Past Postings

Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.

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I came across this by happenstance -- a skit from the Red Skelton show with Emmaline Henry (Mrs. Bellows from "I Dream of Jeannie") and Dan Blocker; from 9 Nov. 1970. In those days they had personality (if not always scripts!)

["Red Skelton And Dan Blocker"]

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"There are some insincere and vagrant spirits degraded from their heavenly vigour by earthly stains and lusts. Now these spirits, after having lost the simplicity of their nature by being weighed down and immersed in vices, for a solace of their calamity, cease not, now that they are ruined themselves, to ruin others; and being depraved themselves, to infuse into others the error of their depravity and being themselves alienated from God, to separate others from God by the introduction of degraded superstitions. The poets know that those spirits are demons; the philosophers discourse of them; Socrates knew it, who, at the nod and decision of a demon that was at his side, either declined or undertook affairs. The Magi, also, not only know that there are demons, but, moreover, whatever miracle they affect to perform, do it by means of demons; by their aspirations and communications they show their wondrous tricks, making either those things appear which are not, or those things not to appear which are. Of those magicians, the first both in eloquence and in deed, Sosthenes, not only describes the true God with fitting majesty, but the angels that are the ministers and messengers of God, even the true God. And he knew that it enhanced His veneration, that in awe of the very nod and glance of their Lord they should tremble. The same man also declared that demons were earthly, wandering, hostile to humanity. What said Plato, who believed that it was a hard thing to find out God? Does not he also, without hesitation, tell of both angels and demons? And in his Symposium also, does not he endeavour to explain the nature of demons? For he will have it to be a substance between mortal and immortal -- that is, mediate between body and spirit, compounded by mingling of earthly weight and heavenly lightness; whence also he warns us of the desire of love, and he says that it is moulded and glides into the human breast, and stirs the senses, and moulds the affections, and infuses the ardour of lust.
[Ch. 27]
"These impure spirits, therefore -- the demons -- as is shown by the Magi, by the philosophers, and by Plato, consecrated under statues and images, lurk there, and by their afflatus attain the authority as of a present deity; while in the meantime they are breathed into the prophets, while they dwell in the shrines, while sometimes they animate the fibres of the entrails, control the flights of birds, direct the lots, are the cause of oracles involved in many falsehoods. For they are both deceived, and they deceive; inasmuch as they are both ignorant of the simple truth, and for their own ruin they confess not that which they know. Thus they weigh men downwards from heaven, and call them away from the true God to material things: they disturb the life, render all men unquiet; creeping also secretly into human bodies, with subtlety, as being spirits, they feign diseases, alarm the minds, wrench about the limbs; that they may constrain men to worship them, being gorged with the fumes of altars or the sacrifices of cattle, that, by remitting what they had bound, they may seem to have cured it. These raging maniacs also, whom you see rush about in public, are moreover themselves prophets without a temple; thus they rage, thus they rave, thus they are whirled around. In them also there is a like instigation of the demon, but there is a dissimilar occasion for their madness. From the same causes also arise those things which were spoken of a little time ago by you, that Jupiter demanded the restoration of his games in a dream, that the Castors appeared with horses, and that a small ship was following the leading of the matron's girdle. A great many, even some of your own people, know all those things that the demons themselves confess concerning themselves, as often as they are driven by us from bodies by the torments of our words and by the fires of our prayers. Saturn himself, and Serapis, and Jupiter, and whatever demons you worship, overcome by pain, speak out what they are; and assuredly they do not lie to their own discredit, especially when any of you are standing by. Since they themselves are the witnesses that they are demons, believe them when they confess the truth of themselves; for when abjured by the only and true God, unwillingly the wretched beings shudder in their bodies, and either at once leap forth, or vanish by degrees, as the faith of the sufferer assists or the grace of the healer inspires. Thus they fly from Christians when near at hand, whom at a distance they harassed by your means in their assemblies. And thus, introduced into the minds of the ignorant, they secretly sow there a hatred of us by means of fear. For it is natural both to hate one whom you fear, and to injure one whom you have feared, if you can. Thus they take possession of the minds and obstruct the hearts, that men may begin to hate us before they know us; lest, if known, they should either imitate us, or not be able to condemn us."
~ Marcus Minucius Felix (c. 150?-270? A.D.), Octavius, chs. 26-27.

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"Knock! Knock!"

Who's there?

"THUMP! (swish) THUMP! (swish) THUMP! (swish) THUMP!, etc., etc."

THUMP! (swish) THUMP! (swish) THUMP! (swish) THUMP!, etc., etc. -- who?

"THUMP! (swish) THUMP! (swish) THUMP! (swish) THUMP!, etc., etc.-- coming soon to a theater near you (check local listings.)"

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Revisionist History -- Then and NOW

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I earlier posted this for laughs on Face Book, but for anybody else in want of a smile...

["Convoy Theme Song" -- C.W. McCall]

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For my own further edification, and perhaps yours also.

In DEDUCTIVE (or syllogistic) arguments the premises are made or based on statements. These statements may be "true" or "false," and may be drawn from INDUCTIVE arguments, and or other (or secondary) deductive arguments whose valid or invalid conclusions are treated as true and false when used as premises. Inductive arguments are ether "strong" or "weak;" while statements based on deductive inference are drawn from "valid" or "invalid" conclusions (except when, for practicality's sake, they are formally used as premises.) Deductive arguments, of themselves, then are not true or false as such, but only either valid or invalid. An argument then becomes "true" or "false" (as it were) only when it is both sound and valid. So, in other words, while it is necessary for a sound argument to be valid in order to be true, in logic it is not necessary for a valid argument to be sound in order to be valid; however, a valid argument must be sound in order to be "true."

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HANDY TIP #4839

"If God created the world, why and how does evil exist?
Yours Truly,
PROFESSOR. CHARLES C. SOLUDO
GOVERNOR, CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA"

Glad you asked. While it is no doubt true, everything that exists, since God created them or it, is inherently good, not every one or everything is in the right place and or time where they ought to be.
Hope this helps,

WTS

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ABOVE -- An artist's recreation of the young Simon the Magician, fresh out of Samaritan High and backed by Helen of Tyre, on the verge and threshold of what-proved-to-be a lifetime career in sorcery and the nercomantic arts.

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["Lou Reed - Perfect Day" -- Lou Reed live Sessions At West 54th 98-10-31]

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Don't you just love dumb people who act and speak (when they say anything) with that air of authority?

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For humanity at large, life is a referendum over whether right reason and honest truth, underpinned by law, should prevail and rule over and among us -- or by contrast and alternatively, secrecy, deception, autocratic spirit people and pie in the sky. As the ballot-count presently stands, the latter view seems the more successful; which is more the shame seeing how there is no greater evil known or ever known than these rotten sorts of spirit people. But since they cannot be discussed openly, intelligently, and scientifically, what wonder that such tyrants should continue to predominantly lord it over the rest of us, by and through their henchmen in the guises of false business, false government, false religion, and organized crime generally.

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I don't need to censor him; indeed, would encourage you to listen most closely to what he says. Why is it then that he so desperately needs to censor me?

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