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Yes,
you're right. There's something new on the NewsGarden website.
We've become an Amazon affliate. That means if you buy something
from one of our Amazon links the channel will get from 2.5-15%
which will be used to help defray expenses, for quiz prizes,
etc. Support your channel! Buy! If you have any questions
or suggestions contact Maggijo, Jed, alllie or Patti on channel!
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Galileo's
Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love
Dava Sobel tells the story of the Galileo and
his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. Sobel bases
her book on 124 surviving letters to the scientist from the
nun. This impressive book proves to be less the story of Galileo's
elder daughter, the oldest of his three illegitimate children,
and more the story of Galileo himself and his trial before
the Inquisition for arguing that Earth moves around the Sun.
That familiar tale is given a new slant by Sobel's translation.
From amazon.com
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God's
Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing
of the English Bible---A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal
From Publishers Weekly:
William Tyndale set out to produce a faithful translation
of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the Old and New Testament.
Such a translation brought him into conflict with the king
and his court. Tyndale set out on a life of self-imposed exile
in Germany and Amsterdam, where he translated and printed
his Bible. As his work made its way into England-thanks in
large part to Anne Boleyn's advocacy-Sir Thomas More, one
of England's most active heretic hunters, attempted in every
possible way to have Tyndale tried as a heretic. Moynahan
recounts the oft-told story of Tyndale's subterfuge and his
remarkable contribution to the history of Bible translation
while recreating the political and religious intrigue of early
16th-century England. Moynahan captures well More's hatred
of Tyndale as well as Tyndale's burning desire to contribute
to God's work through Bible translation, even if it meant
death at the stake. As Moynahan points out, Tyndale's translation
still exists in the King James Version, since his words account
for 84% of its New Testament and 76% of its Old Testament.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Columns:
Note: Anyone who wishes to
become a columnist
or submit a column or a response
to a column
please contact Alllie.
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Happy Endings:
A Theory of
By Alllie
Why do we feel so dissatisfied if a story doesn't have a happy
ending? Why do we like stories in the first place? Why do we not
only like to hear them, we like to tell them? We are compulsive
communicators. We can't stop ourselves. When a caveman went down
to a water hole and a lion jumped out and almost got him, the first
thing he did after his escape was to hurry home and tell everyone
he met about the lion down by the waterhole and how he avoided being
eaten. Thus his relatives and his group of hunter/gatherers learned
there was a lion down by the waterhole and how to avoid it. As the
years passed the information about the hunter who escaped a lion
hiding by a waterhole might be transformed into a story repeated
around fires for a thousand years, a story people love to tell.
We like our lessons wrapped in stories, we like stories about people
rather than just information, because we are social animals. Our
survival has long been enhanced by living in groups and when intelligent
animals live in social groups it is adaptive for them to like
gossip,
to be interested in who is doing what to whom and who is buddies
with whom, who will cheat you and who will help you. Social animals,
particularly animals like us that engage in reciprocal altruism,
aka doing favors and getting favors in return, have to take a keen
interest in learning who to trust, who will reciprocate, and who
will not. We have evolved to like doing what we needed to do. Like
hunting. Or gathering, aka shopping without having to pay. Or gossiping.
We evolved to like listening to stories about individuals we know.
And then about individuals we didn't know. We came to like our lessons
disguised as stories because we had already evolved to like stories,
to like gossip. We absorb information more easily, remember it more
completely, if it comes packaged in stories about people.
So we are compulsive communicators. Writing was the first great
facilitator of this obsession, books* the second
and the Internet the third.** The free
sharing of information shows our compulsive communication, our drive
to tell. We can't keep quiet. We have to tell what we know even
if telling can get us hurt or dead. Copernicus had to share his
proofs that the world circled around the sun even if that sharing
could get him killed. No fool, he waited till he was almost safely
dead before he had his work published. Galileo couldn't keep his
mouth shut either and was tried (and this was his second
trial for repeating the same offense), threatened with torture,
forced to recant the Copernican doctrine and still spent the last
years of his life under house arrest. William
Tyndale was strangled and his body burned for translating the
Bible into English. He knew the danger but he was compelled to share
what he knew at a time when even parents were burned for teaching
their children the Lord's Prayer or the Ten Commandments in English.
Even cops understand this drive and know if they just let criminals
talk they will often confess just because they can't stop themselves
from telling about their crimes. The people who can keep their mouths
shut or who knowingly tell lies, like the CIA or the Bush Junta,
prove how inhuman they are by this unhuman behavior. That is the
lesson of the boy who cries wolf. He tells untrue stories; gives
untrue warnings, until no one believes him even when he's telling
the truth, and therefore he gets eaten. The lesson is not to give
false warnings, not to tell false stories, because they can get
you killed, or at least ignored by those you know. The boy's death
is even a happy ending, a just punishment for his lies, and happy
because he will never again mislead anyone.
So we are compulsive communicators and we like stories, both telling
them and listening to them. But why must the stories have a happy
endings? Well they don't have to. Stories with unhappy endings can
be useful too. An unhappy story about how the lion down by the waterhole
ate someone can be instructive because it teaches that the waterhole
is a dangerous place. Even better would be a story about someone
caught but who escaped by ramming his fist down the lion's throat.
That would be a lesson worth knowing and telling even if the victim
was crippled in the attack. It would still be a helpful story. The
best stories though, the stories with the happy endings, are about
not getting hurt; about not getting eaten, they teach us how to
survive and prevail! The story of the person who got mauled by a
lion is not nearly as useful or satisfying as the story of the guy
who watched the half hidden places down by the waterhole; saw the
lion before it saw him, and managed to sneak away or climb a tree
and not get caught in the first place. The happy ending validates
the lesson.
The media recognizes our need for happy endings, and uses that
knowledge to graft them on stories that have no lessons or that
are as filled with lies as the mouth of the boy who cried wolf or
the Bush who cried terrorist. Much of today's "entertainment"
consists of stories that teach nothing. When we encounter a story
that does it adds an extra dimension to our enjoyment. For example,
Titanic. The lessons are: How to escape from a sinking ship;
and the value of a pair bond in a dangerous situation, i.e., the
value of love. As the young lovers help one another we are shown
that each would have died without the other. As they struggle through
the sinking ship we see what it would be like to struggle through
the cold water, the flooded compartments, what to expect, which
strategies work. As the ship goes down with the lovers clinging
to the stern we are taught that maybe we could cling to the stern
in the same situation and live. The story, like all good stories,
becomes a kind of virtual mental simulator, allowing us to experience
what it would be like to be on a sinking ship without actually being
on one. We learn what to expect. We figure out what we would do
the same and what do differently. Even though Titanic's ending
is semi-unhappy, the lesson that love can keep you alive is still
a valid one.
So, I think that is why we like stories and why we like happy endings.
I believe telling stories and listening to stories are adaptive.
They help us and our DNA to survive and we have evolved to like
them. The telling and the listening, both sides. Most of us can't
restrain ourselves from telling what we know even if sometimes our
stories are little more than whining because another time they might
teach a loved one an important lesson in how to survive.
*
I mean "books" to include all print
media, everything from the Encyclopedia Britannica to the most lowly
flyer and everything in between.
**I'm leaving movies, television and radio
out of this list because with them the communication is all one
way, from those rich enough to own a television or radio station
or rich enough to make movies or TV shows, to us. We only get to
listen in this form of communication. We never get to tell.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Jed for his beta help.
© Alllie,
2003
Reader Response
email alllie
with any responses
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Articles
of Interest
Bush and the Assassination
of JFK by Paul Kangas
ANNALS
OF DEMOCRACY : COUNTING VOTES by Ronnie Dugger (Nov
7, 1988)
Computerized
Systems for Voting Seen as Vulnerable to Tampering by David
Burnham,
The New York Times (July
29, 1985) plus emphasis, links and comments
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Sigmund Aas
The
Terrorist's Achilles Heel: An Alternative Blow to Terrorism
(June 24, 2004)
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Apocalypse
Number Nine
(mp3,
2.9 meg, Oct 4, 2002)
Souces:Artist: Kumi Tanioka
Album: Final Fantasy XI Original Soundtrack (CD
TWO)
Track :The Awakening
Vocals: George W. Bush
Plus Additional sounds & subliminal track
Editing by Aleister
Fun
with Paperdolls
(May 19, 2003)
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Arachne & TaoUrso
TURTLE
TALES: Exodus in a Tin Can on Wheels
Part
1 -
Part 2 -
Part 3 -
Epilogue
Turtle
Tales II: The Road Warrior (November
2004)
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Jimmy2k^
What
is the American Way of Life
(Jan27, 2003)
America is Under Siege
(Dec 3, 2002)
Ozzy Osbourne - American Idol (Nov 26, 2002)
Thomas Jefferson
and Ann Coulter - Comparison and Contrast (Nov 21,
2002)
Some Thoughts on American
Media (Nov 11, 2002)
Some Thoughts on Addiction (Oct 28, 2002)
What Color is the
Sky? (Oct 25, 2002)
The End is Near - And Other
Truths (Oct 7, 2002)
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Hoopie
News_Asylum
(Sept 15, 2002)
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ItsMarty
Virtue
is not chosen, the chosen becomes virtuous
(October 14, 2003) Conspiracy
Theory This!(November 18, 2003)
Black & White (November
21, 2003)
From Cordoba to Jerusalem
(November 25, 2003)
Free Speech and Intolerance
(January 20, 2004)
State
of the Old Union seen from the New Union (Febuary 2,
2004) |
KG4ZMP
Lunar Cheese And Federal Pork (January
20, 2004)
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Lester
Michaels
Morality
& Ethics: A case study of the Carlyle Group |
Marij
Bush's
Folly
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Samurai_Liberal
Election
2000-Highway Robbery and a Supreme Court Disgrace-
Part
1 (May
23, 2003)
Part 2 (May
29, 2003)
Part 3 (June 12,
2003)
Part 4 (July 8,
2003)
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TaleWgnDg
Bush
Is Packing The Federal Courts: What Can I Do? (June
28, 2003)
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Thargor
The
Rantings of an Angry, Fed Up Conservative
BUSH
BASHING DONE WITH LACK OF EVIDENCE OR CONCERN FOR ACCURACY
(July 1, 2003)
A
RECAP OF THE USSC'S 2002 TERM (July 5, 2003)
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Warpster
The
Myth of Free Trade (Febuary 3, 2004)
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More Columns |
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