The Cow's Thunder

Just to begin with I am reading the Koran (Penguin's translation) from an objective point of view, I am not religious or spiritual in anyway whatsoever.  If you are offended by what I say here then your in the wrong religion or universe.

I have not read very much so far only eight percent not even got through the first chapter which is called The Cow.  The reasons behind this name I could not tell you but it is fairly big, the chapter that is.

Basically what I have got so far is that it reads like a summary of the old testament.

Satan did not want to bow down to the humans so he fell, but stayed in paradise long enough to tempt Adam to the 'tree' so god banishes Adam and Eve to the Earth, funny it said earlier that god knew all things maybe he is only good at present and past.  Or perhaps the order is wrong.  The preface and forward to this book tells us that the Koran's chapters are out of order chronically which seems to be a clever method of telling the story differently.  What is more curious is that right at the beginning there is this passage:

"..beneath a dark storm-cloud charged with thunder and lightning, thrust their fingers into their ears at the sound every thunder-clap for fear of death (God thus encompasses the unbelievers).  The lightning almost snatches away their sight: whenever it flashes upon them they walk on, but as soon as it darkens they stand still.  Indeed, if God pleased, He could take away their hearing and their sight..."

That reads like the end of my short story Thunder Road so perhaps if god knows the future he has stole my ideas.  There are many logical reasons against this though.

Moving on their god's convenant should you accept it, so that means we have a choice on whether to believe in god or not?!?  Apparently no choice if you deny or reject off you go to the 'fire' which is made of humans and stones, you will abide there for ever.  Stones are not known for their properties of burning well except in volcano like temperatures something of a curious choice by the author.

It repeats several times about the alms levy which upon researching this is to do with a charity tax which is given to the poor.  Also repeated is the phrase:

"He is the Relenting One, the Compassionate."

Apparently god is unhappy that his flock wanted: "green herbs, cucumber, corn, lentils and onions" which is hardly the fast food or bad for you.  What were they eating before?

Their is a cow sacrifice (reason for chapter maybe) which had to be a "rich yellow, pleasing to those that see it." I have seen brown, white and black cows never a yellow one, I can only assume it was suffering from liver disease.

Then there is this wonderful passage which effectively allows for any interpretation of the Koran:

"[2:106] Any verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We will replace by a better one or one similar."

The operative word here is 'similar', changing one word can change the entire meaning of a sentence.

According verse [2:115] god belongs only to the East and West, did they not have a concept of North and South back then?  The same verse states that god is omnipresent and all-knowing but not in the North or South or knows of it!

[2:122] God's convenant does not apply to wrongdoers so there is a choice?

[2:126] ..."I shall let them live awhile, and then shall drag them to the scourge of the Fire..." That sounds like torture from the Compassionate god.

[2:155] "We shall test your steadfastness with fear and famine..." More torture, more excuses for why bad things happen.  Its god's fault!

[2:178] Apparently god allows slaves.

[2:185] Time to go hungry but god desires your "well-being" not "discomfort", not eating for a whole month is going to be a slow yet fast killing.

[2:187] Multiple wives time during your fast, Compassionate god remember.

[2:190] My favourite verse so far, you allowed to fight but you cannot be the aggressors because god does not love them.  Basically you are allowed to defend yourself however you can attack the wrongdoers who is anybody that does not believe in god.  Murder is allowed by the Compassionate god.

[2:190] Update 3/6/17: Nowhere in the verse does it say kill, fight and attack only.  If they attacked with swords the likelihood of death during those days would have been high due to the lack drugs to fight off infection.  My above statement about Murder is not certain.

Thought Experiment in Summary (Creative Ideas)

It seems to me that so far there is a lot of giving by us humans to the Compassionate god and not a lot given in return.  This god is happy that we fight which would suggest that this god is perhaps maybe a devil or an entity that feeds off the energy created by violence.  Taken to its logical conclusion perhaps all religious texts are written by this dark entity.  Maybe there is another entity that feeds on love and peace maybe it does not need much to maintain itself and faces away from us.  Whereas the dark one's face is always towards us hence all the contradictory religious texts and the constant need for violence.  There is a symbiotic balance between the two, the dark one would starve if we all killed one other or there was only peace.

Th above paragraph is somewhat rambling, welcome to my mind.

The Hindsight Bubble

Bet Fair were offering 8 to 1 odds for Trump winning the election, normally the only gambling I do is low stakes poker but looking back upon his campaign I have realised that it was a forgone conclusion that he would win despite what everyone else thought.

The campaign itself was pure theatre and at no point did you think he was going to win, he however ripped up the rule book of political campaigning.  At no point did you know what was going to happen next, many of his speeches were completely unscripted.

It was not until towards the end of the campaign trail that the Obama/Clinton partnership realised that it was impossible to predict what Trump was going to do next.  Everything Trump did or said was designed to create controversy and it did not matter whether it was true and false.

It would not surprise me if many of the sexual allegations made against him were hoaxed by his own campaign.

This article from Vox shows Trump's ability to speak to the voters as opposed to speaking at them as most politicians do.

I read Trump's policies after he had won to see what what we were in for and what effect he would have on the world, to say I was surprised would be a somewhat understatement.  Zero evidence of a southern wall and in fact very little of what was said in sound bytes throughout the campaign appeared in his official policies.  His policies are heavily watered down versions of his rhetoric, unfortunately his ideas on huge tax cuts, deregulation and massive public spending looks like a recipe for disaster.  Although since he is a successful businessman I would like to think he has a better understanding of managing money and running a country than Hilary Clinton.  As Mae West said

"Between the lesser of two evils, I always pick the one I have not tried before."

Clinton had decided to stick with The Obama administration's failed policies which gave the voters an impossible choice.  The voter turn out was just over 50% a big drop from the last election, in one of his more understandable speeches Trump advised the voters not to vote which effectively took votes from the Democrats.  If the turn out had been higher it is possible that Trump would not have won.

This film from the BBC about HyperNormalisation shows how Trump's win occurred because of the way society and those that manage it have effectively placed us into mirrored bubbles of what we as a group or individuals wish to see.  The film is nearly 3 hours long but it is definitely worth watching.

Our perception of reality is controlled you only have to look at Amazon adverts to see that.

Pulling the Wool

I see Farage is being used by the Yanks now to show just how easily you can dupe the voters into doing what you want.

“You can beat the pollsters, you can beat the commentators, you can beat Washington. And you can do it by doing what we did for Brexit in Britain.”

The trick is simple really you just give them almost no information about what they are voting for and use an single election “promise” on the side of a bus that says you are going to save a lot of the taxpayers money.  Then let human nature run its course!

As everyone knows election promises are never kept not always the fault of the incoming government since they soon discover that not everything they were told whilst in opposition was technically on the up and up.  Effectively an election promise turns into dust when rammed against the hard rock of reality.

The other key to Brexit was having a stupid opposition that assumed they would win no matter what happened, that sort of optimism will always breed disaster for those that believe it.

You really did not need Farage there at all it would of happened without him, he was just going along for the ride paid for by the EU which is a whooping £109K salary including expenses.  More taxpayers money down the drain at least all of Europe contributes to his salary not just the UK.  I wonder how much Trump paid him to put in an appearance in Mississippi and has he declared it?

Admittedly this is nothing compare to (excerpt from Wikipedia):

“In May 2009, The Observer reported a Foreign Press Association speech given by Farage in which he had said that over his period as a Member of the European Parliament he had received a total of £2 million of taxpayers' money in staff, travel, and other expenses. In response, Farage said that in future all UKIP MEPs would provide monthly expense details.”

Conspiracy theorists will be having a field day with Farage and Trump, what really is happening in Mississippi?  Probably has something to do with Tall Eight hundred year old aliens, which is also just misinformation from a document supposedly created by the KGB to scare the west.

I do find it ironic that a MEP is considered to be instrumental in breaking up the EU when in fact it was the pro-EU Conservatives that did most of the damage themselves.

I am surprised the EU cannot sack him under the premise that he is working against the stability of the Union.

Dilbert’s strip today works on so many levels including politics perhaps it should be called: Fararumptium: