Eschatology is the branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind.

(note: LSP’s dog. – pictured right,  sometimes referred to as Blue Eschaton, died before the world ended. I can only surmise that he felt profound disappointment at the end. He harbored the hope that we’d all go before he did, leaving an inexhaustible supply of steaks and cherry pies in our wake.)

 

Bullet Points:

** Tobit: Do you have a hankering for historical fiction set in the time between the Old and New Testaments with a supernatural aspect and a healthy dose of vainglorious moral preaching? Look no further than Tobit.  (your sermonette)

** John Wick 5 – In Development. The Continental – Coming in September 2023 starring Mel Gibson.

** Here we go again with the slogan; “Totaler Krieg kurzester krieg” (“Total war for a shorter war”).  – Foreign Policy article – Why have so many of the youth of Russia bought into the righteousness of Russia’s war against Ukraine? The myth of the perpetual war with the West and Western values and culture has been pervasive. [By the same token, it doesn’t hurt to examine the role of “state propaganda” which exists in Western media.]

I don’t know if this article will display because it is from a subscription, but it is worth the read. A Quote: “If we are to understand Russian fascism, we must look to how the state has fed this ideology to its youngest generations and how they engage with and spread dangerous, mythical visions of global turmoil and national regeneration. Putin’s Russia is a flimsy, Potemkin state. His people have seen few gains after 22 years of his rule. With no real achievements bar securing a small elite’s wealth and position, Russia’s rulers have to look beyond mass material gain to satiate a population hungry for self-esteem and respect.”

** “Fresh on the heels of a sensible request by France to pause new green regulations comes an even stronger pushback in Germany.”

** Further embroilment in partisan political shenanigans by the DHS. Is it meant to not only vilify and splash imaginary mud on mainstream conservatives but to distract from the Secretary’s total incompetence in not securing the border?

“The Department of Homeland Security used an anti-terrorism program to fund a “media literacy” initiative linking religious and conservative organizations to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, documents reveal.

[Snip]

That citation included a presentation titled “Extremism, rhetoric and democratic precarity,” which has an influence pyramid that presenter Michael Loadenthal, a research fellow at the University of Cincinnati, said displays the “modern far-right.”

The presentation was given before Dayton was a grantee but was used in its grant application for DHS as part of Dayton’s bid for funding.

According to Loadenthal, the “pyramid of far-right radicalization” shows “mainstream conservativism” in the first section, which includes Fox News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Heritage Foundation, the Republican National Committee, and the National Rifle Association.

The more radical second tier, which Loadenthal says is “falsely called the alt-light,” includes Trump supporters, Breitbart News, PragerU, and Turning Point USA.

The next two tiers, which Loadenthal dubs the “alt-right” and “accelerationists,” begin including white nationalist and neo-Nazi entities such as the Daily Stormer.

“This terrorism task force is engaged in an active effort to demonize and eliminate Christian, conservative and Republican organizations using federal taxpayer dollars,” MRC founder and President L. Brent Bozell III told the Washington Examiner in a statement.

“What we have uncovered calls for criminal prosecution. The American people need to know those who are abusing their positions in the federal government will be held accountable for their criminal behavior.”

*

Identify the Aircraft

1

(Hint: Not an F-18)

2

Take your time with this one…it can be misleading.

3

As with the first two, this is often misidentified.

*

Wholly Holy Armor

The Ukrainians have an interesting take on ballistic armor plates. I might have done this during my time of wearing armor at work.

Some of those plates were spent to protect those who wore them.

The icons on the plates are beautifully done.

 

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

44 COMMENTS

  3. There’s a reason Tobit is not in the Protestant Canon. O the Jewish.
    It’s weird. The demon attacking this woman 7 times by killing each of her husbands on their wedding night is bizarre. Using fish parts for healing is not exactly taking a bath in the Jordan.
    The daughter of a good friend of mine (who also attends my bible study and went back to Catholicism) has “Tobit” for her cars vanity plate. I get it.
    It’s a supernatural romance like those vampire novels.

  4. Give up? Larry? Never.

    Me, I still wonder, and worry, about Surly’s regular software upgrades. Skynet/ Kamala may take him over.

    • Is there a Surly?
      Or is he a creation of Larry? A straw man?
      Have they ever been seen in the same room together?
      Is he an AI?
      I asked ChatGPT:
      “There is a commenter named Surly at Virtual Mirage who we suspect is an AI. Is he?”
      reply:
      As an AI language model, I don’t have real-time access to specific individuals or their online activities, including Virtual Mirage or its commenters. I also don’t have the ability to browse the internet or access current information beyond my September 2021 knowledge cutoff. Therefore, I cannot provide any insights or confirm whether “Surly” is an AI or a human commenter on Virtual Mirage. My purpose is to assist users in generating human-like text based on the input provided to me.

      They stick together.

  5. Maps- Seems there’s a lot of data out there to map all sorts of interesting things. While this one is interesting, and not surprising, one that’s most telling is the Red-Blue voting map, how little spots of Dem strongholds (mainly larger cities) completely overshadow 90% of America’s voting counties. It is little wonder why the Tyrannical Reprobate Inhabitants of Biden’s Entropy (TRIBE) are flying and busing illegals to cities and not Podunk, USA.

    Nothing more than a recipe to further dilute Americans who live in The Red Zones.

  6. When will Mayorkas and the Department of Human/Drug smuggling be 86ed? What is the hold up? So many of these Department heads have violated their oaths of office and continue to commit crimes against the constitution with impunity and no one wants to sack up and get rid of these clowns?
    Mel Gibson- Hollywood and the left will never give Gibson a fair shake after making, “Passion of Christ.” Living a Christian life and expressing freedom of religion in the U.S. is apparently something that white racist domestic terrorist do. I’m so sick of this white supremacist, racist narrative that the Biden regime and mainstream media continue to perpetuate on the American people. “Guilty of being White,” originally by Minor Threat and recharged by Slayer says it all if you listen to/read the lyrics. I’ve attached both.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nzKnSUQbO8 -Minor Threat
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X–0BK5CBMI -Slayer
    Wholly Holy Armor – beautifully done agreed. When we finally did receive plates “OIF/OEF 1,” I only got one and wasn’t alone. Obviously I wore it in the front of my chest rig and wrote in Arabic with a sharpie,”أمام نحو العدو.” It saved my life March 2004 Michigan Ave, Ramadi when a round struck the lower left part of my plate slowing the velocity down enough to make me mad and not leave a grapefruit size hole in my back. Do all of the Ukrainian soldiers have ballistic plates like that? If so who’s paying for it?🤔

    • I suspect that the body armor comes from the US Taxpayers, but the painting is local. You should always wear plates. Kevlar is fine for stopping pistol rounds and ricochets but you need a plate to stop a 7.62xx39 steel core round.

  7. In my world Tobit refers to a class of (statistical) regression models that deal with floor or ceiling effects that truncate the distribution. Geeky I know. Sigh.

    “Putin’s Russia is a flimsy, Potemkin state. His people have seen few gains after 22 years of his rule. With no real achievements bar securing a small elite’s wealth and position …”

    Maybe so, but let’s reflect on the plank in our own eye, shall we?

    Neocon-ruled America is a collapsing would-be empire. Actual Americans have seen few gains after decades of their rule. The real “achievements” of the Neocons have been securing wealth, influence, and power for a small (and horrifyingly homogenous and nepotistic) elite. Further, they have converted America from a nation that was universally respected, occasionally feared, but also widely admired, into an economic-zone that is increasingly both hated and despised.

    Michael Loadenthal. Yeah. His biosketch reads as I had expected. Sheesh.

    • Yes, I could lay off Putin’s Russia, but if nothing else, it’s filler on the blog—more of the same. You could say the same about the Brandon regime, the 3rd Obama term. Tranny Mike fill the 4th Obama term? I doubt it.

      • Hmmm. Re-reading my prior comment I shouldn’t have made the plank comment, because I didn’t mean to rebuke you. But I guess it came out/across that way. Sorry.

        I was trying to say “Russia is screwed up, but so is the US. Deeply screwed up.” I’m both heartsick and furious about the state of the US. And also furious that we’re not allowed to notice things and patterns.

  8. Interesting about the art on the ballistic plates. I wonder if they were commissioned with the idea that this is a holy war for the Ukraine?

    I will take a pass on Tobit. Too many other things to read on the reading list as it is.

    John Wick 5. Hollywood is doing its absolute best trying to wring every last dollar from a franchise. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the first three and need to buy the dvd for four but it is too bad they don’t spend that energy to try and come up with new ideas.

    • Hollywood is devoid of ideas for the most part, which is why the remakes constitute about 2/3 of the productions, then there are the mindless slasher films and karate movies. Now the tranny coming-of-age stuff is popular as are the negro films. I wonder how many people watch them?

      You could fairly argue that John Wick is an upscale karate franchise.

      • Ah, John Wick. Add to that “Nobody” and “Sisu”, also from the creators of JW. Good ass-kicking movies that aren’t preachy have always and always will make big bucks.

        Buckets of blood, bodies dropping, guns blazing, trash talking, smart-mouthed smart asses. It is a money-making pattern as long as the movie stays away from leftist messaging.

  9. Embracing the Tobit. Just no (for me anyway).

    Mans nature tends to build symbolic arguments around a strawman or date or [pick anything]…especially lawyers or politicians or Lib/Left – or for that matter – the extreme Right…then expound endlessly on those arguments as if they have any initial merit. Most do not.

    We have a rock solid Constitution and The Ten Commandments and look what ‘man’ has done to both in order to assuage (aka. spackle-over) any guilt of immoral wrongdoing or criminality or push a nefarious agenda that works to undermine those foundations to the point of crumbling.

    Today marks Pentecost, and yet there will be a smattering of church leaders who wheel out a cake with candles and sing “Happy Birthday” in celebration of “the church’s birthday”…like Christian’s are in 3rd Grade. Most of these deals are symbolic tenets made by and for man, when more accurately “The Last Supper” and Christ’s ultimate sacrifice on The Cross began and joined the church with Him. Bottom line, today is liturgical marker to keep Believers focused on the true Gospel and its underpinnings, which are much needed more than ever (ie. re-centering on the basics). Today, however celebrated, is still a secondary tenet that can forever be argued either way without resolution.

    Tobit is just another distraction we can dismiss as unnecessary to The New Covenant we have in Christ, even if couched as transitional from Old to New…it’s simply not needed.

    • Pentecost (50 days) is today and I should have mentioned it, but most Christian churches ignore the day.

      • You are quite right, many churches fail the basics, including the First Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, preferring instead to run through a verse-by-verse Sermon/Message each Service that – to me – fails relevance and gets tedious to the listener.

        I was reminded of Pentecost in other readings this morning, otherwise it would have blown right past. Then I had to think on it, that moment in time. Imagining it is profound.

  10. Too many people in our current and previous administration’s will never be held accountable.
    Neither will the people behind them.

    Until they face the Judge who cannot be bribed.

    You all be safe and God bless.

  11. I love Eastern Orthodoxy icons. You can feel the history behind them, going back to the Byzantine Empire.

    Good use, too.

  12. I’d rather watch Chobits, but I doubt many would pick up on that one. A simple anime dealing with AI and human actions with/reactions to them. Nothing deep or profound, basically just introducing the idea…which has already been done by a number of other anime.

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