Blues Versus Greens

In Glasgow football, there are two factions in place, forever contending for supremacy .....

Blues Versus Greens - An Historical Battle .....

Rangers Football Club and The Celtic Football Club .... who also represent the aspirations of many in the two Christian religious and social communities of that city and surrounding areas.

Rebellious Nuns

We have discussed before on this Blog the impact of feminism amongst nuns .... 

Rebellious US Nuns On The War Path  ....

..... especially those in the North American continent, on the Catholic Church, and especially on the concept of 'Papal Authority'. 

Street Sexism

Apparently feminists in Italy, not content to try and deal with real women's issues such as forced marriages, child brides, sex trafficking, equal pay or sexual abuse, have found that actually the number one concern for 'wimmin of the left' should be street names.

Yes you guessed it, too many men's names, not enough female names.  Maria Pia Ercolini the instigator of this story (which the BBC picked up like a shot), found that 7,575 (45.7%) of the Rome city's streets were named after men and just 580 (3.5%) were named after women. "That's proof of the discrimination", she says.

But perhaps realising how this story might play, she has also conceded that  "We don't want to re-name streets - we want new streets to be named after women”.

Downing Street - To be renamed?

No doubt some lazy female politician on the Labour parties cabinet or candidate lists will shortly take up the battle in Britain, and start demanding all places be renamed .... well lets see how the 'Wimmin' deal with "*Offas Dyke" ... that should confuse them :-)

Sir George Downing, 1st Baronet

Actually, it never fails to amaze me how shallow are the waters that the feminine 'fighters' swim in ... they can attack what they see as white male dominance, but those cultures that that really suppress women are left unchallenged through a combination of fear of retaliation, and PC multiculturalism.

*The earthwork that runs between England and Wales, constructed by King Offa of Mercia to mark the boundary with Wales.  

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day .... but apparently many Romans this week thought it could be knocked down in one.

In an odd story, it appears that the urban grapevine had created a legend, which was that the late seismologist Raffaele Bendand (who died in 1979), had predicted that the city would be devastated by an earth quake on 11 May 2011. Consequently, and despite special programmes having been run on state TV calling for calm, reports suggested that as many as an additional 18% of city employees planned to stay away from work to avoid the city on that date.

Bendandi, who was knighted by Mussolini in 1927 for his prophetic meteorological skills, after he apparently used his theory that the movement of the planets caused seismic activity, to accurately predict a 1923 quake that killed 1,000 people. He was also banned from making public predictions, on pain of exile .... and he never actually made any further predictions about the future. Paola Lagorio the President of the the foundation that honours Bendandi said "I can say with absolute certainty that in the papers of Raffaele Bendandi there is no provision for an earthquake in Rome on the 11 May 2011". Needless to say, Rome wasn't even ruffled by a tiny tremor on the day .... but oddly, in one of those coincidence that fuel these urban myths, the town of Lorca in Spain was hit by a large earthquake on the day.

So, be prepared for more such stories next year, as the same urban myth suggested two more such catastrophic events in May 2012.

Tall Romans, Old Romans, and Healthy Romans

And in another bit of research, its been shown that the Romans of Pompeii were as tall as we are, and ate a far better diet than the average Victorian.


Tall and Healthy Romans

We are often told that that the Romans, or anyone in the past for that matter, were all much shorter than we are.

 

Rome Surrenders Its Secrets

Yet more archaeological wonders have been uncovered in Rome, joining those that I have posted on earlier in the year.

Firstly, Nero's revolving dining room (it moved 24 hrs a day, driven by water pressure, and always facing the sun) has been discovered ...... they sure knew a lot about water management in Roman times.

Private British Amphitheatre

and Secondly, a large 'private' Roman amphitheatre has been uncovered inside a gigantic imperial-style palace, within the well-preserved old harbour of Portus. The arena is believed to have been able to hold up to 2,000 people and been used for gladiator games or animal baiting.

Archaeologists claim that the complex is much under rated as it is "one of the most important archaeological sites in the world" and should be rated alongside "such wonders as "Stonehenge and Angkor Wat in Cambodia".

Oddly enough this week also saw more discoveries at Stonehenge .... Archaeologists have discovered the site of an older 5,000 yr old mini-Stonehenge, a mile from the site of Wiltshire's famous stone circle which has been called "Bluehenge"

A Strange Anniversary

This week saw the anniversary of the defeat by Arminius and the Germans, of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Teutoborg forest in Germany in 9 AD. I mention it, because there are those who still believe that the events of that defeat set the course of European history for the next 2,000 yrs.

That the division of Europe into a Romanised West, a German middle Europa, and a Slavic East, was direct result of that few days so long ago. Whether the fact that Germany remained outside the Empire was good (as 19th and 20th German Nationalists believed), or bad, as those who think a German race with a long history of being inside the Roman Empire would have followed a very different path in the 20th century think, is purely a matter of conjecture.

However, I think its unarguable that the Roman Empire would have been considerably stronger if the Germans had been inside its borders. The Eastern portion of the Roman Empire only fell to the Turks in 1453 AD, whereas the Western portion of the Empire fell a thousand years earlier in 476AD, mainly to Germanic tribes.

One look at the map shows that if Germania Magna up to the Elbe had been in the Empire, a massive buffer province would have been created, with large amounts of manpower and a huge influence right into the east of Europe, with who knows what long term consequences.

As it was, the defeat took away the eastward ambitions of Augustus, and although the Germans paid a very heavy price for their victory, as Roman armies regularly crossed the Rhine and devastated Germany for several hundred years (think of the opening scene in the film Gladiator), they never again tried to conquer the region between the Rhine and the Elbe.

Maybe if the Emperor Trajan had gone to Germany rather than Dacia, it might have been achieved, but Germany had no gold, whereas the more civilised Dacians did ... ah well on such facts history is made.

All Roads Lead Where?

A strange story this.

The Vatican is apparently trying to reaffirm Papal Authority over US Nuns who have become rather lax in their belief systems ..... or at least from a conservative Vatican point of view. This attempt is apparently meeting with some resistance from ladies who don't like the idea of male authority.

Now forgive me for laughing, but isn't this just the problem? After all these women are meant to be serving as Holy Nuns, not as Catholic social workers, and wouldn't the Roman Catholic Church collapse if there wasn't any acknowledgement of overarching Papal Authority? After all they are not Episcopalians or in the Church of England, where everyone believes what they want, does what they want, anyway they want.

These Nuns have become so infected with US feminism that one of them, Sister Mary Mackay is quoted as saying "The culture encourages everyone to be very tolerant and open-minded," she said. "To imagine that a dictum sent by somebody we don't know, who lives very far away would take hold in this culture, to imagine that, is really a stretch."

That person she 'doesn't know', who lives 'very far away' is called "His Holiness, the Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI", who last time I checked, was still head of the entire Roman Catholic Church.

Now I don't know what sort of religious teaching Sister Mary got, but I am pretty damn sure that it involved a short mention of Popes, and very certainly included a vow of obedience to his authority, even if he is "very far away", and Sister Mary "doesn't know him".

The report states that many nuns believe the investigation is intended to rein them in, while others warn that a 'male hierarchy' wants to regain control of them as 'women' and as a 'free workforce'. Ahh, US Feminism in full flow amongst the Nuns ..... They are not a 'free workforce', they are Roman Catholic Nuns, under vows of obedience, next they will want women priests, to be able to get married, and for the Church to be run by a female Pope!

All sounds very familiar, but the Vatican in Rome, isn't the Arch Bishopric of Canterbury, and a previous attempt by US Nuns to refuse to obey the Papal Authority, resulted in the expulsion of a number of Nuns who are now lay workers in the the 'Immaculate Heart', a community of former nuns, who had to leave the Church 40 years ago, because they refused to obey the Vatican teachings.

I shall watch this story with interest .... is the Catholic Church still able to withstand the winds of PC Feminism, or is it doomed to decay like the Episcopalian church?