Aug. 15th, 2003

sophiaserpentia: (Default)
Crossposted in [livejournal.com profile] questionofgod

The question of whether to accept or reject the Gospel of Thomas from the orthodox or mainstream Christian viewpoint is not clear-cut. Many of the church fathers quoted approvingly from it. For example, in the second epistle of Clement, we find this:

[II Clement 12] Let us therefore await the kingdom of God betimes in love and righteousness, since we know not the day of God's appearing. For the Lord Himself, being asked by a certain Person when His kingdom would come, said, When the two shall shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female, neither male nor female. Now the two are one, when we speak truth among ourselves, and in two bodies there shall be one soul without dissimulation. And by the outside as the inside He meaneth this: by the inside He meaneth the soul and by the outside the body. Therefore in like manner as thy body appeareth, so also let thy soul be manifest in its good works. And by the male with the female, neither male nor female, He meaneth this; that a brother seeing a sister should have no thought of her as of a female, and that a sister seeing a brother should not have any thought of him as of a male. These things if ye do, saith He, the kingdom of my Father shall come.


Expandon references by Justin, Irenaeus, the <i>Didascalia Apostolorum</i>, and Origen. )
sophiaserpentia: (Default)
Will someone please tell me in the unlikely event I'm ever mentioned in LiveJournal Review or LJDrama? Because I can't be expected to pay attention to those sites. I've got things to do...
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More depressing news about the state of the world's oceans, thanks to human activity.

"It didn't matter if we were looking at the Red Sea, Australia or the Caribbean," added Karen Bjorndal, director of the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research at the University of Florida. "As soon as human exploitation began, whether in the 1600s in Bermuda or tens of thousands of years ago in the Red Sea, the same scenarios were put into play."

First, people killed off large predators such as sharks and the biggest fish and turtles, which are easy to catch and slow to reproduce. Then smaller fish go and finally sea grasses and the corals themselves. A search of historical and archaeological records in 14 regions including the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Red Sea, Caribbean and Australia, show the same thing -- these reefs used to be teeming with life and are not any more.

"In the 1600s when the European ships used to navigate in the Caribbean ... the ship's captain could navigate by the sounds of turtles swimming in the water, there were so many turtles swimming in the water. It is a very, very different world," Pandolfi said. And yet, these turtles had already been decimated by indigenous populations on the Caribbean islands. "I used to think that green turtles were basically in pristine shape when Columbus arrived, and I don't think that any more," Bjorndal said.

from Studies Show People and Coral Don't Mix
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"The problem, for the most part, has been that no one has an incentive to invest billions of dollars in new wires, new towers and new transformers. The old utilities have sold off their power plants but still hold a highly regulated monopoly on the network of lines, and they would invest in new transmission only if state regulators would guarantee them rate increases to pay for it.

"That is the last thing the reglators, who deregulated much of the industry in hopes of lowering rates, would be willing to do. The entrepreneurial power companies that have bought up power plants have decided against building new transmission lines that would compete with existing ones, possibly driving down transmission charges, and would, at most times, be nothing more than 'excess capacity.'"

from the New York Times

Too few companies take the long view. Instead the current idea of efficiency is warehouses on wheels and an overpowering fear of idleness or redundancy. Why pay to maintain "excess capacity" that is not paying for itself?

I suspect the answer to that question is going to come when the energy companies responsible for the blackout, if found negligent, face billions of dollars in lawsuits. Perhaps THAT will provide incentive.

The result of deregulation appears to be a crumbling infrastructure, because there are no immediate payoffs for infrastructure reinforcement. Unfortunately, it may now be too late to go back easily. America is going to be solving the infrastructure problem for decades.

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