We are Back

Gavin writes: Hi, guys and gals. We're back. I am sufficiently recovered from a series of six operations ... or was it seven? ... to be able to promise that we'll be blogging on a regular basis again. Right now I'm off on one of my favorite rants, having just watched the latest trash on Stonehenge. (You should know that many years ago I worked in the neighborhood of Stonehenge at the British Army's missile range on Salisbury Plain. The soil there is a thin layer of humus covering the chalk. The army found that even driving a tracked vehicle across it would churn up the surface.)

We have watched with dismayed amazement as the various "highly intelligent, expert" archaeologists tried to figure out how the early peoples moved the stones.
To us it's extremely simple. If you look at the thermoclines, you will see that in the period when Stonehenge was built, temperatures in winter were just a trifle colder--perhaps 1 degree--than in the present day. In wintertime the ground on Salisbury Plain gets frozen hard.
We have suggested for many years that the way to move rocks is to slide them on ice: Throw down some water overnight. Let it freeze. Slide your stones.
Anyway, the archaeologists will continue to come up with fanciful explanations and methodologies. Students will grub around and find new artifacts. Let's let 'em have their fun.
On another subject, which similarly seems to us to be self-evident: When we first founded the School, we had many many newcomers seeking information. There were very few books from which they could get "odd" (make that deviant or unconventional) notions. Thus we were able to have them experiment with such things as the size of sacred circles and the best materials with which to cast those circles. It turned out that there was a connection between the size of modern circles and the ancient stone circles, and that electrically conducting materials made more effective circles than non-conductors. Yet today's self-styled Witches constantly ignore this research and go their happy ways casting imaginary circles with beautifully wrought swords--which are in and of themselves magnetic and thus disturb any psychic phenomena. As with the archaeologists, we're going to let them go their happy ways. We won't tell them that more experiments are now being done using ellipses instead of circles. An ellipse does have two focal points, and careful measurement of the old stone circles shows that they were all "squashed": more like an ellipse than like a circle.

Okay. Gavin's rants are done for today. Here comes Yvonne's. Blessed be all.

Yvonne writes:
Because of the kindness and generosity of a friend, I've been able now to read a book recommended in Free Inquiry, the magazine of the Council for Secular Humanism at the Center for Inquiry: freeinquiry@secularhumanism.org, http://www.secularhumanism.org The book itself? Bothwell's Prince of War. Pick it up yourself ... if you've got a strong stomach. If you're a recovering Christian, as I am, you have probably heard the term whited sepulchre: a tomb or crypt whitewashed on the outside, containing rotting corpses. The phrase doesn't even hint at the life-long behavior patterns exhibited by Saint Billy Graham of the Southern Baptist Convention and described with fully documented backup in Bothwell's book. You'd better have lots of aspirin handy when you pick the thing up.
It documents insistent behavior that I think of as a song: "Brown Noses at the White House" and lots more. War-mongering is only one expression of the sainted mindset. I recommend the book as a glimpse at the dark side of Christianity--which we all know exists. But again: You'd better have a strong stomach.