Well the only apocalyptic activity so far today is the eruption of Mount Merapi in Indonesia. Most of us are familiar with 666, “the number of the beast” from the Iron Maiden
song and Damien, the cute little demonic boy from “The Omen.”
It is amazing the impact “The Omen” has had on popular culture. The mere mention of the name Damien conjures up scary thoughts from the movie. Do you even know anyone with the name Damien? The creepy musical chanting of Ave Satani still freaks me out to this day. I also know that when some little kid is being a terror, people will joke about looking for a 666 somewhere on the brat’s body.
A remake of “The Omen” has perhaps been created for the sole purpose of coinciding with this date.
Revelation 13:18 in the Bible: “This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six.”
It starts to make me wonder about the numbering systems at the time of its writing. Did anyone use the metric system back then? Or was it Roman numerals (DCLXVI) ?
Be careful out there.
June 6th, 2006
I saw the headline today “Lioness in zoo kills man who invoked God,” and just had to read. I am often amazed in what people will do to test their faith, fate, and basic common sense.
KIEV (Reuters) - A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal’s enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.
“The man shouted ‘God will save me, if he exists’, lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions,” the official said.
“A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery.”
The incident, Sunday evening when the zoo was packed with visitors, was the first of its kind at the attraction. Lions and tigers are kept in an “animal island” protected by thick concrete blocks.
From Yahoo! News
I was most struck with the apparent matter-of-factness of the lioness’s actions — straight for him, knocked down, artery severed, dead.
Now I am not going to even go into a religious discussion here. I can only assume that this man was not operating at full capacity. I started to wonder if there have been similar incidents, however most searches containing “God will save me” returned jokes.
I suppose maybe someone should have challenged this individual that perhaps God does exist and that he tried to keep you safe by keeping the lions on AN ANIMAL ISLAND protected by THICK CONCRETE BLOCKS.
Rest in pieces.
June 5th, 2006
I have used portable media players for years now. From the basic Walkman, generic MP3 player, and now an iPod, I have had ear buds shoved in my ears for some time. One of my favorite uses is to listen to audio books on my commute into NYC. Between train and walk time, I can do quite a bit of “reading” each day. Listening to anything through earphones gives you a great appreciation of just how LOUD the city is.
After walking past diesel locomotives that vibrate your body and the loud blast of air brakes, once I hit the street, the normal din of buses, trucks, and taxis easily competes with the volume of audio being injected directly into my ears. It is no wonder people are having hearing problems as they need to crank the volume to compete with surrounding noise. Throw in some horns and a siren, and you may as well shut the sound off.
When traveling on airplanes, I often saw people wearing large, ear covering headphones — you know the ones that ’70s roller skaters wore. It turns out that these are noise canceling headphones that actually listen to the surrounding noise and through active electronics, phase out background noise. I looked into getting these, but when your headphones are larger than your player, it hardly becomes a portable situation. Also, the fewer things with batteries the better.
The other types of noise canceling earphones are passive. These block out noise by being shoved into your ears forming a tight acoustical seal. They come with a few different size ear cups for varying ear canals. They work very well and may actually help combat hearing loss since you don’t need to turn up the volume as high.
I am using Shure E2c’s which are about $100. There are other models that have wider frequency ranges costing over $500.
There are some safety issues to consider whenever using any earphones. If they work too well, then you can’t hear any outside noises like, “hey buddy! Watch out for that bus!” Driving is another activity that you should be cautious with, and I’m sure it must be illegal to drive with earphones in both ears.
But what’s the point of having great audio if your earphones aren’t any good? Or if you can’t hear the audio over all of the noise pollution?
Shure Earphones are available here.
June 2nd, 2006
