The High Spy MEGATHREAD

[Physics Guy]

According to this Wikipedia entry, the planet we call Venus was associated with the goddess Venus in Ancient Rome, but was not actually named "Venus" until the Middle Ages. Before then "Lucifer", which does literally mean "light bringer", was simply the Latin name of the planet, at least at some times in the year.

As a nearly Earth-sized planet close to Earth, which is also covered in reflective white clouds, Venus looks like an especially bright star (except that it doesn't twinkle*). At some times in the year, depending on where Earth and Venus are in their orbits, Venus appears in the sky shortly before dawn; other times, Venus shows up soon after sunset, or is invisible beside the glare of the sun. Because Venus's orbit is considerably closer to the Sun than Earth's is, Venus is never visible from Earth around midnight. Looking up at midnight is looking away from the Sun. Ancient astronomers/astrologers did figure out that this sometimes morning, sometimes evening, sometimes invisible star-like thing was actually one single planet, but many cultures still gave two separate names to Venus as morning star and as evening star. The name for morning Venus in Latin was "Lucifer", because it seemed to be bringing the light of dawn.

So there was nothing bogus at all about Jerome translating Hebrew "heylel" as "Lucifer". It was just the direct Latin equivalent of the Hebrew name for the morning star.

The passage in Isaiah is quite explicitly talking about a Babylonian king who suddenly lost power, disappearing from sky-high brilliance the way the morning star disappears when Venus moves behind the Sun from us. It's a decent poetical metaphor. Getting anything about a fallen angel out of the passage is crazy, except in the out-of-context symbolic reading of isolated snippets from the Bible that people did like to do in ancient and medieval times. That's a pretty bizarre way to read an ancient book, all right, but at least it's probably better than the modern fundamentalist approach that tries to take everything in the Bible as literally true.

(*You can tell whether a thing in the sky is a star or a planet by watching to see if it seems to twinkle or flicker at all, or whether it's really a steady bright speck. Planets don't twinkle; stars do. The reason why is well understood but quite hard to explain because it involves the wave nature of light, and how light waves interfere with each other, and how that ends up looking. Even explanations that are supposed to be detailed and technical can easily leave you with nothing but the mysterious word "coherence", without giving any idea what it means for light to be coherent or not. In the end the issue in twinkling is just some simple geometry, but understanding what the heck that geometry has to do with how stars and planets look takes a lecture or two. What comes out is that the difference between twinkling and not twinkling isn't really about stars versus planets, but just about how big a shining thing is in relation to its distance and to the wavelength of its light. For visible wavelengths, all the planets in the solar system count as big, for how far away they are, while all stars but the Sun count as small for their distance, because even though stars are much bigger than planets, they are very much farther away from us. Light from things that are "small" in that sense flickers in intensity due to interference effects in our atmosphere, while with light from "big" objects the flickerings average out to a steady shine.)

[IWMP]

I often see Venus at dusk. Makes me think of the children's poem, "starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight".

[High Spy]

I often see Venus at dusk. Makes me think of the children's poem, "starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight".

1. The night time, with its serene darkness and quiet introspection, often parallels the time needed to design, build, and develop an invention. Just as the night allows for reflection and the germination of ideas, the process of innovation requires patience, creativity, and a deep understanding of the problem at hand.

2. In this context, consider an invention that is patent pending with the title of "Launch Apparatus for Aerial Objects." The creation of such a device likely involved countless hours of brainstorming, prototyping, and testing to bring the idea to fruition. The parallels between the night's contemplative nature and the inventive process highlight the importance of perseverance and vision in the journey towards innovation.

Information and feedback about post creation may be viewed here.

[bill4long]

I like to point out that "the devil", in the Hebrew Bible as an enemy to the Creator, doesn't exist.

Satan as an "arch enemy of God" came to exist in the intertestement period. 1 Enoch for example. Read it and see how rational it is (not.)

As for "Lucifer" in Isaiah 14. Gawd, how ridiculous. "Lucifer" was a cognate of Latin and means "light bringer." But in Hebrew the name is "heylel" which was the name of the planet Venus. The topic in the chapter is obviously, and explicitly, against the King of Babylon. Looking at the attributes of this king in the chapter, you'd have to be a complete idiot to think this refers to a "fallen angel who opposes God". Etc.

Thank you, Roman Catholic church, for propagating such loony bull****.

This video =~Why God CANNOT Kill Satan Or Fallen Angels supplies an explanation more verbose than any other that I am aware of. It seems pretty good; what do y’all think.

See bog post here for video embed where The Wicker Man, Enoch and others may respond.

The simplest explanation for why God can't kill Satan is that he doesn't exist.

[High Spy]

Thank you for your kind answer.
I would respond to things individually but I think it's best for me to stop over sharing. I find it hard. I don't realising I'm doing it til I've done it and then start thinking about it.

I don't think anyone likes hearing the word delayed and their kid in the same sentence.

I wish I waited til I had some sleep before deciding whether to post this thread or not.

My son Jason received a certificate of completion rather than a high school diploma, but then was shook by an earthquake on his birthday. This significance of this Likely will be appreciated in a few years. The middle digits of he social security number are five and seven, in that exact order. My daughter’s name begins with a C making their initials together JC, and those facts are just the tip of an immense iceberg of strangeness stacked upon strangeness.

[High Spy]

Thanks for wishing me a happy birthday!

The 100th anniversary of my dad’s birth found me in a strange place that touts itself as the Galapagos of the North. That was on August 15th and it was strange partly because my Dad’s company was headquartered in the Twin Cities. Twins just now I realize are part of my story being the baby of my family descended from an identical twin mother. Many unique species are only found on St. Paul Island.

https://slogbog.com/viewtopic.php?p=351 ... ness#p3517 tells another snippet in a very strange tale that stretches back many decades.

[High Spy]

So when you said that the 27 club had "a" famous member, "a" equals five?

If CuriousQuill has $380, then does she have $1.

I had no idea what the 27 club was at the time of my original posting.

Thanks to you, another anomaly involving 5 & 7 is revealed.

Revelation is a wonderful thing.

Thanks for the help.

My surname pluralized reminds me what the Bible says about Bishops and wive(s).

https://slogbog.com/search.php?keywords=570175 will currently find three posts about said plural expressed in reformed LEET code that look like this color. Also it’s what I defined as HEET code because all the characters are Hexadecimal numbers. Today’s revelation is DEET, code because all the characters are Decimal numbers. Can anyone think why representing something as a decimal number is of major advantage when it comes to performing what may be a very common task.