You can “blame” the author of this blog for this one. It seems he discovered the DIY (Do It Yourself) feature on Despair.com and decided to “join the war” against those famous “motivational posters” found in many corporate offices. (Hey, I happen to like those posters.) He came up with quite a few daft ones…so inevitably, my own parody gene decided to assert itself and rise to the challenge. The above is the result. (You may view the full-scale graphic here in the Humor section of my Photobucket galleries. Other parody posters may be found here, here and here. If I get enough of these made, I may have to start another subfolder just for them.)

The oil painting (of the Milky Way Galaxy, viewed from outside) is by Don Davis. The orange dot in the center is the supergiant star Antares, the Heart of the Scorpion. The Sun, and indeed its entire local stellar neighborhood, is indistinguishable at this distance. Antares (in effect) marks the spot of the larger stellar neighborhood of the Sun, being one of the brightest stars in it.

Of course. one could turn the whole “perspective” around mentally and rejoice in the vastness and wonder of what we puny humans are destined to inherit according to God’s plan (cf. Psalms 8 with Hebrews 2)…now that’s motivational!

Blessings in Jesus Christ (ברכות בישוע המשיח),
Johanan Rakkav (יוחנן רכב)

Two news items I just spotted justify the title. First, items from the Charlton Heston movie classics The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur are going on the auction block for hefty prices. Can you imagine what many a religious organization (had it the funds) might pay for a copy of the paired tablets bearing the Decalogue in paleo-Hebrew?

Second, while signing up for an online publishing service, I ran across a column called “13 Crazy Examples Of Why English Is The Most Hilarious Language To Learn” (especially for Chinese speakers, it seems!). One of the photos given therein is given above as well. (I have to believe, given what I know about the structure of Chinese and Japanese, that American efforts to use these languages may be just as hilarious to the hearers. A story I can’t quite recall, told by an American married to a Japanese woman, would illustrate the point brilliantly.)

Blessings in Jesus Christ (ברכות בישוע המשיח),
Johanan Rakkav (יוחנן רכב)

This morning I stumbled across a small article with a big photo (see above) in The Times of Malta Online. Yesterday was European Union Day, or Europe Day, yet one would never know it if one looked to the American media for one’s sole source of information. I only found this reference thanks to Yahoo’s automatic search capabilities, which in my case tags any news articles it finds referring to the phrase ”European Union”.

Having such articles forwarded to me every day (and frequently) points out to me just how influential the EU has already become in the world. This influence will only grow as God guides world events to their ultimate climax and people again start seeking violent means to resolve their conflicts (cf. Revelation 17, among a good many other passages).

Blessings in Messiah (ברכות במשיח),
Johanan Rakkav (יוחנן רכב)

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Earlier tonight, Lou Dobbs (on CNN) was asking three radio talk show hosts about the epic Obama-vs-Clinton race. (I saw this at a local restaurant, of all places.) Upon coming home I came across the above blog (Trailhead) on Slate.MSN.com, and in particular the disturbing results of a bizarre readers’ contest.

Can Senator Obama lose now? We will see.

Thanks to a friend, I just received this link from Aish.com: a one-minute video celebrating the State of Israel’s 60th anniversary, compressing 60 years into 60 seconds in a most effective way. (It’s rather disconcerting — and cheapening — to hear the National Anthem set to a fast dance beat, however.)

I can’t help but be reminded of another video (one produced by me) describing (among other things) a very special piece of music performed on Israel’s Independence Day…

The song so performed (David’s Elegy aka “The Bow”) is found here:

Blessings in Messiah (ברכות במשיח),
Johanan Rakkav (יוחנן רכב)

Sometimes a retired, conservative friend sends me commentaries of various kinds. This one was sent on May 7. Thanks to Internet problems I haven’t been able to post it until now, nor discover the original source (although this has certainly been cited enough times on the Internet).

I am certain that many with one or another political point of view (and not just that of the Democratic Party) will find that this article will make their blood boil. Let me make clear that I am apolitical — or more precisely, I am an unreconstructed theocratic monarchist, not a supporter of any government or political movement of this world. I count myself an ambassador of the coming Kingdom of God under the Lord Jesus Christ, and I hope I do a halfway decent job in that role. But I also love the nation in which I was born, and what this retired Brig. Gen. says about why we are in the Middle East right now (painful though the task may be) makes a great deal of practical sense. It also makes sense in the light of specific biblical prophecies about the peoples who founded the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic-Nordic-Judaic order that has made and kept the peace these last two centuries (as much as humanity has ever known peace, that is).

Blessings in Messiah (ברכות במשיח),
Johanan Rakkav (יוחנן רכב)

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Middle East Imperative
by: James Cash, Brig. Gen., USAF (Retired)

I wrote recently about the war in Iraq and the larger war against radical Islam, eliciting a number of responses. Let me try and put this conflict in proper perspective.

Understand; the current battle we are engaged in is much bigger than just Iraq. What happens in the next year will affect this country and how our kids and grand kids live throughout their lifetime, and beyond. Radical Islam has been attacking the West since the seventh century. They have been defeated in the past and decimated to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover. But they can never be totally defeated. Their birth rates are so far beyond civilized world rates, that in time they recover and attempt to dominate again.

There are eight terror-sponsoring countries that make up the grand threat to the West. Two, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, just need firm pressure from the West to make major reforms. They need to decide who they are really going to support and commit to that support.

That answer is simple. They both will support who they think will hang in there until the end, and win.

We are not sending very good signals in that direction right now, thanks to the Democrats.

The other six, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya will require regime change or a major policy shift. Now, let’s look more closely.

Afghanistan and Iraq have both had regime changes, but are being fueled by outsiders from Syria and Iran. We have scared Gaddafi’s pants off, and he has given up his quest for nuclear weapons, so I don’t think Libya is now a threat.

North Korea (the non-Islamic threat) can be handled diplomatically by buying them off. They are starving. That leaves Syria and Iran. Syria is like a frightened puppy. Without the support of Iran they will join the stronger side. So where does that leave us? Sooner, or later, we are going to be forced to confront Iran, and it better be before they gain nuclear capability.

In 1989 I served as a Command Director inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex located in Colorado Springs, Colorado for almost three years. My job there was to observe (through classified means) every missile shot anywhere in the world and assess if it was a threat to the US or Canada. If any shot was threatening to either nation I had only minutes to advise the President, as he had only minutes to respond.

I watched Iran and Iraq shoot missiles at each other every day, and all day long, for months. They killed hundreds of thousands of their people. Know why? They were fighting for control of the Middle East and that enormous oil supply.

At that time, they were preoccupied with their internal problems and could care less about toppling the west. Oil prices were fairly stable and we could not see an immediate threat.

Well, the worst part of what we have done as a nation in Iraq is to do away with the military capability of one of those nations. Now, Iran has a clear field to dominate the Middle East, since Iraq is no longer a threat to them.

They have turned their attention to the only other threat to their dominance, they are convinced they will win, because the US is so divided, and the Democrats (who now control Congress and may control the Presidency in 2008 ) have openly said we are pulling out.

Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will obviously do if we pull out? It is not the price of oil we will have to worry about. Oil WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE to this country at any price. I personally would vote for any presidential candidate who did what JFK did with the space program - declare a goal to bring this country to total energy independence in a decade.

Yes, it is about oil. The economy in this country will totally die if that Middle East supply is cut off right now. It will not be a recession. It will be a depression that will make 1929 look like the “good-old-days”. The bottom line here is simple. If Iran is forced to fall in line, the fighting in Iraq will end over night, and the nightmare will be over.

One way or another, Iran must be forced to join modern times and the global community. It may mean a real war—if so, now is the time, before we face a nuclear Iran with the capacity to destroy Israel and begin a new ice age.

I urge you to read the book “END GAME” by two of our best Middle East experts, true American patriots and retired military generals, Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney. They are our finest, and totally honest in their assessment of why victory in the Middle East is so important, and how it can be won. Proceeds for the book go directly to memorial fund for our fallen soldiers who served the country during the war on terror. You can find that book by going to the Internet through Stand-up America at http://www.ospreyradio.us/, http://www.ospreyradio.us/ or http://www.rightalk.com/, http://www.rightalk.com/.

On the other hand, we have several very angry retired generals today, who evidently have not achieved their lofty goals, and insist on ranting and raving about the war. They are wrong, and doing the country great harm by giving a certain political party reason to use them as experts to back their anti-war claims.

You may be one of those who believe nothing could ever be terrible enough to support our going to war. I f that is the case I should stop here, as that level of thinking approaches mental disability in this day and age. It is right up there with alien abductions and high altitude seeding through government aircraft contrails. I helped produced those contrails for almost 30 years, and I can assure you we were not seeding the atmosphere. The human race is a war-like population, and if a country is not willing to protect itself, it deserves the consequences.

‘Enough - said!’

Now, my last comments will get to the nerve. They will be on politics.

I am not a Republican. And, George Bush has made enough mistakes as President to insure my feelings about that for the rest of my life. However, the Democratic Party has moved so far left, they have made me support those farther to the right.

I am a conservative who totally supports the Constitution of this country. The only difference between the United States and the South American, third world, dictator infested and ever-changing South American governments, is our US Constitution.

This Republic (note I did not say Democracy) is the longest standing the world has ever known, but it is vulnerable. It would take so little to change it through economic upheaval. There was a time when politicians could disagree, but still work together. We are past that time, and that is the initial step toward the downfall of our form of government.

I think that many view Bush-hating as payback time. The Republicans hated the Clinton ’s and now the Democrats hate Bush.

So, both parties are putting their hate toward willingness to do anything for political dominance to include lying and always taking the opposite stand just for the sake of being opposed. JUST HOW GOOD IS THAT FOR OUR COUNTRY?

In my lifetime, after serving in uniform for President’s Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush I have a pretty good feel for which party supported our military, and what military life was like under each of their terms. And, let me assure you that times were best under the Republicans.

Service under Jimmy Carter was devastating for all branches of the military. And, Ronald Regan was truly a salvation.

You can choose to listen to enriched newscasters, and foolish people like John Murtha (he is no war hero), Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, Harry Reid, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and on-and-on to include the true fools in Hollywood if you like. If you do, your conclusions will be totally wrong

The reason that I write, appear on radio talk shows, and do everything I can to denounce those people is simple. THEY ARE PUTTING THEIR THIRST FOR POLITICAL POWER AND QUEST FOR VICTORY IN 2008 ABOVE WHAT IS BEST FOR THIS COUNTRY. I cannot abide that.

Pelosi clearly defied the Logan Act by going to Syria, which should have lead to imprisonment of three years and a heavy fine.

Jane Fonda did more to prolong the Vietnam War longer than any other human being (as acknowledged by Ho Chi Minh in his writing before he died). She truly should have been indicted for treason, along with her radical husband, Tom Hayden, and forced to pay the consequences.

This country has started to soften by not enforcing its laws, which is another indication of a Republic about to fall.

All Democrats, along with the Hollywood elite, are sending us headlong into a total defeat in the Middle East, which will finally give Iran total dominance in the region. A lack of oil in the near future will be the final straw that dooms this Republic.

However, if we refuse to let this happen and really get serious about an energy self-sufficiency program, this can be avoided. I am afraid, however, that we are going in the opposite direction.

If we elect Hillary Clinton and a Democrat controlled congress, and they carry through with allowing Iran to take control of the Middle East, continue to refuse development of nuclear energy, refuse to allow drilling for new oil, and continue to do nothing but oppose everything Bush, it will be over in terms of what we view as the good life in the USA.

Now, do I think that all who do not support the war are un-American— of course not. They just do not understand the importance of total victory in that region.

Another failure of George Bush is his inability to explain to the American people why we are there, and why we MUST win.

By the way, it is not a war. The war was won four years ago. It is martial law that is under attack by Iranian and Syrian outside influences, and there is a difference.

So, what do I believe? What is the bottom line? I will simply say that the Democratic Party has fielded the foulest, power hungry, anti-country, self absorbed group of individuals that I have observed in my lifetime. Our educational system is partially to blame for allowing the mass of America to be taken in by this group. George Bush has done the best he can with the disabilities that he possesses.

A President must communicate with the people. And, I would tell you that Desert Storm spoiled the people. Bush Senior’s 100-hour war convinced the people that technology has progressed to the point that wars could be fought with no casualties and won in very short periods of time.

I remember feeling at the time, that this was a tragedy for the US military. To win wars, you must put boots on the ground. When you put boots on the ground, soldiers are going to die. A President must make the war decision wisely, and insure that the cause is right before using his last political option.

HOWEVER, CONTROLLING IRAN AND DEMOCRATIZING THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE ONLY CHOICE IF WE ARE HELL-BENT ON DEPENDING ON THEM FOR OUR FUTURE ENERGY NEEDS.

Jimmy L. Cash, Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret.
Lakeside, Montana 59922

“I’ll tell you what war is all about; you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.” — Gen. Curtis LeMay

Another thing that has long intrigued me are the various sorts of personality (temperament) tests. One of the most intriguing (and these days the most popular) is the Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator (MBTI). This test (ultimately based on and adapted from the theories of Carl Jung) gives one a four-letter code depending on how one interacts with the world in four different categories (yielding sixteen different temperament types in all). On all such variants of this test, I have consistently been defined as an INTJ (Mastermind, Scientist, Free-Thinker, or whatever), although as I have grown emotionally I sometimes act more like an INFJ (Sage or Protector, which is what my sister and an old friend decidedly are: the rarest type of all, it is said).

Facebook has an “app” called MyType which includes an interesting chart of interrelationships between temperament types. Depending on what type you perceive yourself as being (which may differ from how others perceive you — again, the app has a feature that takes this into account), you are shown various interactions with other types on a chart called MyRelationships. As your friends on Facebook take the test, they are put into various categories and you can learn a lot about how you relate to them on an essential, natural level.

MyType’s written information (though not its one-word summaries of each type is based on information found on The Personality Page (which has its own somewhat more detailed MBTI test). But there is much, much more information found on the latter site, and I plan to explore it as much as I possibly can and to recommend it to anyone I think it could help. It seems too bad that the design of the opening page is so poor (especially, perhaps, on my wide screen monitor — it may look better on a smaller one).

While the Personality Page’s online test is said to be more accurate than many, the MBTI does have its limitations. Even its original creator (in its original form, at any rate) said it misassigned the code about 1/4th of the time. Before you get too skeptical (or too discouraged) because of this, one reason for the problem is that not everyone is equally self-aware (or as honest with themselves). Another is that in each of the four categories, one is dealing with a spectrum between two poles – not with a “digital” choice (1 or 0, yes or no). Supposedly, my sister is even more strongly a J than I am, although that possibly was not true when I was younger and more rigid in that area. A third is that while we preferentially deal with the world in certain ways, as we grow older we become more capable of relating “outside the box”.

Sometimes administrators of the test recommend that one look at the summaries of closely related types in order to gain insights about oneself. I learned a good deal about myself by looking at ENTJ and INFJ, for example.

Blessings in Messiah (ברכות במשיח),
Johanan Rakkav (יוחנן רכב)

This is my first post on “The Chronicles of Johanan Rakkav”. As long as I’m making this a dedicated personal blog, I might as well say something very personal (as taken orignally from my dysfunctional Yahoo 360 blog, and then from my quirky Blogspot blog, which will now be devoted solely to The Music of the Bible Revealed).

2008-04-28: I confess to a certain fascination with IQ and aptitude tests. When I was still pretty young (I don’t remember quite when), my mother told me me that a test I’d taken rated me as a “borderline genius”, but the school refused to tell her (or me) just how high my score was. Considering what I was able to do and allowed to do even in elementary school (let alone middle and high school), it must’ve been pretty high. But it’s possible that not until today have I been able to guess just what the school meant by “borderline”.

One thing that’s puzzled me about IQ tests over the years (decades!) is that on almost all of them, I never got an average score of higher than 138, and usually somewhat less. Not only did that not seem to jive with how well I dealt with problems when I was “in the zone”, but even less did it jive with how people perceived me and how I interacted with them. Those who know me well can probably guess how puzzling I found this, as I don’t deal well with ambiguity and lack of self-consistency (in myself or in how things relate to other things).

Over the past few years, I’ve taken some online tests that solved part of the problem. These tests broke down my aptitudes into categories. On one I got a 160 in logic, 120 in math, and in the high 130’s on most other categories. On another, I got scores of 100th percentile (no conversion to IQ scores) in both logical and verbal aptitudes, in addition to mostly very-high-90’s percentiles in other areas. Both of these breakdowns explained a lot. On IQ tests I always have had the most problems with mathematical and spatial reasoning tests (even though I still did well above average in these). In verbal and logical tests, however, I have always been very strong — and it’s those areas that I tend to project in my persona vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Writing is my first love anyway — and it makes sense (considering, again, how people react to my writing as well as how well I interact with written material) that my verbal aptitude would be at the top of the chart. So all this helped explain why people perceive me as being considerably more brilliant than my usual average IQ score would suggest. They perceive my logical and verbal aptitudes as well as my musical ones, basically.

Still, I felt that the whole picture wasn’t in place until today [the day when I took the test, that is]. Some part of my mind has always thought that, surely, I could’ve done (and sometimes have done) better even in the “weaker” areas than I have usually done. It wasn’t that I felt myself anywhere near the level of the truly great geniuses of the world (though I seem to be able to communicate with just about anybody, no matter how brilliant he or she is) — I just didn’t feel that sense of self-consistency that would reassure me of where I truly stood. I may not be as fast at solving some problems as some, yet I seem to be able to solve whatever problem is posed to me in time. And there was one test I took at the former Ambassador College (Pasadena, CA.) when I was applying for a WATS line job — the administrator unexpectedly came back and said it was the highest score she had ever seen on that test (if memory serves, I had a perfect score).

If all this tells you (the reader) that a lot of my self-esteem revolves around my intelligence … you’re right. Part of the reason is that in my childhood and youth, I seemed to be valued for little else other than my brains and my musicality; and old habits of thinking die hard. But it’s also part of my basic personality: INTJ on the Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator. If anyone is tempted by intellectual vanity, it’s us Masterminds (and, in my opinion, especially scientists/artists like me). Jeremiah 9:23-24 is one of the hardest moral admonitions in the Bible for me to live up to:

(Jeremiah 9:23 ESV) Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches,
(Jeremiah 9:24 ESV) but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

Well, an old friend and recent arrival on Facebook, Sonia King, took a free online IQ test and got a slightly higher average IQ score (140) than I’d had heretofore. I told her that I probably would get a lower average score than that because the math score would mitigate the logical and verbal scores. Imagine then my delighted astonishment (or was it astonished delight?) when I got back what is probably the highest score the test will give back: 160+. I’m pretty sure I got every answer right … because this time, I didn’t give up early in frustration on some questions or rush through because of having to beat a clock, but sat there until I was absolutely satisfied that I’d worked out the correct answer in every case. (The coffee and cocoa probably helped too. ) So I have Sonia to thank for this bit of serendipity.

I find it strangely comforting to know that I did my best on this test, that I almost certainly “aced” it, and that therefore I really am capable of the level of performance that I guess for myself and that other people guess about me. While part of me still can’t help but wish I were a top-of-the-bell-curve, universal genius like Goethe or da Vinci (so that I could understand the world as fully as humanly possible), realistically I’m not sure I could bear the emotional and spiritual burdens that such insight would give me. (I have a hard enough time bearing what my gifts give me now — cf. Ecclesiastes 1:18!) Meanwhile, it’s enough to have the self-consistency that I crave even more. I don’t necessarily need to be at the cutting edge of the bell curve; just to know my approximate place on it, in a way that’s consistent with my own observations and those of others.

As for the “borderline genius” bit: different tests I’ve seen will give different definitions of where “genius” begins. Some will begin the “genius” range at 140 (which is where Sonia is on average). Others (like this one) will begin it higher. Since my top scores on the “breakdown” tests have been at 160 or so, could it be that when I was young, the “borderline genius” score really meant I was on the borderline of what this test would call “extraordinary genius”? That would explain much about why I was considered “borderline” and why no one would tell the family “borderline what?”

Update 2008-04-29: The best way of summarizing all this is probably found here:

(Romans 12:3 ESV) For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
(Romans 12:4 ESV) For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function,
(Romans 12:5 ESV) so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.(Romans 12:6 ESV) Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;
(Romans 12:7 ESV) if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching;
(Romans 12:8 ESV) the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

P.S.: My twin sister did almost as well — probably missing only one or two questions. On some other day she probably would’ve aced it also. I’m not sure I want to know how well Miss Positronic Brain (my niece) would do. I do want to know how well my nephew would do — he was the family chess champion until I beat him two out of three games, and he would probably wipe the floor with me now.

Blessings in Jesus Christ (ברכות בישוע המשיח),
Johanan Rakkav (יוחנן רכב)

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