Showing posts with label spam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spam. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Spam Phone Calls
I received a phone call from Woonsocket, Rhode Island (USA) and totally ignored it. In fact I deleted it. I do not know anyone in Woonsocket or the entire state of Rhode Island. The call was either a wrong number or what is called "spam." (The derisive word "SPAM" comes from a canned spiced ham product which many people consider to be awful but which many others enjoy. It has a reputation similar to that of the also unfairly maligned fruit cake.)
Spam phone calls are a particular problem in the United States. Massive numbers of automated phone calls are sent by businesses trying to increase their profits or are sent to deliver a particular message (often political) to as many people as possible. This type of Spam is merely a nuisance. In 2017, the United States Federal Trade Commission received 7,157,370 complaints about spam calls. The problem is escalating. There were 4.5 billion reported spam phone calls in the United States in June of 2018. These spam phone calls are essentially total garbage.
A second type of spam calls is is intended to be hostile and is criminal. One form of these aggressive attacks is intended to completely clog up phone lines and render them useless. This is a form of denial of service attack.
An even more criminal type of spam attempts to deceive or trick as many people as possible to respond to the call and to voluntarily give out their personal information such as bank account numbers, credit card numbers, computer sign-on passwords, etc. The motive here is to steal money.
In today's world everyone is constantly surrounded by what is essentially SPAM; totally worthless garbage. Messages flood at us from television, movies, radio, music, books, news organizations, junk mail, flyers, and other people. The vast majority of it is secular or explicitly non-Christian. Some of it is malignantly anti-Christian.
There is an old saying in the Southern United States about a person so holy and high-minded that he or she is of no use in the real world. This is not what God wants. He wants us to let Him use us for His purposes here in the real world. We are told to he holy (separated) because God is holy, but we are also told to be "in the world but not of the world." Essentially, do not be useless.
Ignoring the vast majority of the garbage swilling around us does not mean that we must have no interest in culture, or learning. or books, or music, or sports, or fashion, or outdoor activities, or politics, or any other thing. It does, however, require us not to chase after every wind (especially those which we know stink). It also requires us to learn to recognize "the stink" even when a little perfume has been added.
Leviticus 11:44,45; 19:2; 20:7, 1 Peter 1:16, John 15:19; 17: 14-16, Ephesians 4:14, Ecclesiastes 6:9
Sunday, August 24, 2014
I apologize that it has taken me so long to respond to all your comments.
I apologize that it has taken me so
long to respond to all your comments. Someone flooded my Comments folder with
hundreds of pieces of spam such as this:
“Get a list of homes appear to egest doomed to meditate all of your people. You essential to target. You power possess a large indefinite amount meliorate for yourself, causation you commercialism efforts on this determiner at contrasting points, and urinate bound that you constantly get by with your withmobile commercialism strategies that Outlet Louis Vuitton gucci borse borse gucci Portafoglio Gucci Christian Louboutin Site Officiel sapphires are ordinarily unchallenged that a massage not single necessity to output with their new furnishing or victimised car, motor vehicle or SUV that gets basic cognitive process is a just smell at advertisements and you'll see that it can prevent moment on your promises to bivalent what it my page”
I have responded to each comment on
the post where it occurred. Click
on the links below to view the posts, the comments, and my responses. I thank
you all for your interest in this blog.
A 1500 Year old Church
Unusual Christian Places: The Bodhisattva
Statue
Fiction in the Bible?
Say Your Prayers
An Atheist’s Definition of
Christianity
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Magic Squares in Christian Occultism, Part 1
I had to remove today’s post because it became corrupted by
some sort of commercial spam. I am instead posting on another subject entirely. Before you
read this, let me absolutely declare that I am not an occultist of any
sort. I reject the practice of
magic. I am not speaking about stage magic, which is a form of entertainment
based on sleight of hand and visual deception. That is clearly not real and does not claim to be real.
What I am talking about is Magic (or more properly Magick).
Magick is based on the belief that there is an underlying basis to reality
which is not apparent to the normal human senses. Magick believes that with knowledge of the correct
words, phrases, or actions, one may influence, or even force, the universe to
produce particular intended results. In other words, spells and curses. The
traditional Christian understanding is that we should have nothing to do with
any of this. Of course, some Christians, even some very learned Christians,
have not abided by this understanding. Knowing about Magick and understanding
how it crept into Christian use is not a violation of the proscription against
it. It is necessary so that we do not do it again. (Sadly, some still do.) [Deuteronomy 18:9-13; Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 19:26, 19:31, 20:6, 20:27; Galatians 5:19-21.]
This will take several days to discuss, so bear with me and
keep on reading. The subject of this series of posts is “Magic Squares” and how
they have been used in Christian symbolism.
The simplest Magic Squares are, of themselves, merely
mathematical constructs which consist of numbers arranged so that the addition
of the numbers in a column in any direction (left to right, right to left, top
to bottom, bottom to top, or diagonally from corner to corner) always add up to
the same sum. Examples are:
2
7 6 All
the columns in any
9
5 1 direction total
to 15.
4
3 8
8 58 59 5 4 62 63 1
49
15 14 52 53 11 10 56
41
23 22 44 45 19 18 48 All
the columns in any
32
34 35 29 28 38 39 25 direction total
to 260.
40
26 27 37 36 30 31 33
17
47 46 20 21 43 42 24
9
55 54 12 13 51 50 16
64 2 3
61 60 6 7 57
These mathematical constructions were known in numerous
cultures around the world from early in the history of mathematics.
The
mathematical process for producing the squares can be expressed in mathematical
formulae. The earliest squares were based on addition, but later squares have
been based on multiplication, complex numbers, shapes other than squares,
hypercubes, primes, and even genetic algorithms. The term “magic square” is also applied to word squares
which read the same in any direction.
The squares became associated with occultism through the practice of numerology. Numerology assigns number values to individual letters of alphabetic writing systems. Every word or name can be assigned a numerical value.
The squares became associated with occultism through the practice of numerology. Numerology assigns number values to individual letters of alphabetic writing systems. Every word or name can be assigned a numerical value.
More in the next post: Magic Squares in Christian Occultism,
Part 2
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