Chev

You're right!

The biggest argument I've heard for there not being more Soul Food restaurants is because the food is supposedly so unhealthy for you.
The thing people need to understand is that although most Soul Food is dense and calorie rich, it's also rich in calcium, vitamins, minerals, and proteins needed to build the body up!
It was made to sustain people who were doing hard physical labor all day long and compensate for the minerals and tissue damage done with intense labor.

It's the same with most Italian food!
Most people don't realize that most of the Italians who came to the United State were the "dark" Italians of southern Italy and Sicily who were considered the slaves or peasants of Italian society and THEY were used to doing long hours of hard physical labor either in agriculture or building ships in the hot Mediterranian sun so THEIR food....similar to Soul Food....was calorie rich and consisted of a lot of fat and starches (pasta) for energy to work all day.

Most people haven't had authentic Italian food from Sicily and southern Italy but when I lived in Detroit I used to drive across the Canadian border every so often and go the the Little Italy or take women there for dinner for some REAL Italian food.
A little history......
Detroit used to have a Little Italy inside the city but Al Capone had it moved to across the border to Windsor Canada so that he could set up a liquor operation overthere as an excuse to bring liquor back and forth across the border.

But back to Soul Food...............

As full of fat and calories as it is, I'll take REAL food over the fake genetically modified garbage they're serving in most restaurants any day.
I'd love to go back down South again to my people's houses and eat those green beans swimming in butter and fat back, or that corn bread full of bacon (cracklin' bread).

What I see popping up around the country now is a lot of "vegan" Soul Food restaurants which is almost sacrilegious to call that tofu garbage "soul food".

I've said many times before and I still maintain that there is an under current of contempt and irreverence for Black male authority among many Black women.
You see this online as well as real life.

I'm not saying this is the case with Cynique, but I'm speaking of many female posters in general who choose not to come to this site and a few others that are owned by or mainly moderated by Black men.

Just like many Black women don't like working for a Black male manager because she doesn't want "some sorry ass nigga" whom she doesn't respect telling her what to do or getting the last word in, many don't like participating on a site where a Black male may have the last word.


The motto "to each his/her own" means nothing to people of this mentality.
The concept of simply ignoring those whom you don't agree with or staying in your lane is simply not enough.

Many women like HEAVY HANDED moderation where they can point out those whom they don't like and get them BANNED or better yet get the moderators and other members to CLOWN ON them and shame them into leaving.   

And with most Black sites you can CLEARLY recognize whether the moderator(s) is male or female simply by how they conduct themselves and what they consider inappropriate to say, where as on most White sites I've visited it's hard to tell the male moderators from the female moderators unless them mention it because of how uniformly they think and use their judgement.

And a lot of the Black children that AREN'T aborted and end up in the foster care system are sold to homosexual White couples (two mommies or two daddies) and there's no telling WHAT type of madness they end up going through in those homes.

At our community center I've worked with atleast 2 teenaged Black boys who live in seperate households and both were from the inner city and were adopted by homosexual couples.
One by a lesbian couple who has 2 other adopted Black children, and the other boy was adopted by a gay couple.

They're having problems right now from what they've gone through at their homes that I wouldn't DARE discuss even if it were legal for me to.

I don't think orphanages even exist anymore.
I think as soon as a child is taken from their parents for whatever reason they immediately go into the foster care system to be assigned to a private home.

Troy

Don't for one second believe they've gone away!
Especially with 45 in office.

Just assume that they've gotten better at espionage.
Sitting back just observing and gathering information.

They probably learned a few lessons from their Russian counterparts.

How do you think the Russians were able to have such an impact on the 2016 election.
They were monitoring Black websites and sitting back all nice and quiet observing and studying and every now and then pop up under some weird identity just to spread misinformation and then disappear again.

Chev and Troy

Well you two STILL haven't sold me on planets and moons being stars, but OK...I'm beginning to understand.

It took a minute, but I'm beginning to comprehend how the stars and planetary alignments and their patterns can verify the times of alleged events.
But this is beginning to lead to new questions for me.............

These alignment patterns.....as consistent as they may be....would seem to only verify when something took place IF those who are recording the event MENTION that particular celestial alignment during the event itself.

For example if a great battle took place at a particular time and those scribes looked up in the sky that night and said,
"On this night Saturn is here, Venus is there, the Virgo constellation is here...ect..."

I understand now.

But most historical events that I've read DO NOT mention celestial alignments with them. They just say "Such and such took place" and leave it at that.

So again, how can we verify the actual occurence of the EVENT when the alignments aren't even mentioned as is the case with MOST historical events we read about?

Troy


When I saw you posted in this thread, somehow I KNEW it would only be a sentence or two and most likely would NOT be an answer to any of the questions I posed to you.

1. That "battle" was just a hypothetical. 
It was an example for the question of how could something that happened in the past be confirmed or verified by looking up in the sky today.
It doesn't mean a battle took place or that you claimed it took place, but IF someone DID claim it took place.....how could the planet or star alignment confirm this claim?

2. I see you totally ignored the question I posed to you of whether or not YOU believe that planets and moons are stars also.


Lol, neither one of you (Troy and Chev @Chevdove) are doing a very good job explaining to me in a plain simple way that I can understand HOW planets and stars CONFIRM or VERIFY the claims people make of alleged past events like The Flood or Jesus walking on water.

The STUDENT is ready, but where is the teacher?
 

21 hours ago, Delano said:

 noun

Definition of wandering star

 

: any of the seven planets of ancient astronomy

 

 

  Your definition of a wandering star says it's "ancient" astronomy.

On ‎5‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 7:14 PM, Chevdove said:

 

 

 

@Pioneer1 You are so wrong! I have a degree in science and have taught science. 

The word 'STAR' means 'a planet'! The word 'STAR' also means 'THE SUN' in the scientific world!

A 'star' is the definition of 'the sun', 'the moon', the MOVING STAR [ie planets], 'COMET' and etc! 

PLANETS are defined today and in the distant past as being MOVING STARS. 

The moon is defined to be 'A SATELLITE STAR' ...

This has always been the scientific language!

 

 

  She says the scientific world TODAY defines planets as well as the moon as stars.
 

Again, this is the first time I'm hearing that science STILL calls planets and moons "stars".

Troy

Is this a serious question to me? Don't be silly Besides @Chevdove never asserted that.

Well, you're supporting her assertion that you can look at the stars and planetary alignments to verify historic events so I'm just asking you for specifics of how this is done.

If a claim is made that a battle was fought on April 20th 1791....how can I look up at the stars or planetary alignments and confirm this today?

Do you also believe that the moon and planets are "stars" too?

I appreciate our brother doing this for the students.

However I think that the money he's pledged to pay off their debts would have been a MUCH better spent if he would have guaranteed the same amount of money to each student toward their OWN BUSINESSES.

Or atleast gave them the option for that money to go towards debt payoff or towards businesses.

I think this would be more of an INVESTMENT than simply paying off debt because it would generate far more money for them in the long run.

Troy

Few can recall something from Ebony with the same level of fondness

Perhaps Ebony should have become a Black men's magazine the way Essence caters to Black women.

Chev

I can still remember as a kid going out with my family to Sunday dinners (often after church) to different Soul Food restaurants around the city. 
There were so many to choose from.
My father would take us to different ones and you didn't have to worry about people cussing, fighting, or act a fool around you and your family.

In many AfroAmerican communities today there are no or very few actual "sit down" restaurants PERIOD whether you're talking about Soul Food, Chinese, or fast food.   Most of them are designed for you to walk in or drive up, place your order and pay, get the food, and LEAVE.

The message they're sending the customers is: Get your shit and get up out of here.....Lol.

Most of the sit down and relax, customer service oriented restaurants today are only the fancy restaurants like Ruth Chris.

I think most AfroAmerican youth (25 and under) are missing out on a LOT of amenities that used to be taken for granted in our culture. Most of them don't know what it's like to go to a Black establishment and get waited on by Black people with a smile and eat food cooked with love from ANOTHER Black person.

I still remember the old greasy spoons in Detroit that were Black owned and Black ran.  Early in the morning as early as 6am or 7am Black folks heading to work in the morning would stop in these joints for a full breakfast of grits, eggs, coffee, pancakes, ect.....and meet up with eachother.
I'm getting hungry just THINKING about them!

I don't know if you remember but there was movie back in the 80s called the BLUES BROTHERS in which Aretha Franklin portrayed a waitress in a greasy spoon while performing the song "You better think".   I remember Black waitresses like that who would call everybody "baby" and put a lot of SOUL in serving their customers.
You don't see that today.

You see Black youth walking around eating pizza or chili fries most likely made by someone who does NOT look like them or give a damn about them.

2 hours ago, Chevdove said:

 

 

@Pioneer1 You are so wrong! I have a degree in science and have taught science. 

The word 'STAR' means 'a planet'! The word 'STAR' also means 'THE SUN' in the scientific world!

A 'star' is the definition of 'the sun', 'the moon', the MOVING STAR [ie planets], 'COMET' and etc! 

PLANETS are defined today and in the distant past as being MOVING STARS.

The moon is defined to be 'A SATELLITE STAR' ...

This has always been the scientific language!

There are so, so, som many distinct types of stars in the universe and various ones have a distinct defintion!

 

I guess one way to maybe correlate the term 'STAR' could be like a word 'HUMAN' or 'HOMO SAPIEN'; in that there are many different adjectives to define 

humans, some are 'primitive homo sapiens', some are called 'Home Erectus', some are called 'modern homo sapiens', some are specifically defined as being European, or African, or etc....

 

Even the scriptures define the term 'STAR' as meaning various types of bodies in the universe with various distinctions.

This is a common understanding in the science world in tht MOVING STARS is another term for PLANETS!!!

 

 

 

Are you telling me that in the scientific community today moons and planets are considered STARS?

That would be amazing because this is the first time I'm hearing this.

Mel

this is exactly how I felt - and see, you did understand. Some how I had a feeling you knew exactly why I responded the way I did! And yes, I understand why it struck you as irrational - because "love" is irrational and to actually have love for all living things equally is probably something you don’t come across on a daily basis.

It wasn't that hard to figure out, you pretty much said it plainly.

When you say "love for all things equally" I don't NECESSARILY consider that statement irrational because I realize the word "love" is just one English word that is used to describe MULTIPLE different types of feelings, many of which aren't even related to eachother.
I think Greek attempts to separate it with words like "agape" and "eros" ect....

I would guess that the feeling you're calling "love" that you feel equally for everything is a deep caring type of feeling which is a separate feeling than what you have for your children and both of those feelings are different than the type of feeling you have for a lover or spouse....but most people will call all of it "love" for lack of a better term in English.

Mel

Out of all the things I wrote correcting Troy you chose to focus on "people" - why is that?

It stood out for me because all the other reasons you gave for objecting to how he described you seemed rational (despite my not agreeing with your objections to a couple of them), but your objection to being described as "loving people" and declaring that you don't.....only to turn around and describe this as being too reductionist and that you actually love ALL living things seemed a bit irrational.

I can understand your objecting to it if he said outright or implied that this love was reduced to ONLY people instead of all living things, but this was neither said nor implied.
It just wasn't expansive enough to your liking.

Imagine walking into a pet shop and asking an employee,
"Since you work well with dogs, could you give me the best advice on how to train mine?"
....and they rebuke you by saying.
"Actually I DON'T work well with dogs, I work well with ALL animals!"

Perhaps it was just the wording.
Maybe if you had added a "just" in your objection it would have seemed more rational TO ME.
For example:  "I don't JUST love people.....I love all things"

 

Out of curiosity.......
Although you didn't say it outright, do you think for a man to call you smart is a bit "condescending" ?
Do you take that compliment from a MAN the same way a Black person would take it from a White who called them "articulate"?

Chev

That also means that some of our own people are a part of our self destruction for this cause of White Supremacy and so, what do we do about that!?

You're abolutely right.
Infact a LARGE PORTION of our people are guilty of self destruction in the community.

What has worked for me and most other AfroAmericans I know who seek to improve themselves is to SEPARATE ourselves from the self-destructive elements.  When I say seperate I'm talking both physically (moving away from and avoiding known trouble makers) as well as separating ourselves mentally and culturally (not listening to self destructive music, engaging in self destructive behavior, or watching movies that promote crime and murder in the Black community....Empire comes to mind) and seeking the company of those of like minds so that we can build among eachother.

Ideally, the goal should be to CLEAN UP the community and rid it of those criminals and savages who engage in grossly self destructive behaviors like gang banging, pedophilia, rape, and theft.

The problem is the Caucasians in Law Enforcement often times protects those who are engaging in this behavior in our communities or keeps it contained in AfroAmerican communities in an attempt to keep it out of theirs.
They actually enable most of the bullshit you see going on in Black neighborhoods.

If it were totally up to us without any outside intervention I believe decent AfroAmericans would have organized and ran out the drug dealers, murderers, and pedophile from our community a LONG time ago.

25 minutes ago, Mel Hopkins said:

 

@Pioneer1  who cares about compliments?   I prefer accuracy.  

... I corrected Troy's description because while he's assigned it to me - it has nothing to do with me.  And yes people are included in the set of living things but to focus on people would be a reductionist view of my outlook.  I would provide first aid to a person just as I would provide first aid to a plant.  I would relocate a person who seeks to harm me just like I would relocate a spider.   

Out of all that he said to you I'm focused on the "love for people" portion of his statement because I was a bit puzzled for the reason you gave for objecting to it.

Is accuracy the issue here, or specificity?
It seems to me that his statement was not incorrect, but your issue with it was that it was too narrowly focused or "reduced".


BTW, I prefer a healthy balance of compliments-accuracy-criticizm.
Too much of either without enough of the other usually doesn't lead to the best results.

Del

It just occured to me that this "new era" or change in my attitude has occured one day AFTER the May 17th date you made mention of.

Troy
 

Easy, the laws of physics have not changed. Which is also why we know how the planets were aligned

Yes I understand this but the question isn't whether or not the planets as they align today is the same as how they aligned millenia ago because I believe they do; the question I have is how does it confirm or verify the EVENTS that were alleged to have occurred during their alignment?
In other words to illustrate my question.............

The summer soltice occurs around the same time each year.
Correct?
It may not occur on the same DATE each year, but occurs during the same TIME FRAME each year meaning after every threehundred and sixy something days we pretty much know we will get a summer soltice.

Now if I'm a great general in India and I won a battle during the summer soltice of 1935, how will people in the United States in 2019 be able to determine that this took place or verify that it happened simply by how the planets or stars align with eachother?
Does this alignment give them a vision of past events like a time machine?

1 minute ago, Mel Hopkins said:

@Troy     And no, I don't have love for people.  I have a love for all living things and their ability to express life that will lead to evolution. 

Now wouldn't this "all" also INCLUDE people?
The man is giving you a compliment, why are you giving him a hard time....lol.

On ‎5‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 1:27 PM, Cynique said:

Information comes from many sources.  Knowledge is simply tweaked information.

To me, knowledge is MORE than just tweaked information but it's also information that is TRUE.
You can focus on piece of information, but if that information turns out to be false it could lead to bad results.....and shouldn't be passed along or passed down as a body of knowledge.
 

Troy

You mentioned in a post that if it were your choice you would have kept Jet and scrapped Ebony, I'm a little curious as to why?
Was it the debt Ebony was in that would have made it dead weight fiscally?

BTW.....
I still remember going to barbershops as a kid and going through all of Jet magazines checking out the "Beauties of the Week", LOL.

Troy

So... you have no problem with walking on water, resurrection, parting of the seas, etc.... this is what gives you pause?

Actually I don't believe any of this took place.
I could be wrong, but how can I prove or disprove something that happened so long ago?

This is why I'm asking Chevdove how can it be proven through astronomy and the study of planetary movements.
She's trying to explain it to me but I'm clearly not her best student...lol.

Del

You're correct that "Beta" is Greek for the the 2nd letter of their alphabet.
I should have made it clearer that when I said "Beta" means "house of" that's what it means in GE'EZ which is a Semitic language of Ethiopia similar to Hebrew.

Troy

Obviously I don't know the details of the matter, but you certainly don't sound like one who has EVER been morally deprived nor even like one who would have had a habit of making grossly irrational and irresponsible decisions in their youth.
I'm sure you did what you felt and thought was the best thing to do at the time so you shouldn't burden yourself with the past.

The important question is did you raise the children YOU DID bring in this world correctly or atleast as best you could?

 

Del

You're correct that creating life is different than sustaining it.
It's a difference most conservatives don't seem to "get" nor do they want to.

They'll fight like hell for a human to be brought into this world but don't show much interest in  keeping them here once they've arrived.
 

Zaji

I see being a part of the AmericaS and being AmericaN (U.S.A Citizen) as different. All those places can be a part of the AmericaS, in fact. But not be AmericaN. So it really depends on what is meant. Based on maps online, the attached is what is actually, in modern times, considered The Americas

Welcome back to the site, I missed your input.

Yes you're right that the most common term used in refering to the Western Hemisphere is the "Americas" (plural) and for the most part it's the term I also use; but because of the misinformation and confusion that leads so many to believe that ONLY the U.S.A should be called America....I often use the term "America" singularly for shock value to initiate conversation.

For example, I'll call Mexico or Brazil "America" expecting disagreement which will then lead to me correcting them and as it follows a conversations will usually open up over the matter.
 

Del

Expertise in engineering does not make you an expert in statistics.

Doesn't both fields require you to think logically and in terms of numbers and mathematics?
If so, I would think the same basic intellectual skills that lay at the foundation of both careers could be used by one field to understand the other.
Similar to how an expert in Espanol would atleast have some familiarity with Italiano since both have their roots in the same Latin foundation.

This is the beginning of a new era for me on this site.

I will TRY to be more understanding of other people's views and more appreciative of the knowledge and information other people are presenting.

Some may ask what has caused me to seek a change in my demeanor.

Well......Del, Troy, and Cynique have been advising me for quite some time to "expand" my thinking and not see things just from a narrow selfish perspective but it wasn't until I reviewed Mel's African American Culture thread....OVER AND OVER AGAIN....and how adamant I was in my error that I realized how embarassingly foolish and down right irritating it may have seemed to others.

Another thing I noticed about my conduct was that as much as I liked people supporting my views and giving me positive "likes"..... I almost never did it for others.
So as I've said I will try to be more appreciative and infact this appreciation will start with the owner and Moderator Troy.

Thank you bro for providing me and others with a platform to express ourselves...the good and the bad...as well as a safe space for up and coming AfroAmerican authors to promote their talents and intellectual gifts.