Elisha and the floating Axe head

This little story has always intrigued me, how could one make iron float in water?

What was the secret of the stick? Was it vibrating in some way when it hit the water to produce a buoyancy in the iron of the axehead? Was it a special wood or did it secrete some fluid or something to cause the lifting effect?

Notice it was just the axe head itself which flew off into the water, no wood to support it.

The Lost Axe Head (2 Kings 6:1-7)

1. Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “Behold now, the place before you where we are living is too limited for us.

2. Please let us go to the Jordan, and each of us take from there a beam, and let us make a place there for ourselves where we may live.” So he said, “Go.”

3. Then one said, “Please be willing to go with your servants.” And he answered, “I shall go.”

4. So he went with them; and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees.

5. But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water; and he cried out and said, “Alas, my master! For it was borrowed.”

6. Then the man of God said, “Where did it fall?” And when he showed him the place, he cut off a stick, and threw it in there, and made the iron float.

7. And he said, “Take it up for yourself.” So he put out his hand and took it.

Whipping Toads to produce Rain

"At one time the natives of Venezuela worshipped toads. They regarded the toad as "the lord of the waters," and treated it with much reverence; though, as has been the case with other idolaters, they were ready, in times of difficulty, to compel favorable hearing from their pretended deities.

They whipped their imprisoned toads with little switches when there was a scarcity of provisions and a want of rain."

In a similar vein, I don't know how christian believers can ignore the command to not worship images...and yet there are statues of the Virgin, dolls of the virgin, Jesus, the Saints, etc. who people worship and revere despite what their very bible instructs them not to do....

it's the cafeteria believer syndrome where they pick and choose what they wish to believe and practice. If people practiced ALL that the Bible taught the world would be outraged, same for the Muslims and others with so-called 'holy' books full of teachings containing a mix of hate, death, love and respect for their followers to carry out.

Learn Hypnotism - 3 eBook CD for price of 1

If you have a few minutes, you might want to read my page on hypnosis and all the amazing things associated with its application.

Included is an experience I had when I hypnotized a neighbor kid when I was about 14. As well the hypnotic gaze of snakes, the discovery of 'eyebeams' which can be detected electronically, the Italian Hypnotist Robber who was caught on tape with his eyes glowing as cashiers handed over their money and remembered nothing,

several methods of trance induction and many odd cases, animal catatonia, healing, psychic phenomena, party/stage stunts, including my favorite of negative hallucination where you make your subject NOT see something...much more...if nothing else, its might be a hoot to read. - Source

Overloading the System to Destruction

Katman sent me this link to photos of the tea party rally in Washington and in one of the photos was a sign mentioning the Cloward Piven Strategy. I'd never heard of this so did a search and was astounded at what I found. It sure looks like the beginning of what is to come if we can't get it together on a grassroots level.

/ ...the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion.

Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Most Americans to this day have never heard of Cloward and Piven. But New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to expose them in the late 1990s. As his drive for welfare reform gained momentum, Giuliani accused the militant scholars by name, citing their 1966 manifesto as evidence that they had engaged in deliberate economic sabotage.

"This wasn't an accident," Giuliani charged in a 1997 speech. "It wasn't an atmospheric thing, it wasn't supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare."

Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet.

The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. - Source and the Cloward-Piven website

The Power of Heat and Iron

"Experiment (remarks Baron Liebig) has shown that a quantity of heat, sufficient to raise a pound of water one degree of temperature, will, when communicated to a bar of iron, enable it to elevate a weight of 1,350 lbs. to the height of one foot.

An interesting application of this fact was long ago made in the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, in Paris. In this building, which was formerly a convent, the nave of the church was converted into a museum for industrial products, machines, and implements.

In it's arch, traversing its length, appeared a crack, which gradually increased to the width of several inches, and permitted the passage of rain or snow. The opening could easily have been closed by stone and lime, but the yielding of the side walls would not have been prevented by these means.

The whole building was on the point of being pulled down, when a natural philospher proposed the following plan, by which the object was accomplished;

A number of strong iron rods were firmly fixed at one end to a side wall of the nave, and after passing through the opposite wall, were provided on the outside with large nuts, which were screwed up tightly to the wall.

By applying burning straw to the rods they expanded in length. The nuts by this extension being now removed several inches from the wall, were again screwed tight to it.

The rods on cooling contracted with enormous force, and made the side walls approach each other. By repeating the operation the crack entirely disappeared. This building, with its retaining rods, is still in existence."

On the Wonderful Effect of Imagination

"During the siege of Breda, in the Netherlands, in 1625, the garrison was dreadfully afflicted with the scurvy. So useless was the medical aid afforded to the soldiers, and so desperate were they in consequence, that they resolved to give up the city to the enemy.

This resolution came to the ears of the Prince of Orange; he immediately wrote addresses to the men, assuring them that he possessed remedies that were unknown to physicians, and that he would undertake their cure, provided they continued in the discharge of their duty.

Together with these addresses he sent to the physicians small vials of coloured water, which the patients were assured were of immense price, and of unspeakable virtue.

Many, who declared that all former remedies had only made them worse, now recovered in a few days. A long and interesting account of the wonderful working of this purely imaginary antidote was drawn up by M. Van der Mye, one of the physicians in the garrison, whose office was thus successfully usurped by the Prince of Orange.

A corroborative proof of the well-known power of the imagination in affecting disease is afforded in the following Arabian fable; One day a traveler met the Plague going into Cairo, and accosted it thus; "For what purpose are you entering Cairo?"

"To kill 3,000 people," rejoined the Plague.

Some time after, the same traveler met the Plague on his return, and said, "But you killed 30,000!"

"Nay," replied the Plague, "I killed but 3,000; the rest died of fright.""

On the Power of Ice

"An artillery officer at Quebec made an experiment during a hard winter, by filling a bomb-shell, about fourteen inches in diameter, with water, and then closing the opening with an iron peg, which was driven firmly in.

This being exposed to the severe frost, the stopper was driven out to a distance of more than 100 yards, and a cylinder of ice, eight or nine inches long, came out of the opening.

In a second experiment of the same kind, the stopper resisted the expansive force; but the shell was itself was rent, and a ring of ice was forced through the crack all around the shell.

In the same manner houses have been overthrown by the expansive force of frost in the earth causing the ground to swell up. Stones will break in consequence of the water they contain freezing, and trees have split up with an explosive sound on occasions of sudden cold occurring when their vessels have been full of sap."

Detecting a Murderer

"The origin of the curious custom of making persons suspected of murder touch the murdered body for the discovery of their guilt or innocence is interesting. This method of finding out murderers was practised in Denmark by King Christian II.

The story goes that it arose in the following way; Certain gentlemen being on an evening together in a tavern, fell out among themselves, and from words grew to blows, insomuch that one of them was stabbed with a poniard.

Now the murderer was unknown, by reason of the number, although the person stabbed before death accused a pursuivant who was one of the company.

The king, to find out the homicide, caused them all to come together, and, standing round the dead body, he commanded that they should, one after another, lay their right hands on the dead man's naked breast, swearing that they had not killed him.

The gentlemen did so, and no sign appeared against them. The pursuivant alone remained, who, condemned before in his own conscience, went first of all and kissed the dead man's feet, but as soon as he laid his hand on his breast, the blood, we are told, gushed forth both out of his wound and his nostrils, so that, urged by this evident accusation, he confessed the murder, and was, by the king's own sentence, immediately beheaded."

Origin of 'Baker's Dozen'

It was the Devil's dozen, thirteen being the number of witches supposed to sit down together at their great meeting or sabbaths. Hence the superstition about sitting thirteen at a table. The baker was an unpopular character and became a substitute for his satanic majesty.