After 1,500 years, frankincense returns to the Holy Land in time for Christmas

What a lovely idea.

KIBBUTZ KETURA, ISRAEL – Seven years after I revealed her success in sprouting a 2,000 year-old date palm seed found on Masada, botanist Dr Elaine Solowey of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies has done it again.

1,500 years after the last frankincense tree disappeared from the Holy Land, Dr Solowey has managed to grow the first shoots of a tree whose scented white sap was once worth more than gold.

At Kibbutz Ketura deep in Israel’s Negev Desert, Dr Solowey is carefully nurturing the fragile sapling in her greenhouse, where she is also growing myrrh and balm of Gilead – probably the “gold” brought by the Three Wise Men to the infant Jesus in Bethlehem.

“This is the first frankincense tree to set seed in Israel in 1500 years,” Dr Solowey told me as she presented the tiny sapling for its first public photo-call this week. “It was necessary to bring this variety back to the country because the last people growing these trees near the Dead Sea left and the trees left with them.”

Must be some kind of a deep Zionist plot as well, but perhaps one day I will be able to sniff this…

Sarcasm bewilders me

I have to admit that sarcasm bewilders me, usually I cant understand it and take it for face value. So people usually have to say <sarcasm font> or wave a flag. But looks like I am missing a trick..

From Smithsonian Magazine:

Sarcasm seems to exercise the brain more than sincere statements do. Scientists who have monitored the electrical activity of the brains of test subjects exposed to sarcastic statements have found that brains have to work harder to understand sarcasm.

That extra work may make our brains sharper, according to another study. College students in Israel listened to complaints to a cellphone company’s customer service line. The students were better able to solve problems creatively when the complaints were sarcastic as opposed to just plain angry. Sarcasm “appears to stimulate complex thinking and to attenuate the otherwise negative effects of anger,” according to the study authors.

And:

Sarcasm so saturates 21st-century America that according to one study of a database of telephone conversations, 23 percent of the time that the phrase “yeah, right” was used, it was uttered sarcastically. Entire phrases have almost lost their literal meanings because they are so frequently said with a sneer. “Big deal,” for example. When’s the last time someone said that to you and meant it sincerely? “My heart bleeds for you” almost always equals “Tell it to someone who cares,” and “Aren’t you special” means you aren’t.

Or else since this was done in Israel, this could well be a zionist plot <sarcasm font>

HU scientists discover 'Star of David' molecule

Hebrew University researchers have created a fascinating molecule which can be used for diabetes cures and for green fuel inputs.

Here’s the sucker in question.

And while i was of interest to me as the proverbial nerd, the idiot clown in me was laughing my head off thinking about the idiot rage boys now fulminating on clean fuel or medicines stating that its a Zionist plot. heh.

Captain of Jewish immigrant ship the Exodus dies

This took me back to my days as a teenager when I first read Leon Uris’s The Exodus. leave aside the fact that the book is, lets say politely, historically challenged, but for a teenager, its fascinating. Reading about Dov and Ari and the Holocaust and how a nation and a country was created, pretty stirring stuff. I quote:

The skipper of the Jewish immigrant ship the Exodus, which was refused entry to British-controlled Palestine in 1947, has died at the age of 86. The Exodus was carrying over 4,000 mostly Holocaust survivors when the ship was forced to return to Germany. The incident sparked widespread sympathy for their plight. After weeks at sea, the refugees were placed in camps in Germany. After an international outcry, they were transferred to Cyprus by the British authorities, where they remained until the creation of Israel in 1948.

Pretty interesting.

The curious story of Jesus Matzo

I was doing comfort shopping in Sainsbury's last weekend when I came across this stack of goods. I have to admit I was puzzled. Yehuda as the word stood for Christian or Jesus as that's what I have heard in my childhood. Matzo I knew was a Jewish bread similar to a Indian chapati.

The maker of this bread is Yehuda Matzo and the Matzo seems to be named after a gentleman called as Eliezer Ben Yehuda, one of the men who was mainly responsible for reviving a long dead language, Hebrew, into common usage. Read his wiki entry, fascinating story. How amazing, a single man fighting against all those odds, to resurrect a language long thought to be dead or extinct.

Curious how language becomes part of nationalism as we have seen in so many countries, whether in Tamil Nadu with Tamil, Wales with Welsh, Spanish versus English in USA.

 

Technorati Tags: Hebrew,History,Israel,Nationalism,Zionism

Zionists are causing old people to die in England

This was so funny. It was a spoof post on here, which claimed to show that it was the ZIonists and their support by the British Government which is causing the old to die off or be cold or both!. And then everybody got taken in, look at the comments on the post, or even here.



Come on guys, it was a spoof, pisstaking post, are you seriously sure that any sane man can write that?



All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Arun Gandhi's opinion on Israel and Jews

As I said to a fellow denizen of the net, Arun Gandhi got into this pickle because he is unable to calibrate a principle "non-violence" against place/public policy. For example, he himself agreed that nonviolence can only work against a liberal society such as the UK. In other words, if he had practiced this non-violence principle against say Beria or Stalin, well, I wouldn't bet on that principle working.

In this case of Jews and Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi suggested that they all go happily to their deaths as part of non-violence and belief in god. Well, they did, millions of them. (even if this "happily" is debatable!) And? It still took a war to get rid of Hitler. So that kind of public policy advice is rather silly. (Mind you, his suggestions to the Arabs was even more silly!)

And now this is even sillier. Also it shows the lack of understanding of the religion by concentrating so much on the holocaust. While I am not an expert on Zionism, I do think that while the holocaust did play its part, one forgets the civilisational and religious drive behind Zionism going back to the slavery in Egypt and and exile in Babylon millennia ago. So the Zionist philosophy is based upon much deeper, longer and broader factors than just the Holocaust. It borrows and rests on a very hard set of religious facts and emotions. So resolving the Palestinian question cannot be done by just looking at the Holocaust.

Before his apology, yes, his statement could be construed as anti-Semitism, but I am giving him the benefit of doubt (to use a cricketing metaphor!) and accepting his apology and explanation.

As for his statement about thousands of people marching across the Jordan River in a non-violent protest, actually that is a good tactic because Israel will not be able to resist it, but Palestinians, for a variety of reasons, will not be able to do this. See here for a more detailed debate about the applicability of this principle. But, unfortunately, Arun Gandhi tried to parlay his family name and all he managed to end up doing was to commit the same mistake that the Mahatma committed with respect to this issue.

Technorati Tags: Anti-Semitism,India,Israel,Palestine,Judaism,Zionism

What's the reward for killing Zionist cows?

Huh? Huh? you tell me! Read this and groan!

Technorati Tags: Zionism , Palestine , Terrorism

Zionist Control over US Media?

Here's a look at the frequently heard allegation but never proven. I quote:

If one accepts that the Sulzbergers are Episcopalian, they can be eliminated as ‘Jewish’ controllers of the New York Times. The Knight Ridder group controls many newspapers. Betty Scripps, who is a stalwart of my local Washington National Opera company, is not exactly a Hadassah lady. The mighty Scripps Howard empire, which rose to prominence a century ago alongside the Cowles dynasty, still controls numerous publications. Names like Gannett, Robinson and McClatchey dominate other media empires, along with Sumner Redstone of Viacom and Boisfueillet Jones of the Washington Post. Then there is the Southern Tennant-Bryan empire. Add to this mix Ted Turner, Murdoch, Dow Jones, Luce and Hearst and I do not see any Jewish conspiracy.
Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson are the three heavyweight network news anchors, and I do not recall any Jews ever sitting in these chairs in my lifetime. Peter Jennings was a fierce critic of Israeli policies and made this known in his ABC News reports. Israel is covered infinitely less on American television than on British media, but when it is it is often portrayed with a critical eye, most particularly on CNN.
The opinion-formers in the United States in primetime are non-Jews: Gwyn Ifyl, Stephen Colbert, Lou Dobbs, Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers Bill O’Reilly and finally Keith Olbermann, who is of German Lutheran extraction. In fact, except for the occasional appearance by Bill Kristol, the vast array of television and radio punditry is the exclusive realm of Christian commentators.
In Hollywood there are some prominent Jews but except for 'Schindler’s List,' when did Spielberg or any other Hollywood mogul produce Zionist or Jewish-dominated material? Woody Allen’s humour is New York Jewish, but except for ‘Crimes and Misdemeanours’ he has never produced a rant on Zionist or Jewish themes.

Mind you, if its not Zionist control, then its Crusader Zionist control. that should take care of the above defence! :)

Technorati Tags: Crusades , Christianity , Zionism , Media , USA , Israel