[ExI] david statue coincidence

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Mon Aug 22 16:43:03 UTC 2016


.He could have lobbed stones at Goliath all day long, running further away
if heavily-armoured Goliath got too close. But really it was just one of
many stories attributed to David after he became Israel's greatest
hero...BillK

The story doesn't tell how many stones it took for David to score.

I've read where Goliath would have been terrified facing a sling wielded by
a shephard.
Of maybe it was a sty he watched, and then Shepard the name, would have
been Stewart, which means ward of the sty.  trivia for today

Throwing stones:  read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- Heinlein.  Computer
operated ramp/sling tossed huge stones at Colorado until they gave in.  I
read lately where the military has a stone thrower that can generate
immense speeds and kill at large distances with just stones - no explosives
needed.  Repeating history

 bill w

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 11:14 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On
> Behalf Of BillK
> Sent: Monday, August 22, 2016 7:41 AM
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] david statue coincidence
>
> On 22 August 2016 at 14:38, spike  wrote:
> >>... Let us consider what that looks like from the point of view of the
> > surrounding people....What is stopping us from getting all the same
> force multipliers?
> > Why didn’t Goliath’s guys all take up slingshots the day after the
> > fatal combat?
>
> >... In this probably fictitious story David cheated by bringing a gun to
> a sword fight...
>
> His legendary victory redefined the notion of cheating.  This had enormous
> impact.
>
> >...He could have lobbed stones at Goliath all day long, running further
> away if heavily-armoured Goliath got too close. But really it was just one
> of many stories attributed to David after he became Israel's greatest
> hero...BillK
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> This in itself brings up a related but important point.  Family histories
> shape the family.  The deeds of the fathers shape the ethical foundation of
> the descendants.
>
> Consider Hebrew mythology.  The patriarch Abraham sired two sons, Isaac
> and Ishmael, both of whom became the father of nations.  The storyline soon
> forgets about Ishmael and follows Isaac and his sons, Esau and Jacob.  Esau
> was the favored one,  the big burly elder son, strong, manly was he, his
> father's favorite.  Isaac was elderly and blind, so the younger trickster
> son hatched a plot to disguise himself as his older brother by putting
> sheepskins on his hands.  Esau had hairy hands but Jacobs were smooth.  He
> managed to fool the blind elderly Isaac, who conferred his blessing on
> Jacob, who then got outta town.
>
> Esau returned from the hunt, went in to receive the deathbed blessing from
> his elderly father who was powerless to undo the birthright blessing he had
> already given away to that shyster Jacob, who had already fled.  All Isaac
> had left was a curse that had already been prepared for his younger son
> whose moral fiber was questionable at the time, clearly transitioned by the
> ruse to proven.  His questionable morality now definitely deserved the
> prefix im.  In the odd view of life in those days, the old man had only a
> blessing and a curse.  The blessing had been stolen, so the other son is
> cursed.  Weird.  The blessed son prospered and the cursed son withered.
>
> Keep reading if you wish.  It's all in Genesis chapter 25 and following.
>
> Blessed younger son took his stolen blessing and went to find a bride.
> Everything he touched turned to gold.  He agreed to work for his uncle
> Laban for seven years for his younger daughter, Rachel.  Not wanting to be
> stuck with a spinster daughter, Uncle Laban tricked his son in law by
> switching the bride and bride's maid, so that Jacob married the older
> daughter.  Upon discovering the ruse, Jacob worked seven more years to
> obtain the younger daughter who he also married.  Two wives.  Sisters.  The
> mind boggles.
>
> The story of Jacob is filled with accounts of uncle/nephew or
> son-in-law/father-in-law cheating each other, which is the point of my
> recounting the story.  In our family histories, we make good guys out of
> all direct ancestors, even if they were not really good guys.  Jacob is
> written up as the good guy, even though he was a liar and a cheater.  His
> hapless uncle is also the father of the race, being the father of both
> brides.  He too was a trickster.
>
> So... we have a case where family legends shaped the memetic foundation of
> a people.  We have a meme that cheating in business is OK, so long as
> everyone prospers in the end (as both Jacob and his uncle/father-in-law
> did, by Jacob's simultaneously dishonest but clever business tactics.)
>
> Jacob's older wife Leah produced ten sons, his beloved younger wife Rachel
> (who also resorted to trickery) produced only the two, Benjamin and
> Joseph.  These dozen sons formed the twelve tribes of Israel.  Ten of those
> came to naught, but Benjamin and Joseph's tribes combined to form the
> mighty nation of Israel.  Many generations later, David came along, slew
> the man who would have been a distant cousin if the story has any basis in
> fact.  Still more generations passed, producing Daniel, whose story
> contained element borrowed from the patriarch and father of the nation
> Joseph.
>
> Still later, Jesus of Nazareth came along, among whose most remarkable
> achievements was somehow finding a dozen British guys living in the Middle
> East: James, John, Peter, and the others.  To this day it is most
> mysterious how Jesus and those twelve Englishmen got there, what they were
> doing in Israel, and how they learned to speak with that marvelous and
> grammatically flawless royal Shakespearean dialect.
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
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