Britain's First Jedi Member of Parliament 1165
earthlingpink writes "In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, the Hon. Member for Copeland, Jamie Reed MP, announced that he is a Jedi: "as the first Jedi Member of this place, I look forward to the protection under the law that will be provided to me by the Bill" (the quotation is a fair way down the page; search for 'Jedi,' not surprisingly). How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?" Update: 06/29 23:15 GMT by T : Reader JE_Hoover adds a correction: "Although the previous MP for Copeland was the Hon. Member for Copeland, the current MP for Copeland is not a member of the privy council. Debretts make it all clear."
Jamie Reed MP on theyworkforyou.com (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is Jamie Reed's MP page [theyworkforyou.com] on My Society's [mysociety.org] excellent TheyWorkForYou project.
And here [theyworkforyou.com] is the screen scraped debate, that you can comment on like a blog.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:4, Interesting)
By the way, I can't help noticing that verified religious crooks of recent centuries past have claimed to be able to perform those very things, only they were exposed as fraud.
So for me, claiming to believe in a Jedi creed is no more ludicrous than being a Christian. Also, watch this post be modded down promptly as a troll, which should tell you something of the power of long entrenched religions.
Re:Insult! (Score:3, Interesting)
How long? Try never. (Score:2, Interesting)
Its not like there hasn't been ample opportunity of late either. Answers on a postcard: how come you can do this sort of stuff in a country with an absolute union between state and the state religion (nb. Her Brittanic majesty is both head of state and head of the church of england) but you're in deep shit if you try it in the US with a written constitution ensuring free speech? I'm at a loss as to figure out how this state of affairs has arisen. I am however reasonably sure its not what the founding fathers had in mind.
Re:That wasn't a Christian (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:2, Interesting)
*Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[a] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
or
*JAR JAR: Oh, noooooooooo!
Hey, help me! Help me!!
QUI-GON:
Let go!
JAR JAR
Oyi, mooie-mooie! I luv yous!
QUI-GON
Are you brainless? You almost got us killed!
JAR JAR
I spake.
QUI-GON
The ability to speak does not make
you intelligent. Now get outta here!
QUI-GON starts to move off, and JAR JAR follows.
JAR JAR
No...no! Mesa stay...Mesa yous humble
servaunt.
QUI-GON
That wont be necessary.
JAR JAR
Oh boot tis! Tis demunded byda guds. Tis a live debett, tis. Mesa culled Jaja Binkss.
QUI-GON
I have no time for this now...
JAR JAR
Say what?
Oh, nooooo! Weesa ganna....
QUI-GON
Stay down!
JAR JAR
OBI-WAN
Sorry, Master, the water fried my weapon.
QUI-GON
You forgot to turn your power off again, didn't you?
QUI-GON
It won't take long to recharge, but this is a lesson I hope you've learned, my young Padawan.
OBI-WAN
Yes, Master.
JAR JAR
Yousa sav-ed my again, hey?
OBI-WAN
What's this?
QUI-GON
A local. Let's go, before more of those droids show up.
JAR JAR
Mure? Mure did you spake??!?
JAR JAR
Ex-squeeze me, but da moto grande safe place would be Otoh Gunga. Tis where I grew up...Tis safe city.
QUI-GON
A city! Can you take us there?
JAR JAR
Ahhh, will...on second taut...no, not willy.
QUI-GO
No??!
JAR JAR
Iss embarrissing, boot... My afrai my've bean banished. My forgoten der Bosses would do terrible tings to my. Terrible tings if my goen back dare.
QUI-GON
You hear that?
QUI-GON
That's the sound of a thousand terrible things heading this way...
OBI-WAN
When they find us, they will crush us, grind us into little pieces, then blast us into oblivion!
JAR JAR
Oh! Yousa point is well seen. Dis way! Hurry!
Re:That wasn't a Christian (Score:2, Interesting)
As for Jedi, there's one important distinction between Lucas and Jesus: Lucas came up with Jedi-ism(?) for entertainment, Jesus really did believe what he said was real (whether it is or not is obviously up for debate).
(oh, I'm neither Christian nor Muslim -- or Jedi, for that matter)
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but there's no scholarly consensus that the Jospehus and Tacitus texts on Jesus are authentic. Some think they are interpolations by Christians generations later, some don't. So, the texts have to accepted on faith and therefore don't settle anything. Links:
Tacitus on Jesus [wikipedia.org]
Josephus on Jesus [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:2, Interesting)
Christians are humans. Humans are flawed. Just because they fail doesn't mean they're not Christians, even though you seem to imply as much.
Most basketball players aren't Michael Jordan. But because you're no Michael Jordan doesn't mean you're not a basketball player.
Re:May the Force be with nobody (Score:2, Interesting)
A Jedi once bit his sister... (Score:3, Interesting)
with the business end of a double-bladed lightsaber given to
her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo Sith Lord and
star of many ILM møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo
Sith Lord", "Gungans of Passion", "The Mani Mitichlorians of Horst Nordfink"...
Re:This Moron Is My MP! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:3, Interesting)
You're missing a very important part of the process. According to Catholic belief the wafer is not simply a piece of bread that is eaten and digested like any other wafer. It is subject to a miracle - in the very literal sense.
Catholics believe in the miracle of transubstantiation. This states that at the moment of consumption the communion wafer literally, physically changes and becomes the flesh of Christ. It's important to understand that this is not simply seen as a symbolic or metaphorical thing, but that according to Catholic dogma it actually physically happens.
If transubstantiation did take place then it wouldn't matter in the least what the wafer was made from - it could be made from arsenic and cyanide, and if the miracle of transubstantiation is correct, the person eating it would suffer no ill effects whatsoever, because those substances would not enter their body.
Therefore, if the catholic church is so confident that this miracle takes place - and it is, after all, a fundamental part of their beliefs - then why do they bother getting gluten free wafers for people who can't consume gluten?
Re:Wrong Claim (Score:2, Interesting)
Incorrect. I am a recovering Catholic, so I have some major issues with their beleifs from the perspective of living in the real world, but this is not one of them. They beleive that the priest *petitions Jesus* to turn the host into his body, like he did at the Last Supper, so that the congregation can gain the same benefits as the Apostles.
In general, Catholics do not ever profess to beleive that people have their own internal "super powers" -- not the pope, or priests, or even saints. Their beleive is that these people have a much closer connection with God. God then performs performs such miraculous works as the consecration at mass, the pope's infallible statements, etc., using the person as his agent.
While I don't think it was ever explicitly stated, the implication is that God could easily just do these things without human intercession, but that having a person act as his agnet to do them provides a more comfortable and easily understood experience that simply having full written Papal bulls appear from thin air.
Re:Jesus Heals (Score:2, Interesting)
I am a Christian that believes in miraculous healing. I am reluctant to attribute all of the healing I see or hear about to miracles, but I have seen and heard enough to believe that it does happen. Instantaneous disappearance of symptoms, doctor-verified physiological changes, these things occur to people I know personally. These people have no discernible reason to lie. In some cases, if they lied about being healed, they'd be dead (unless of course they lied about being sick/injured in the first place, which I will admit is possible, but unlikely). Sure, some could be attributed to misdiagnoses, but it strains credibility (assuming you didn't start with the assumption that such healings were impossible) that all of them were just mistakes. I admit that I have not witnessed any instantaneous visible changes, and retain some skepticism of reports I have heard of such things.
Too many people, I believe, discount all of these things out of hand, purely from a philiosphical perspective. But theory is always subject to observation. Observation is, of course, flawed especially when psychological factors are involved, but I believe that observation strongly suggests that there is something to this healing thing. Accepting this as an empirical fact will lead to a host of philosophical questions, but this is the same thing that happens in the physical sciences all the time.
Some will attribute these things to the "mysterious power of the mind" or some other naturalistic, but unexplained phenomenon, and with them I would have an entirely different sort of conversation, far more than I could ever hope to encapsulate in a post. Some will discount these things because there have been so many hoaxes over the ages. But the hoaxes are perpetrated by people who have something to gain from the hoax, whereas the majority of the people I see and talk to, and even pray for, are ordinary people who have nothing to gain but getting better.
Regarding your question about not everyone being healed, a few points:
What I have heard suggested: There are a few factors that are said to limit the work of God. Most of them could be summed up in the category of "faith".
Why God is limited by faith is an interesting question, and another one that I don't have a definitive answer for. Let it suffice to say that I feel it is more easily understood when viewed as a relational question more than as a philosophical one.
Faith gets a bad rap because it is easily abused, but the same could be said for a multitude of ideas and institutions in a free society. I don't advocate blind faith, but I think blind skepticism is just as problematic.
The faith of which I speak is also not entirely with regards to the specific healing, but it is generally around belief that God is good and wants to do good things for us. This very faith allows one to trust that God will work good on their behalf, even if it's not the specific thing that they're asking for. Sometimes God won't do something we ask because it's not what we need (cue the Rolling Stones). Or sometimes God will do it later, after we have changed in such a way as to be ready.
Apart from the issue of faith, the other main factor that comes into play is the existence of other forces (both human and spiritual). God
unattributed quote: (Score:3, Interesting)
PS: I'd like to know what percent of American christians believe that Jesus was literally a man-god, as opposed to a godly man. Yes, I'm sure there are those out there who would bet their life that an omnipotent sky dweller is responsible for everything, but I doubt it's really a large percentage. Pulled-out-of-my-ass statistic: maybe 25% of american christians (and that's a highball).
Keep in mind that the ones who are the most extreme correspond highly with those who are most vocal.
And before the slashdot conserva-posse comes to lynch me, I do not hate christianity, only lunacy. Frankly, I think the saddest part of christianity today is that there is so much of value which is totally ignored for the benefit of those who wield the devotion of the masses.
"You can flame me now. My heart is full of love." ~somebody else's sig
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
If the New Testament is true (in terms of events, ignoring the sentiments of the writers), Jesus was far different from a crook or a madman.
Re:Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Peace is a lie, there is only passion
Through passion I gain strength
Through strength I gain power
Through power I gain victory
In victory my chains are broken
The force shall free me
Thats the thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good for him (Score:3, Interesting)
Please note (lest the worst ever be inferred) that I would never begrudge anyone their faith. My point was that one is (at least in the UK) free to choose one's religion; this is in contrast to race, sexuality, etc. Incitement to the hatred of the latter two is, as Atkinson says, irrational and deplorable. Maybe I carried an abstraction a bit too far.
I think that in a free society, the overall message of the law should be criticism and ridicule of ideas (of which I count lifestyle choices as a subset) is acceptable. Practitioners of these ideas are free to answer criticism, counter-ridicule, or simply walk away and carry on unhindered, as per their human rights. According to Atkinson,
What is unacceptable is bullying: be it in the name of race, sexuality, religion, or something as seemingly trivial as choice of hobby.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, your belief does not explain reikki. Maybe reikki doesn't work, but to those who believe it does, and there are a lot of them, your personal belief doesn't hold water.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
You may draw your own conclusions about the significance of this fact.
*now that i've posted this, I fully expect the gp to be modded +5 insightful.
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
You have to be a complete idiot.
The Roman Church is the first Christian Church. Everybody else is a fucking schism and even less interesting than the Catholics. "Wannabe Christians" are even more ridiculous than "real" Christians.
Not to mention that Jesus was a fanatical Jew and had absolutely NO intention of founding a new religion of any kind - especially one that persecuted his own people for two thousand years for something that never happened. As a result, Christianity is the biggest joke - or tragedy, depending on your viewpoint - in human history.
Studying the Jedi. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
To be a Jedi. .
1. Follow a path of Serving Others rather than Serving Self.
2. Use force only for defense.
3. Do not allow strong emotions to rule your thoughts and actions.
4. Believe that one's Focus Determines One's Reality.
5. Do not allow attachments into your life.
6. Learn how to manipulate the 'Force'.
7. Learn martial arts with respect to the sword.
There's probably other elements, but that's all I could think of off the top from the films.
My thoughts on those points by number. .
1. Agree wholeheartedly with the principal. Hard to do in this reality where eating kills and everybody has baggage they're working through.
2. Fits with the first point.
3. Hmm. Sounds like a good idea, but I'm not entirely clear on this. I think love and compassion, and emotion in general are really, really important to explore and understand within yourself. Shutting them off does not allow self knowledge, but rather puts up walls which cause problems.
4. Absolutely. "Your Focus determines your Reality". This is an incredibly powerful function of this reality. This is difficult to understate. This is the easiest route to so-called 'magic' I've ever seen. Anybody can make anything happen, but watch out for anticipation. That and wishful thinking will derail you every time.
5. Yes, but it's a very easy thing to screw up. A blanket law of not being allowed to love makes it easy to follow, but is probably crippling in the long run. In the end, learning how to love without attachment is one of THE big goals in this reality.
6. Energy works rather differently here than it does in the Star Wars universe, but the general idea is there.
7. Why not? How can one expect to master the ephemeral if one cannot master the physical?
Those are just my thoughts. --Plus this last one; I don't think Jedi can be considered a religion in the classic sense, (besides the fact that it's made up), in that religions typically involve (petty) god worship at some point, (that and not asking too many questions). Whereas 'Jedi' seems to be more like the study of spirituality without such limitations; self-exploration and the exploration of reality through the interaction of consciousness and spirit with the universe. Not the same as no fish on Fridays and believing in Roman social engineering/population herding propaganda (the Bible).
-FL
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are several physiological theories about the meridians and points of acupressure. Nervous reflexes are one; there are others involving the electrical properties of fascia, and another involving a network of less-differentiated cells throughout the body. It's possible that different points work by different mechanisms. The explanation is far from complete.
Most pracitioners of Chinese Medicine don't care much about trying to find a Western Medicine explanation for why acupuncture, Asian bodywork therapy, and Chinese herbs, are effective; any more than most musicians are deeply interested in the physics of sound, or the physiology of hearing.
As for "believing" in qi, qi is not something one has to "believe" in. Qi is something that is experienced. If you get up in the morning as say "I feel full of energy today!" - you just made an observation about qi.
"O genki desu ka?" - "How is your ki (qi)?"- is the Japanese version of "How are you?" (Specifically, "genki" is what the Chinese call "yuan" or "original" qi, a specific type.) It doesn't require a voltmeter or any objective observation to answer. :-)
It's unfortunate that many practitioners of CM and of Asian martial arts have latched on to the idea that qi is some sort of electromagnetic like energy field. This is a misinterpretation, attempting to fit Taoist concepts of the Universe into a Platonic/Aristotelian grid.
Like other aspects of Chinese Medicine's model of the human being, qi is best understood not by what it is but by what is does. The CM model is very much a functional, not a structural, one.
I recommend Tad Kaptchuk's The Web That Has No Weaver to those interested in learning more.
The two are no more incompatible than the description of a certain sound in terms of a time-varying frequency spectrum, versus "that's an A chord played on a steel-string guitar". The former description may tell you why, when you play it through your amp, it makes your speaker buzz because of some resonance; the latter tells you how it works in the music. They're both correct.
(Tom Swiss, NCCAOM [nccaom.org] Diplomate in Asian Body Therapy; Sandan, World Seido Karate Organization)
Re:Jesus Heals (Score:1, Interesting)
-Isaac Asimov
Yes, except... (long) (Score:2, Interesting)
> the power of those styles. Even in asia, fery few people believe in chi these days.
I totally agree with you based on my experience with Goju Karate, Jujitsu, Shorinji Kempo, Chi Kung, Baguazhang, and Kung Fu. No question, chi is just a convenient way of thinking about your body and isn't actually real---that was my experience.
Except then I accidentally measured the damn stuff.
Surprised the heck out of me when I did it---I was TOTALLY expecting a different result. So I repeated the experiment. And again. And again. And...well, I explained the result to friends kinda like this:
I was sitting in a research talk about databases, and having trouble paying attention because I'd just presented and it was right after lunch. The speakers were passing around wireless heat sensors, so I started playing with one when it came around to me. The standard demo was to hold it in one hand and then cup your other hand over it - the sensor would pick up the heat change, and the assosciated data stream being shown on the screen at the front of the room would spike up to a new level accordingly.
After doing that a couple of times, I was bored again. I decided it would be fun try pretend to channel chi into it; nothing would happen, of course, but the idea was worth a few seconds of chuckling---flinging chi at a doctorate-level research project! Amusing notion, but with only one problem:
I was wrong.
I did a half-hearted two seconds of a standard little meditation/visualization meant to build up chi, and pictured it flowing through my arms down into the sensor, fully expecting the continuously-updated data display to be wholly unchanged. You can imagine I was a mite surprised, then, when the sensor output spiked at the exact moment I was doing this.
My immediate thought was that it was pure coincidence - the sensor's readings probably spike randomly every now and then no matter what's going on. If I waited a little while, I figured, I'd see a similar spike without me doing anything, and that would be that.
So I waited.
Nothing.
Okay, first two hypotheses---that nothing would happen and that it was a coincidence---were false. But it was probably a fluke---I doubted it'd happen again.
So I did the little two-second meditaty thing again...and the sensor spiked again, exactly at the instant I was visualizing the chi hitting it. So much for hypothesis #3.
At this point, I figured it was pretty clear that I was indeed causing the spikes in the sensor readings, but how? I guessed that maybe I'd been inadvertently tensing my hands a little, moving them closer to the sensor cupped inside. So, of course, I test that, doing the channel-thing again, but this time keeping _very_ careful watch on my hands to see that they're completely motionless.
Spike!
I ran that test a second time, holding my hands motionless through the both tests and the maybe-it's-coincidence-after-all? waiting period in between; spikes (only) at the instant of channelling, just as before. Hypothesis #4 bites the dust.
Well, alright, I thought, if I'm doing something to influence the sensor, is it just yes/no, or is it actually measuring something? If I'm theoretically channelling _more_ chi, will I get a bigger spike in the readings?
Hypothesis #5.
This time I do the building-chi visualization for a little longer, maybe 3-4 seconds, and visualize a more powerful stream of chi flowing through my hands into the sensor.
And the sensor spikes like I've never seen before, not when I was doing the previous tests, not when I or anyone else was cupping and uncupping our hands around it, never---this spike is significantly larger than any other change I'd seen the sensors detec
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:2, Interesting)