J-M's History Corner

  The United States’ healthcare system is notoriously broken, and ludicrously expensive. It’s the only for-profit healthcare system remaining among the world’s developed nations. Every other developed country has instituted taxpayer-funded universal healthcare, largely (in many cases entirely) eliminating medical bills, and ensuring that citizens aren’t made choose between bankruptcy and dying like some in the US. But dare suggest that in America, and you’ll be greeted by cries of “BuT tHaT’s SoCiAlIsM!” from the ignorant and from Big Pharma (“socialism” being the political scare word in the US for anything Republicans don’t like, shutting off reason and debate – never mind that America doesn’t have a single socialist politician, or a major socialist party). (If you want to know what socialism is, don’t ask an American. They correctly get the fact that unfettered socialism is bad, and then incorrectly label everything they don’t like “socialist”, thus greatly ...

  From Game of Thrones season 2 episode 3, which I’m in the middle of watching. Thought provoking conversation about power. https://youtu.be/FpL6Fwu0wkw  

  The previous parts to this series: Debunking American Election Myths, Part 1: The Capitol Siege Debunking American Election Myths, Part 2: More on the Capitol Siege Just A Friendly Reminder Debunking American Election Myths, Part 4: The Vice-President’s Powers and Dueling Electors A claim made by both Republicans and Democrats after last year’s American elections, and made by Republicans after the 2012 election, this is one of the easiest conspiracy theories to check – in fact, THE easiest to prove or debunk (alongside the VP’s powers). The number of registered voters in each state and county – and in many of the cities, if not all of them – is PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION found on the relevant state government websites. Similarly, the number of votes cast in each state and county, and many if not all of the cities, is publicly available information. In short, the voter turnout – whether the number of registered voters exceeded the...

 

  https://youtu.be/bIpKfw17-yY

 Here is my Restored English Translation (RET) of the 10th chapter of the Book of Genesis (Hebrew: Beresheet ).  As usual, it contains the  Hebrew names and a glossary of them after the chapter.  As I  don’t believe in the Aleph/Tavs any more, I have included a separate section at the very end showing where the Aleph/Tavs appear in the Hebrew text. The first half of this chapter contains the infamous account of the Tower of Babel.  The latter half contains a genealogy from Shem to Noah.  Like the Genesis 5 genealogy , the main versions of this genealogy – Masoretic (which in this case agrees with the Samaritan Pentateuch ) and the Septuagint – disagree on the ages of the patriarchs.  To make matters worse, the Septuagint – which is widely known to exaggerate the numbers in the genealogies (making its numbers generally unreliable) – includes an extra generation (a Cainan in between Arpachshad and Shelah) not found in the other versi...

  Blockbusters Reviewed Welcome to the 46th edition of My Movie/TV Thoughts! Last time, I reviewed Avengers: Endgame (2019). This time, I’m reviewing: Jurassic Park (1993), rated M for violence That is the Australian rating; in the United States, it’s rated PG-13 for intense science fiction terror. As usual, I’ll give the trailer and a clip at the end. And as usual, I offer the following disclaimer, just to be safe: WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD. PROCEED AT OWN RISK. Jurassic Park Want a great action-adventure thriller? Call Steven Spielburg. Want a great and memorable movie score that will become immortal? Call John Williams. Combine the two – and throw in a cast that includes Richard Attenborough, Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill, along with groundbreaking special effects and sheer terror – and you’ve got what has rightfully become regarded as one of the greatest classics of the last century. Arguably of all time. ...