Videos, Audio, Poetry, Paintings etc., that send a message

Worlds Most Dangerous Comic - This guy appeared on "America's Got Talent" and he goes all out just to win!

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We should not let radical environmentalists create all kinds of regulations in China because "pollution" is overstated and exploited in these videos and blown out of proportion. Waste = success. No waste = no money being made.

As a Republicand and a Christian I say we vote to overturn pollution laws in America so we can have a competitive edge again. "global warming" is a myth. GOD is REAL!

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imajica said:

tell me if this doesn't send a shiver down your spine - damn this guy has a good voice!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exyJ2CSfrHo

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Accusations of mutiny and an accidental death leave sailor Billy Budd in danger of hanging for murder. Britten's masterful setting of Herman Melville's towering novel-adapted by E.M. Forester and Eric Crozier-illuminates a journey through "the straits of hell."

Britten's Billy Budd
Apr. 25 - May 9, 2008 at Houston Grand Opera
www.houstongrandopera.org

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Budd Billy Budd is a novella begun around 1886 by American author Herman Melville, (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) completed but not published before his death. The work has been central to Melville scholarship since it was discovered in manuscript among Melville's papers in 1924 (33 years after his death)and published the same year.

... In 1962, Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr. established what is now considered the correct text; it was published by the University of Chicago Press, and most editions printed since then follow the Hayford/Sealts text. One of the most influential twentieth century versions of the story was the libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier for the 1951 opera Billy Budd by Benjamin Britten.

[edit] Plot summary
The plot follows Billy Budd, a seaman pressed into service aboard the HMS Bellipotent in the year 1797, when the British Navy was reeling from two major mutinies and was threatened by Napoleon's military ambitions. Billy, suffused with innocence, openness, and natural charisma, is adored by the crew, but for unexplained reasons arouses the antagonism of the ship's Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, who falsely accuses Billy of conspiracy to mutiny.

When Claggart brings his charges to the Captain, the Hon. Edward Fairfax "Starry" Vere, Vere summons both Claggart and Billy to his cabin for a private confrontation. When, in Billy's and Vere's presence, Claggart makes his false charges, Billy is unable to find the words to respond, due to a speech impediment. Unable to express himself verbally, he lashes out seemingly involuntarily at Claggart, killing him with a single blow. Vere, an eminently thoughtful man whose name recalls the Latin words "veritas" (truth) and "vir" (man) as well as the English word "veer," then convenes a drumhead court-martial.

He then intervenes in the deliberations of the court-martial panel to argue them into convicting Billy, despite their and his belief in Billy's innocence before God. ("an angel of God, yet the angel must die.") Vere claims to be following the letter of the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War, but recent scholarship suggests otherwise. At his insistence, the court-martial convicts Billy; Vere argues that any appearance of weakness in the officers and failure to enforce discipline could stir the already-turbulent waters of mutiny throughout the British fleet. Condemned to be hanged from the ship's yardarm at dawn the morning after the killing, Billy's final words are, "God bless Captain Vere!"

The story may have been based on events onboard USS Somers.


[edit] Popular interpretation
A story ultimately about good and evil, Billy Budd has often been interpreted allegorically, with Billy interpreted typologically as Christ or the Biblical Adam, with Claggart (compared to a snake several times in the text) figured as Satan. Part of Claggart's hatred comes not despite Billy's goodness, but because of it. Claggart is also seen to be thought of as the Biblical Judas. The act of turning in an innocent man to authority and the allusion of the priest kissing Billy on the cheek before he dies, just as Judas kisses Jesus on the cheek when he was betrayed. Vere is often associated with Pontius Pilate. This theory stems mainly from the characteristics attributed to each man. Billy is innocent, often compared to a barbarian or a child, while Claggart is a representation of evil with a "depravity according to nature," a phrase Melville borrows from Plato. Vere, without a doubt the most conflicted character in the novel, is torn between his compassion for the "Handsome Sailor" and his martial adherence to the Articles of War.

......
In the 1980s, Richard Weisberg of Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law advanced a reading of the novel based on his careful research into the history of the governing law. Based on his mining of statutory law and actual practice in the Royal Navy in the era in which the book takes place, Weisberg rejects the traditional reading of Captain Vere as a good man trapped by bad law and proposes instead that Vere deliberately distorted the applicable substantive and procedural law to bring about Billy's death. The most fully worked-out version of Weisberg's argument can be found in chapters 8 and 9 of his book The Failure of the Word: The Lawyer as Protagonist in Modern Fiction [orig. ed., 1984; expanded ed., 1989].

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BIG BWACULL said:

For a laugh :

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greek pontian ancient dance danced from serres akrites dancers

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This is a video showing ethnic Macedonians from a village arrounf Florina (Lerin) in northern greece. The folk dance is called "ZA RAMO" which in Macedonian means "Sholder to sholder", because people that are dancing are holding each other by their sholder.

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http://oceania.org.au
http://iwhales.org

This is a whale we encountered during our 2001 Research Expedition.
We named him "Sky Rider". He breached over sixty times consecutively!

The Oceania Project was established in 1988 by Trish Franklin.
We are an independent not-for-profit research organization dedicated to raising awareness about whales and dolphins.
Thank you for your support!
Participate in the internship program aboard the annual whale research expedition:

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Themes:
skepticism is good
religion is illogical
religion is dangerous
The Quotes:

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
--Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
--Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."
--Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991)

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
--Carl Sagan (1934-1997)

"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them." ibid., p. 226
--Galileo Galilei (1564--1642)

"The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."
--Stephen Hawking (1942-present)

"Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world."
--John Burroughs (1837-1921)

"If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life."
--Albert Camus (1913-1960)

"Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction--faith in fiction is a damnable false hope."
--Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

"And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence."
--Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."
--Richard Dawkins (1941-persent)

"Man... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." Letters from the Earth
--Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice"
--Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

"An honest god is the noblest work of man. ... God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power."
--Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)

"It's an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous."
--Gloria Steinem (1934-present)

"I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously."
--Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

"I can't embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages. And that persecution still goes on today all over the world."
--Amanda Donohoe (1962-present)

"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."
--Stephen King (1947-persent)

"Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine."
--Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty."
--Ilka Chase (1900-1978)

"There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as The Dark Ages."
--Ruth Hurmence Green (1915-1981)

"Religion is a byproduct of fear... For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?"
--Arthur C. Clarke (1917-present)

"The wisdom from these great thinkers is a precious gift. To ignore their intellectual contribution, is to risk stalling the progress they hoped to foster."

SecularAstronomer (1987-) and websnarf (1969-), YouTube Atheists.

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"Man... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." Letters from the Earth
--Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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"He's said sorry! - to all aboriginals with high mortgages in marginal electorates for cryssake!!"

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