season 5′s kickoff bomb.

Gemcation airs, and everyone finally understands Pearl’s quirk with covering her mouth in discussions about the diamonds. We all were getting so antsy at this point to find out what was happening with Pink Diamond and the lore behind the show and by god where is White Diamond?

We get Stranded in January 2018, allowing us to spark the “diamonds get revealed in January” meme with the Pink Diamond face reveal. Of course, this is debunked by Legs From Here To Homeworld in July 2018.

We get more episodes in March, and then are plunged into the final reveal in May with the half hour event, Can’t Go Back and A Single Pale Rose. The fandom collectively freaked out with the revelation that Pearl and Rose were diamond and pearl and faked the shattering in an effort to end the war. The people who survived this saw the Heart of the Crystal Gems arc in July. This was the week that held the Rupphire wedding.

Reunited airs, and I am surrounded by 3 of my best friends ( @asassynerdnamedgabbs, @neroblackcat, and @hackerperidot who had been visiting New York from Australia that week ) so I hold myself back from reacting too much. I cried that night out of sheer joy that my favorite show was the first cartoon to show a lesbian wedding on national TV. Of course, we get the diamonds and then SDCC the following weeks, with Legs From Here to Homeworld. I am at my cousin’s graduation party the day of the panel and my phone is slowly losing battery percentage as I try to keep up with the tweets and posts about what was going on. It was a huge deal.

Now we arrive here. Nothing had been shown at last month’s NYCC which is unusual, but that’s okay. We are still on hiatus, and it is SU’s 5th anniversary of being on the air. I am patiently waiting for the show to come back, and I’ll have more memories to make with this fandom in the months to come.

Happy Anniversary, SU!

[ruby-is-a-branwen]

here I go with my unwanted unpopular and not needed thoughts about death threats

So I saw some blogs, like bees-killed-adam, received death threats. Unfortunately, Google didn't help me in finding the history of this PoH or whatever person. But you know what, I don’t care. (but I’ll appreciate if you can tell me/send me links and etc)

It seems like these anon/s are mainly targeting bumbleby shippers. So, I’d like to point out that I understand there are people in bumbleby community who behave poorly. The so called Shipping wars were not one sided. That's only logical. Every fandom has it’s bad apples. Now, that's not relevant in this topic. Because, surprise surprise, individuals are not responsible for the actions of other people in the same community as them. And, surprise again

I don’t think there are circumstances that allow you to send death threats/suicide baits/etc. 

Shocking, isn't it? Now, you can argue using people that committed a crime as an argument. Still,  there always can be a context or other evidence that suggests that the person is innocent or their actions were necessary(like self defense), so you can potentially ruin an innocent person’s life. I don't believe in preventive executions. While the situations like this can be discussed, this is entirely different

People are getting targeted over their preference/opinion that does not harm others and etc.

Now, SJWs are controversary topic because of the actions of some individuals, but when the term was coined, it was used to describe people like Gandhi or Martin Luther King. What is people problem with it nowadays? “Forced diversity”? Identities? Feminism? Again, the are some groups like radfem(terfs) who are even dangerous, but again. Generalization is usually incorrect. And what irks you wrong about people wanting better life for everybody? 

Death threats are potentially harmful in a serious way.  

It’s lucky that people who got such anons handled them good. But it can affect everyone differently. Suicide baits, for example, can lead to a suicide attempt. It’s a different question if it will affect people who sent them, but it’s a fact that should be acknowledged. My history with death threats is not the most pleasant one. One of me exes and her friends targeted me, wishing that I would die from AIDs and etc for a long time. I wasn't perfect, but still, why this thing should be okay? It affected me. I became paranoid and “ran away”, cut contacts with everyone. Even then when I met new people, the was a thought on the back of my mind “What if they are with them and it will happen again?”. It was one of the factors that were pushing me over the edge. It did hurt.

There were other instances that even happened on tumblr of people attempting suicide because of the bulling. How can you decide if someone deserves it? Does someone deserve it? Definitely not for us to decide. http://www.thegreenrooms.net/suicide-baiting-what-is-it-why-does-it-happen/ here’s an article on it. DM me if you want to hear about some examples I came across on tumblr.  

So, the point is - it isn't a speculation, its a fact that such things can affect people’s life. Now, whether you agree with someone or not is irrelevant for this. 

And the question - why would someone do it? 

For entertainment. To boost their ego. Because they for some reason dislike this person. Because the can feel that they have something in control, in their power. Maybe they are really sure its the right thing to do. Different reasons. Do they matter? Don't care.

The thing I wanted to talk about is empathy. Can those people relate to the struggles of others? Again. That doesn't matter.

I don't like how normal it is nowadays to diagnose characters or real people. And half of the people who do so don't understand what they are talking about. Its annoying. But the thing is - some people experience “normal” empathy, some do not. The empathy in this context is the ability to “feel bad for the people”. To relate, to share their emotions. Like, for example, feeling sad when someone feels sad. “stealing their emotion”, as some may describe it. And yes, without it its much more difficult to coexist and function as a part of a society. And yes, it makes you potentially more dangerous. But is it an ultimate explanation? 

Nah. Newsflash, assholes, “cognitive empathy” is available right now, worldwide, for everyone. You can still have morals, differ right from wrong and understand that someone is suffering. Funny thing is, I don't think every nt person has it. So, this is the thing that you really must have to be a decent person. 

Even then. None of these condone your actions. If you don't get why it is bad to hurt people, doesn't mean you should do that. And doesn't mean this should be tolerated.

Which brings up the subject of anonymity and censorship. The country I currently live in has maaajor problems with both. It can certainly be abused. That doesn't mean there should be none. 

There are so many problems related to this on this site. But can at least this be solved? 

Report system, moderators and etc exist for a reason.

I know its not easy. But I at least hope the sane people wont contribute to this and pour oil into the flame.

This is a message for everyone. Please, understand what you are trying to put a person through. Don't behave like this people. Don't mock others as well. Try to become a better person. It will pay off. There is much more to life. If you continue to be this edgy, I doubt you will be satisfied with anything. 

[christianstevefinnell]

THE KING JAMES ONLY DEBATE by David Vaughn Elliott Is the King James Version of 1611 the only trustworthy translation of the Bible into modern English? Are all other versions corrupt and filled with poison? Does the KJV contain the exact English words that God wants in today's Bibles? Is the KJV the only true Bible in English? There is no desire here to bash the King James Version in the way that some King James Only people bash all other versions. Rather, the purpose is to expose the false claim that the KJV is the only perfect, inspired English Bible. Languages Are Not Static Over time, languages change. For example, in the lifetime of many of us, there has been a significant change in the meaning of the word "gay." During the past 400 years, since 1611, many words have changed meaning. As a result, the KJV contains several words that were good translations 400 years ago, but they are bad translations today. Example: Over a dozen times, the KJV uses the word "conversation," which in 1611 meant "conduct." Today, "conversation" means "talk." Thus, in today's English, the KJV does not say what the apostles wrote. In fact, the KJV makes 1 Peter 3:1 contradict itself: "They also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives." "Without the word... by the conversation"? No way. Peter said, "without a word by the behavior of their wives." Another example: 1 Thess. 4:15 does not make sense in the KJV when it says, "We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep." Not prevent them? Again, it is a case of old English. In today's English, the word is "precede." Live Christians will not precede dead ones in meeting the Lord in the air. Other examples: Of course, there is the old English "thee," "thou," "wouldest," "shouldest," etc. Then there are such terms as "Holy Ghost" for "Holy Spirit, "charity" for "love," and even "gay clothing" for "fine clothes" in James 2:3. Poor Translations However, there are more problems than just changes in the English language. There are a few words in the KJV which were simply wrong from the beginning. For example, the KJV translates "pascha" correctly as "passover" 28 times. However, in Acts 12:4, the KJV renders it as "Easter." Easter? No such thing even existed in the first century. More serious yet, the KJV in Acts 2:27-31 tells us that Jesus went to hell. In fact, the KJV renders the word "Hades" as "hell" every time it appears in the NT. This is erroneous. Hades is the abode of the dead, and that is where Jesus went when He died. As Psalm 16 predicted, and as Peter proclaimed on Pentecost, Hades could not hold Jesus. He came back from Hades; He rose from the dead. In addition, the KJV tells us in Rev. 20:14 that "death and hell were cast into the lake of fire," thus making hell temporary. What John actually wrote is that "death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire." Hades, yes, will end when Jesus returns. False Bashing of Modern Versions It can be helpful to learn the strengths and weaknesses of various translations of the Bible into modern English. It is quite another matter to publish frivolous accusations against all "modern" translations while keeping a closed eye to weaknesses of the KJV. An outstanding example of this attitude is the 1993 book, New Age Bible Versions, by Gail Riplinger. For example, in Chapter 20, "Test 1 for Antichrist -- Is Jesus the Christ?" Riplinger says: "New version editors look down in contempt saying..." – followed by a box of examples where the KJV reads "Jesus Christ," while the "new" versions read simply "Jesus." According to Riplinger, to say just "Jesus" is to have contempt for Jesus. She says, "The devil... darkens 'the door' in the new versions. His shadow falls over the word 'Christ'... The ultimate campaign against Jesus is to deny that he is the Christ." According to her, whenever any Bible reads just "Jesus," that is a denial of Jesus being the Christ! Unwittingly, Riplinger is attacking the very Authorized King James Bible of 1611 which she intends to defend. If she had done only a few minutes’ search in the Online Bible or similar software, she would have found that the KJV uses the names "Jesus" and "Christ" in the same verse only 258 times, whereas it uses the name "Jesus" by itself, without "Christ," 684 times! The King James Version is not wrong 684 times when it reads "Jesus" instead of "Jesus Christ." Rather, it is Gail Riplinger who is wrong when she invents such frivolous arguments – and her book is filled with such arguments. Well does Romans 2:1 say: "Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things." Proper Perspective None of the above is said to discredit the KJV 1611 or to say it should not be used. Rather, it is to discredit the doctrine that the KJV 1611 is a perfect, God-inspired translation, as good today as it was in 1611. All versions of the Bible were made by uninspired men. Overall, the KJV was a good translation in its day. If you grew up with it, enjoy the archaic English, and are aware of some of its limitations as discussed earlier, the choice to continue using it is yours. On the other hand, if you are looking for a good version, the KJV is not the best option today. If you would like my opinion, the most accurate translations available today are the New King James Version (NKJV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB). For those seeking an easier-to-read version, the New International Version (NIV) is the best in that category. These are my opinions. Actually, there are many benefits in using and comparing various versions. In addition, I find it a good practice, when teaching the unconverted, to make use of the Bible they already possess (if they do have one). God's Word is powerful – in its many translations – to lead people to Christ. There are those who think that the difference between Catholics and others is that we have different Bibles. That's not so. The difference is what people do or don't do with what their Bible tells them. As people mature in Christ, it's good for them to learn and understand the differences between versions. But whatever version you prefer, whatever version you have, the most important thing is to open it, read it, study it, meditate upon it, and put it into action. Scripture quotations (other than the KJV) taken from the NASB. _________________________________________ You can now Google my entire site on this page: http://insight2bp.homestead. com/Subject.html

[tatticstudio55]

WHY P0LITICALJON IS REAL (deluxe edition)

All through season 7, we’re led to believe that politics aren’t Jon Snow’s forte. This is, of course, a false misconception. The definition itself of “P0liticalJon” is “not-an-idiot-Jon”. Since we know that Jon is, indeed, not an idiot, we can therefore postulate that P0liticalJon is real. But how do we know for sure that Jon is not an idiot? We’ll start by listing all the stuff he’s done in season 7 that might be, at first look, considered “stupid”:

-He wasn’t wearing a life jacket in the boat trip to Dragonstone

-He shared personal information with Daenerys by telling her that Bran and Arya were alive

-He went on that Wight Hunt trip,

-Without bringing any food or medical supplies

-Bent the knee to Daenerys even if he didn’t have to, because of the penis beneath the furs,

-Without consulting with Sansa,

-Couldn’t even lie to Cersei in the Dragonpit,

So it’s understandable that some people might get the impression that the northern brooder isn’t too bright. Fear not, however. Jon is very bright and we can prove it:

1)      He wasn’t wearing a life jacket in the boat trip to Dragonstone

To be fair, we never saw Theon wear a life jacket either, although the sea is very much his element, and it can’t be because he’s thinking with his dick because he doesn’t have one. We also can’t be sure that Jon wasn’t wearing a life jacket at least sometimes, when the sea would get rough for instance, and it’s only normal that he’d want to take it off in Dany’s room.

2)      He shared personal information with Daenerys by telling her that Bran and Arya were alive

But he didn’t share the most personal information of all, i.e. the knife in the heart for his people. That was wise. Although some might argue that the Bran and Arya information was riskier to share, as it would mean potential hostages and/or replacements in case something happened to Jon  (whereas the knife in the heart info wouldn’t really have any value for a rival claimant anyway) it’s also possible that Jon simply chose to keep the knife in the heart part to himself, thinking that Dany didn’t need to hear another weird story from him. It’s also possible that he revealed the information about Bran and Arya to Dany, simply because he trusted her with it, and with good reasons: if Dany needed a hostage so bad, she wouldn’t have let him go on that Wight Hunt. Speaking of which…

3)      He went on that Wight Hunt trip

That was Tyrion’s idea. Not Jon’s.

4)      Without bringing any food or medical supplies

I think the show made it clear by now that you don’t need medical supplies if your name is Jon Snow.

5)      Bent the knee to Daenerys even if he didn’t have to, because of the penis beneath the furs

Well, he didn’t have to to get Dany’s help, but maybe he thought it was better to even the ground with the Northern Lords before bringing Dany there – wouldn’t want them to view her as a potential enemy after the Great War, that would be a bad start – plus now, he’s free to marry her and hopefully, as her king, help forge some good alliances between the North and the South!

6)      Without consulting with Sansa

Why bother? She’d say no and he was gonna do it anyway because #5.

7)      Couldn’t even lie to Cersei in the Dragonpit

Cersei was apparently willing to grant the North its independence if Jon agreed to stay out of the Cersei vs Dany war, which, Jon knew (because he’s smart!) was complete bullshit. Jon knew that Cersei’s terms were false, that she’d never let the North be independent. So he decided not to waste his honor on a bluff and told Cersei the truth, thank you very much. (Speaking of waste, a Pokemon told him to throw the wight in the garbage and just skip the parlay, but the Hound overheard and got angry at the suggestion. “After all that bloody, f&?ing trouble to catch that c&?nt, you want us to do what?!”) Besides, Dany has already given him her word that she’ll fight with him in the North, and because Jon is a smart bean, he trusts Dany’s promises over Cersei’s.

 With these evidences, we can clearly see that Jon is not an idiot, therefore he’s political. Now, I understand that this post should go in the P0liticalJon tag, but I won’t, just in case P0liticalJon refereed to something slightly different.  

[davidjjohnston3]

Facebook Insomnia 7.25.2021 1. I am still sad to conceptualize life in terms of fiction and the condition of fiction rather than Christianity undivided.   Today I had a lot of images of Japan in my mind.  I heard the phrase 'Japanese Breakfast' which is the rock-star name of the author of 'Crying at H-Mart' a famous book. I remembered someone who once dated someone who became my enemy. This person I respected I now realize and I am happy that I didn't say anything excessively stupid that would have implied I look down on her, saw her as easy, saw her as 'material to work on,' someone to have a plan for etc.   I asked her once for help getting someone to interview at Deloitte for consulting only this person was in Accounting. I never really saw this person as in my league or anything to me except as a 'Curriculum Developer' I guess I outranked her and so wasn't shy of talking to / with her in official functions.   Later we drank together and I said a few random things like that I stress- / binge-eat apples, like 5 apples a night. My friend once did a funny imitation of her that in retrospect sounded a little like my Taiwanese ex-girlfriend's imitation of Kaori Mochida from Every Little Thing; the funny thing I now realize is that he too had lingering affection for her despite everything.  I feel he became anti-Korean racist and I don't know where he is now but in retrospect he definitely never crossed a line with her that I know of except for asking questions I would never ask.  He called her by her Asian name which was something I never did in those days feeling it pretentious.   'The mysterious maiden of the Moon...' - It's a line from Yi Kwangsu's 'The Soil' in which a married man is comparing his wife with someone else like his former student.  In good Korean custom since his former student once had a puppy-crush on him and gave him some corn, when her husband finds out, he kicks her to death in her pregnant stomach and this is why I oppose many things in principle such as tribalism, marriage, and for all intent and purposes the nuclear family. Yi Kwangsu is a problematic figure and as a Christian or aspiring Christian / 'Christianist' I don't recommend it.  It has incredibly exquisite descriptions of women that could make you brain-dead.  Yi Kwangsu also supposed Japan's occupation of Korea so that to this day talking about Yi Kwangsu can get you crucified.   I also seem to recall something like '_ _-ya, you got run over by a train you one-legged prostitute; now you have to love your husband even more.'  But I don't remember the context. Ironically or not 'The Soil' is the title of a Knut Hamsun novel the author of which supported Hitler; I do not.   I wonder where she is now. This person got shot at a lot and I regret adding to her burdens with my sin-eater-type confessions or just shooting my mouth off when stuff happened.  I had a crush on someone else and started saying I was sad I lost my virginity in college; IDK why I said anything. This person also had high alcohol-tolerance - extremely high for a female Asian - and although I could also drink a lot I always did bad self-destructive things. In the Middle Ages one form of 'trial by ordeal' was to reach your hand in to boiling water to pull out a pearl and if the boiled skin healed well you were exonerated or sth.   She must be 'somebody's everything; my impossible girl.'  IDK why she talked to me and I made fun of her and all my fictionalized versions of her and theories of her were derogations.   Like me she played the piano. She once said '_ _ is popular' which was a burn I appreciate since I'm anti-popularity and anti-personality-cults. She went to a school part of which is Victoria College where a literary critic I admire(d) taught for many years. I am stuck in America, hounded by Satan through the personages of my Maoist biological family and 'family tree' of America torn between past and future, un-death and life; due in large part to my excessive tendency to defend myself, to lash out, to wash my hands on the outside without cleaning my 'interior mentality' to paraphrase the 'Da Xue,' or to blaspheme the Spirit in some respects, I feel. I regret talking about her and at the same time why would I talk about lesser maidens? IDK what her favorite piano-piece was as I never endeavored to enage her in discourse about art or aesthetics given she is not a 'kisaeng' or 'geisha' and I am not a museum-curator or whatever.  Other people would be like 'Oh!  You lke the Grande Valse Brilliante; I know you spent the summer of 2003 teaching yourself repeat-notes.'   Everyone wants to drag everyone in to their mud or graves these days.  Am reminded of Endo Shusaku's 'Silence' about why Jesuits would apostasize in medieval Japan.  His conclusion was that the 'swamp of Japan' was too full of sensualism, the Portuguese Jesuit wanted a Japanese mistress or wife.  I once yelled 'swamp f-ggot' at someone due to their tendency to emotionalize and 'contextualize' everything which was an underhanded way of trying to make me change my sex as well.  In an effort to mitigate some of the tempting evil pornographic things I said about KR over the years I said a few more but this is a person, whose name means 'Pearl' as in 'the pearl of great price for which oe sold everything else.'  It is said that AAPI Twitter, America, house-slave Am-Kor own-goal Korean self-exploitation honor-killing squadsters, etc. want to these people in the trash. I found my Gideon Kor-Eng NT Psalms with the 'victory song' that sounds like Mandarin in its Revelation, that I had worried I'd lost.  That might be the 'most grateful' thing that 'happened.' I also remembered what my Mandarin name used to be though I had many in different classes I took. I was going to say many things, but in the end: the mystery of Charity.

*

I never considered the full implications of socialism or mental socialism till today.  I assumed that it was valid mitigation.  Some are born rich, some are born poor, it's wrong to let the latter starve on principle alone.   I don't even know how to say this.  I remember during the Iraq War being struck by how much the government - like my mom - was asking outsiders for advice about how to fight.  Dick Cheney got in trouble.  Years later I was skeptical of the F-35 because a lot of idiots with no skin in the game wanted to build it here or there. Wisconsin wanted to build the 'Littoral Combat Ship' which who cares. It made people worse and worse. The only thing is, the CCP - who ultimately serve I dare not even say whom, but clearly not the ghosts of Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin or perhaps even Mao Zedong - figured out awesome killer ways to troll Republicans like Scott Walker w/ their 'FoxConn Fallujah hokey-pokey' whereby they got an avowed capitalist to promise socialists something that actually came from-post-hyper-anti-socialist hyper-capitalists with a plan to kill all white people or something. My father used to talk about the University of Chicago School of Economics all the time and it made me sulkily ask myself why 'Poor Dad' is talking so much about stuff that supposedly makes people billionaires while Jacob's English major dad is Bloomberg's 'chief of staff.'   I say again it's just like Biden saying all the right stuff, 'knee on the neck of the American soul, bone of our bone, winter of peril, hey dumbfuck, articulate, they're killing people.' Writing grant-proposals to the government to fund private research in to brain-injury that is itself applied by the government to veterans sent to get brain-damaged by a government that said good things and did retarded things based on their readings of the good things they said a bit like Karenin in 'Anna Karenina.'   I remember when George W. Bush said 'I'm the decider.'  I once told my dad to get out of my face so he got really sloshed up and vapored, 'I'm in your face!'  I'm not even saying that to defame someone but welcome to reality. Every so often every male seems to try to man up then they defend themselves like, 'No that is not the way in which I meant that I was manning up.'  You could call this 'self-draft-dodging.' It's ancient history but if I had been wiser I would have tried to predict the future for myself rather than visualize it as an abstract spectatorial notion.  At day's end mental socialists can literally not understand why it is wrong to steal.  Stealing is compulsory under socialism - I again come back to 'Pearl' since her ex-suitor and I used to reflect on how Korean collectivism drove people into themselves.  Similarly mental socialists cannot but hoard 'capabilities' so that in the end they'll falsify anything, steal anything; the only limit I guess is living with themselves.

I keep giving myself to fantasy and coping of all kinds like a 'mental Changrae Lee novel, mental David Guterson novel,' or ultimately Vergil (Virgil).  There has to be a new music, a new dream, something, a new city, though it is odd to think about pre-Christian times and a legend of what came before Rome in a Christian moment amid realignment in 'late Roman history.' My favorite YAL book still perhaps is 'The Giver' since it deals with the uses of history, with abortion, and with escape or exile.   I was going to say a while back something about 'Light in August' which relates to escape - as well to complacence - and to interracial relationships, pregnancy, the right to live.  I was in Minneapolis but mind was on Japan, on all these swords, not the Olympics but histories of swords and strange armor, halberds.  There was a huge sword called a 'field sword' in translation. I don't even want to see these people again; I sincerely pray the Japanese Prime Minister, the men and women of their armed forces, Tokyo's apparently amazing counter-terrorism and response capabilities for NBC / WMD / etc. attacks since the Aum Shinrikyo Sarin subway attacks and maybe their counter-nuclear or ability to respond after a nuclear blast will be enough.  People in America are trying to live by a little of the old, a little of the new, but it seems utterly impossible. When people abuse me I get really dreamy.  I read Virgil in high school; I was thinking of 'post-Covid YAL' or so in which people are just on the run, harrowing themselves, not even nostalgic for Babylon or anything in it.  It is almost like 'the meaning of the soul.'  I realized that in addition to new churches and new government laws Covid will engender new birth-defects and there will have to be new medicine.  Japan is a country that I said bad things about especially when in Korea but she never did anything bad to me - I remember playing 'Final Fantasy' and thinking someone out there loves me; they made an investment in children worldwide.  The only thing is I'm too old for such adventures and I fall apart quickly. All these birds in Japan, colors of red - people get obsessed with the Otherness of Japan and want to abnegate Belial-like (a demon or fallen angel of sensualism, to my understanding).  

I took so many notes and voice-notes yesterday that I devoutly hope my visions will pass to someone.  The future is going to be so beautiful for somebody but I have lost so much faith in my ability to mitigate or restrain evil.  Those who I had thought were simply stupid but were diabolically opposed to my existence - whom I did not wish to understand and whom I had 'fancied' I could placate or appease through offerings - turned out to be radically evil, unconditionally evil.  I feel that my father (biological) would steal my soul if he could; would eat it in a way.  My mom is always sitting on the porch and gives a look of hope like I could change her mind but it'll never happen.  I want to kill myself; I think things worldwide will get worse before they get better; I don't trust Biden or anyone who says the right things without showing exactly what they are doing.  Christians seem so petty sometimes like melanin, hairy legs, in Japan this therefore that, Native American Indian manhood rituals.   I just want to know which pastor has the 'batting average' I can believe in but it has to be John MacArthur doesn't it?  

[truthasgodsays]

THE KING JAMES ONLY DEBATE by David Vaughn Elliott Is the King James Version of 1611 the only trustworthy translation of the Bible into modern English? Are all other versions corrupt and filled with poison? Does the KJV contain the exact English words that God wants in today's Bibles? Is the KJV the only true Bible in English? There is no desire here to bash the King James Version in the way that some King James Only people bash all other versions. Rather, the purpose is to expose the false claim that the KJV is the only perfect, inspired English Bible. Languages Are Not Static Over time, languages change. For example, in the lifetime of many of us, there has been a significant change in the meaning of the word "gay." During the past 400 years, since 1611, many words have changed meaning. As a result, the KJV contains several words that were good translations 400 years ago, but they are bad translations today. Example: Over a dozen times, the KJV uses the word "conversation," which in 1611 meant "conduct." Today, "conversation" means "talk." Thus, in today's English, the KJV does not say what the apostles wrote. In fact, the KJV makes 1 Peter 3:1 contradict itself: "They also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives." "Without the word... by the conversation"? No way. Peter said, "without a word by the behavior of their wives." Another example: 1 Thess. 4:15 does not make sense in the KJV when it says, "We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep." Not prevent them? Again, it is a case of old English. In today's English, the word is "precede." Live Christians will not precede dead ones in meeting the Lord in the air. Other examples: Of course, there is the old English "thee," "thou," "wouldest," "shouldest," etc. Then there are such terms as "Holy Ghost" for "Holy Spirit, "charity" for "love," and even "gay clothing" for "fine clothes" in James 2:3. Poor Translations However, there are more problems than just changes in the English language. There are a few words in the KJV which were simply wrong from the beginning. For example, the KJV translates "pascha" correctly as "passover" 28 times. However, in Acts 12:4, the KJV renders it as "Easter." Easter? No such thing even existed in the first century. More serious yet, the KJV in Acts 2:27-31 tells us that Jesus went to hell. In fact, the KJV renders the word "Hades" as "hell" every time it appears in the NT. This is erroneous. Hades is the abode of the dead, and that is where Jesus went when He died. As Psalm 16 predicted, and as Peter proclaimed on Pentecost, Hades could not hold Jesus. He came back from Hades; He rose from the dead. In addition, the KJV tells us in Rev. 20:14 that "death and hell were cast into the lake of fire," thus making hell temporary. What John actually wrote is that "death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire." Hades, yes, will end when Jesus returns. False Bashing of Modern Versions It can be helpful to learn the strengths and weaknesses of various translations of the Bible into modern English. It is quite another matter to publish frivolous accusations against all "modern" translations while keeping a closed eye to weaknesses of the KJV. An outstanding example of this attitude is the 1993 book, New Age Bible Versions, by Gail Riplinger. For example, in Chapter 20, "Test 1 for Antichrist -- Is Jesus the Christ?" Riplinger says: "New version editors look down in contempt saying..." – followed by a box of examples where the KJV reads "Jesus Christ," while the "new" versions read simply "Jesus." According to Riplinger, to say just "Jesus" is to have contempt for Jesus. She says, "The devil... darkens 'the door' in the new versions. His shadow falls over the word 'Christ'... The ultimate campaign against Jesus is to deny that he is the Christ." According to her, whenever any Bible reads just "Jesus," that is a denial of Jesus being the Christ! Unwittingly, Riplinger is attacking the very Authorized King James Bible of 1611 which she intends to defend. If she had done only a few minutes’ search in the Online Bible or similar software, she would have found that the KJV uses the names "Jesus" and "Christ" in the same verse only 258 times, whereas it uses the name "Jesus" by itself, without "Christ," 684 times! The King James Version is not wrong 684 times when it reads "Jesus" instead of "Jesus Christ." Rather, it is Gail Riplinger who is wrong when she invents such frivolous arguments – and her book is filled with such arguments. Well does Romans 2:1 say: "Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things." Proper Perspective None of the above is said to discredit the KJV 1611 or to say it should not be used. Rather, it is to discredit the doctrine that the KJV 1611 is a perfect, God-inspired translation, as good today as it was in 1611. All versions of the Bible were made by uninspired men. Overall, the KJV was a good translation in its day. If you grew up with it, enjoy the archaic English, and are aware of some of its limitations as discussed earlier, the choice to continue using it is yours. On the other hand, if you are looking for a good version, the KJV is not the best option today. If you would like my opinion, the most accurate translations available today are the New King James Version (NKJV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB). For those seeking an easier-to-read version, the New International Version (NIV) is the best in that category. These are my opinions. Actually, there are many benefits in using and comparing various versions. In addition, I find it a good practice, when teaching the unconverted, to make use of the Bible they already possess (if they do have one). God's Word is powerful – in its many translations – to lead people to Christ. There are those who think that the difference between Catholics and others is that we have different Bibles. That's not so. The difference is what people do or don't do with what their Bible tells them. As people mature in Christ, it's good for them to learn and understand the differences between versions. But whatever version you prefer, whatever version you have, the most important thing is to open it, read it, study it, meditate upon it, and put it into action. Scripture quotations (other than the KJV) taken from the NASB. _________________________________________ You can now Google my entire site on this page: http://insight2bp.homestead. com/Subject.html