Childress

The missionary Mormon girls I've encountered represent a vast upgrade over the rather matronly Jehovah Witness women who've come to my door. No offense to the late Michael Jackson.

It's our fault, JK. Cotard dwells in a higher dimension. But Emrys grokked it. I kneel to both of them. Or it may be a case of the Cotard Delusion (no offense ,Cotard): ' The delusion of negation is the central symptom in Cotard's syndrome. The patient afflicted with this mental illness usually denies their existence, the existence of a certain body part, or the existence of a portion of their body. Cotard's syndrome exists in three stages: (i) Germination stage—the symptoms of psychotic depression and of hypochondria appear; (ii) Blooming stage—the full development of the syndrome and the delusions of negation; and (iii) Chronic stage—continued, severe delusions along with chronic psychiatric depression. ' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion

Similar experience here, also in NY actually Westchester County. I was struggling academically in my junior year, the bottom 10% of our class according to my advisor, a hopeless case. Out of the blue, I scored as a National Merit Finalist. After this was reported in the school newspaper I lost the few (loser) friends I had. They began looking at me squirrely. 'Damn straight baby, I lived in unhip poor Brooklyn' Bad timing, sburke. It's now gentrified.

JWs? They can be relentless and thrive on opposition. My tactic is to declare myself an LDS member in good standing, normally a respectful stand-off ensues. Recently two well-scrubbed young people, a guy, and a girl, showed up at the door. I sniffed missionaries. 'Sorry, I'm LDS', I said smiling. They beamed. Turned out they were Mormons and began bombarding me with questions: really? which tabernacle? who's your bishop? Er, uh. I nearly converted, they were extremely warm and friendly and the girl... wow.

The series scored an impressive 8.9 rating on IMDB. But Britain was a very different country then. Produced in 1978 it may suffer on the relevance index. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077078/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Checked out that show but couldn't get past the opening episode with the nun and you-know-what. However, I wished Breaking Bad never ended- pure brilliance. There are probably hundreds of series set in LA from Dragnet to The Shield, a compelling if brutal experience.

Raul Castro interred his brother's ashes in a very curious mausoleum yesterday. https://www.yahoo.com/news/castros-ashes-return-cradle-revolution-060049775.html

Just noticed something disconcerting re the above photo: Castro's long, prehensile fingers.

I applied to a commune but was turned down due, I suspected, to hair. I sported an unkempt afro. At the time flowing locks, Jesus style, were de rigueur. Think the Allman Brothers. I live a few miles from Venice. It's been yuppified. Single apts go for $2000+. Modern hippies can't come up with the scratch.

Are you wimping out on us, SA?

None of my business, but did you and sburke share a commune in Millbrook, NY in the early 70s? Or the East Village or Venice, CA?

Castro was loathed by the middle-class, in every country. His appeal- his mojo- was confined to the very poor and the highly educated. However, like Hitler, once in his presence nearly everyone succumbed to his Svengali-like charm. He 'snowed' people. Steven Spielberg said that the four hours he spent with El Commandante in Havana constituted the most meaningful four hours in his life. Presumedly not his marriage, the birth of his children or the success of his films.

I remember my father showed us the will of his great-great grandmother. The yellowed document was recorded in Alabama and dated around 1840. In it, she bequeathed eight of her slaves to one of her sons. Each slave was denoted by a first name: Robert, Jack, Betty etc. What struck me the most? Her incredibly graceful and elegant handwriting. Sorry, Robert VI.

Are you trying to render JK suicidal?

It was a case of giving the Devil his due. Castro was a bad dude, but a formidable bad dude. And an astonishing survivor. A quote from an old thread: (Castro) has what is called an eidetic photographic memory. It has nothing to do with people who memorize. He just reads something, and it’s like a Xerox machine. When he was a student at the University of Havana, he boasted that he was reading a book and he could tear out the pages and put them in the trash can, and then he could recite from memory the whole book. That is amazing. And he uses that to fool people that he is very knowledgeable of certain areas, like he did with the Soviet who was the one who first came to Cuba [and reported] that Castro was a Marxist. Castro was telling him about Marx, Lenin, Engels. The night before, he just read a few books about Marxism. It is an incredible ability. By the way, Hitler had the same ability.

You're right and Tennyson would have been my first guess. Google somehow routed me to Dawkins. Good pick up.

Always loved that expression- so brutally graphic- and assumed it was ancient, but no. Google reveals that it originated with the Darwinist Richard Dawkins in 'The Selfish Gene'. Kudos to him and to you for using it.

The stain will never be lifted. Sorry, Michael. Along with thousands of other Americans, our family counts Pochahantas as an ancestor. My cousin is really into it. He's a member of some sort of Algonquin society, posts on affiliated forums and claims to own Powhatan's peace pipe, an unimpressive artifact in my estimation.

This poster's opinion: Castro should have been spayed, neutered and buried alive in one of those ancient US cars that prowl around Havana belching smoke. But... the man, armed with a photographic memory and a profound understanding of human nature, can be classed among the certified geniuses of history. He played the West like a violin, romancing our intellectuals while borrowing many tactics from Hitler. Castro's attempted coup d'etat, the aborted attack on the Moncada barracks, eerily recalled the Beer Hall Putsch with the self-promotional trial, conviction, and subsequent foundational book that mirrored Mein Kampf minus the anti-Semitism. Factoid: Castro was a superb athlete, in every sport he attempted. At 6'3, he starred on his high school basketball team but was known to get disoriented on the court, scoring thunderous dunks on the other team's basket. A revealing character detail?

Anyone else on the Forum with disreputable or controversial ancestors? Don't be shy.

Both sides of my family owned slaves pre-CIvil War. I feel no ancestral guilt, a barbarous, even Nazi-ish notion in my opinion. But, apparently, Affleck does. To the point of pressuring the host of 'Finding your Roots', Henry Louis Gates, into deleting the embarrassing passage and igniting a mini-scandal. Affleck later manned up and apologized. During the censored interview, he did take pride in a youthful ancestor who joined Washington's army. Yankee superstar, Derek Jeter, learned on the show that he's also a descendant of slaveholders. He found it amusing.

Don't RIP.

If I'm not mistaken, the Ephesus cemetery was discovered around 1993, the one in York, England ten years later.

The first confirmed gladiator cemetery was discovered by German archaeologists. Contrary to expectations, the fighters lived on a vegetarian diet. The lifespans tended to be short but with potential perks like riches and the adoration and availability of women, often aristocratic. And freedom. The oldest gladiator the researchers came across was aged fifty, apparently a matinee idol whose remains were interred in the middle of the graveyard along with a stone memorial. The gladiators' bones leave evidence of rather sophisticated surgery, sans anesthesia although opium was not unknown by Romans. They imported the analgesic from India where their coinage has been found. The much-revered emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was an alleged junky. https://www.phactual.com/the-first-recorded-opium-addict-the-roman-emperor-marcus-aurelius/

I still have Vespasian's As. A burly fellow by all accounts. 'Decided to see whether Tumblr had anything useful on catapults. Since that was bust on page one at least, having found an array of things not martial, I turned to the ballista instead.' Good luck, John. But check with your neighbors first. And your Deed Restriction policy.