Ramblin' with Roger

Posts Tagged ‘ABC Wednesday’

“Proclaim liberty throughout the lands and to all the inhabitants thereof, it shall be a jubilee for you.” – Leviticus 25:10. In the Judaic tradition, during the Jubilee year, debts were forgiven and land that had been sold to repay debts was returned to the original owners. “What was sold shall remain with the purchaser until the year of jubilee; in the jubilee it shall be released, and the property shall be returned.” – Leviticus 25:28. In both Judeo-Christian and non-Biblical traditions, there has been an understanding that forgiveness of debt, when that debt becomes so onerous that one cannot ever get from under it, is both fair and practical.

Julius Nyerere, former President of Tanzania, asks, “Must we starve our children to pay our debts?” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had a long fascination with India. You can read what the CIA World Factbook says about the country.

Maybe I’m drawn in because of the idea of an independence movement that was won, NOT primarily by militarily means, but rather through a civil disobedience movement practiced by Mohandas K. Gandhi, Read the rest of this entry »

Help! was the second Beatles movie, after A Hard Day’s Night, but the first one I saw. When I watched it in a movie theater, back in 1965, I loved it! Viewing it again in 2009 on TV, with the Daughter, it really didn’t hold up, but it was nevertheless enjoyable for the music, if nothing else. Here is the trailer to the 2007 video release. And here or here or here is the 90 minute film, in its entirety, or it was there, as of this posting.

But what I really wanted to talk about is the album. Or to be more precise, the albums. Read the rest of this entry »

Gerrymandering is a word which means “a practice that attempts to establish [in the process of setting electoral districts] a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected districts. Gerrymandering may be used to achieve desired electoral results for a particular party, or may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, racial, linguistic, religious or class group.”

The term was created way back in the early 19th century concerning the redrawing of the “Massachusetts state senate election districts under the then-governor Elbridge Gerry…to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a salamander.” Read the rest of this entry »

I was reading some news aggregator one morning late last year, probably MSNBC, when there was a tease about “pre-fame Courtney Stodden pictures.” Naturally, I said to myself, “Self, I have no idea what a Courtney Stodden is.” As it turned out, though, I had heard in passing about the event that provided her greatest notoriety. She is the now 17-year-old would-be singer/model who married actor Doug Hutchison, best known for his appearance on the X-Files, who was 50 at the time of their marriage in May 2011.

So Courtney Stodden is “famous”? Read the rest of this entry »

Discussing specifically the California judicial ruling Read the rest of this entry »

When I was growing up, Canada was referred to as a dominion. It achieved that status, rather than as a colony, per the British North America Act of 1867: “Whereas the Provinces of Canada [i.e., Ontario and Quebec], Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom …shall form and be One Dominion under the Name of Canada; and on and after that Day those Three Provinces shall form and be One Dominion under that Name accordingly… Read the rest of this entry »