Alex > Recent Status Updates

Decent chapter on hurricanes. Now, that is why I picked up this book.

Blowing up a church in Bulgaria, causing four hundred deaths, classy. 17. April 1925. Very enlightened, commies.

Likewise, the info on tornadoes is pretty good.

The advice on lightning strikes is great!

"37. For greater is the joy of the Birth than the Conception. — Yea it was one angel, that brought us tidings of Your Conception: — but in the joy of Your Birth, a multitude of Watchers brought tidings.

R., Blessed be Your tidings in Your day!"
That's really interesting, to me.

"34. His Will was able, even by force to rescue us.— But since it was not force that made us guilty, it was not by force He purged us.— The Evil One by enticement enslaved us: Your Birth enticed to give us life.

R., Blessed be He Who planned and gave us life!"

"The gold of the idols worshipped You, that You treated it as alms; which availed not apart, for the uses of life."

"19. Sin had spread its wings, and covered all things — that none could discern, of himself or from above, the truth.— Truth came down into the womb, came forth and rolled away error.

R., Blessed is He Who dispelled Sin by His Birth!"

"17. The Evil One knew how to harm us; and by lights he blinded us — by possessions he hurt us, through gold he made us poor — by the graver's graven images, he made us a heart of stone."

The Eyes of Erebus is pretty good.

Arrived at Hymn 15.

"But only Temur saw fit to rebuild, for he was a creator as much as a destroyer."
We see what he built, but not what the people he killed would have built if it hadn't been for Timur.

"That Temur was cruel is beyond question. But to accuse him of sadism is to indulge in unfounded speculation which owes more to the prejudices of the twenty-first century than the values of the fourteenth, when human life was held far cheaper than it is today."
This is so stupid. Marozzi compares Timur favorably with Baybar to make his point, who was also reknown for cruelty.

He has absolutely no clue about the Crusades, but he does make a neat list of times Timur has been an opportunistic, hypocritical asshole. He never even went on a Haj.