I posted a topic and a day later it was gone. What is the criteria for deleting posts? A non political simple post ??

>>This really is very rude.
>>Which is to say, the Rude Ppundit lives up to his name like a military toe tape with sparklers on open microphone night.
>>
>>Scroll down to read through all the rudeness.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

Nine Final Observations on the Beckture: So That Happened:
A few random things left over from watching Glenn Beck's Tent Revival Meeting and Hoveround Demonstration this past Saturday in DC:
Lee Popa, the RUDE PUNDIT

1. What the fuck was that? No, really. Before it happened, Beck was promising nothing short of a "miracle." Instead, what we got was a Very Special Episode of The Glenn Beck Show, starring Glenn Beck as the lovable lump Glenn Beck, featuring the Glenn Beck Minstrels. It was terrible and boring and old and white. It wasn't frightening, as some liberals have said. It was pathetic, like watching a parade of freaks from a Fellini film. And Beck's hour-long speech was absolute fucking nonsense. The Rude Pundit's seen actual tent-revival preachers who have been awe-inspiring and scary. Fuck, he's seen scabby homeless guys screaming about Armageddon on the street corner who were more coherent.

2. You can't spend every day of your life making broad, awful, confrontational political statements in order to get an audience and then say you're gonna have a big damn life-changing rally but it won't be political. No, motherfucker. It's political because you're political. You can wave your hammy arms at the different memorials in DC like the most enthusiastic tour guide in history, you can yell about a magical sky wizard, but it's political. And people who think it wasn't political are the blind fools who always follow the deranged sociopath right off the cliff. It was political because it was specifically Christian, specifically putting American history in a Christian context. (Yes, he trotted out a Jew.)

3. The best analogy the Rude Pundit can come up with for the whole goddamn ridiculous waste of time is the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. For what was this but a journey from across the nation of Christians going to the city of our stone holy sites in order to pray.

4. Advice to unthinking Beckerheads: Just because one says something with fervor and volume does not make it true. However, a good con man has to act as if he believes the lie and act accordingly. (So, you know, kudos, Glenn.)

5. Fun juxtaposition:
Glenn Beck, speaking on Friday at the Kennedy Center, just before raping a kitten, using his tears for lube: "We are 12 hours away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

Sarah Palin, speaking at the Beckture: "We must not fundamentally transform America, as some would want."

6. Neither Beck nor Palin nor the crowd nor his own niece understood a goddamned thing about Martin Luther King, Jr. Beck has reduced King to "the content of character, going so far as to say on Fox "news" the next day that King's actual ideas on economic justice are "racial politics." Using "racial politics" as a pejorative against King is like using "touchdown" as an attack on the skills of Peyton Manning. Beck perverted King, transforming one of the most confrontational figures in history into Dream Negro, the Care Bear.

7. If this was, as some analysts have said, like the Obama rallies of 2008, well, all one can say to the people there, "You've got one hell of a letdown coming your way."

8. And you follow someone who admits that he cries all the time and hears voices whose only advice to you is "Pray." Did you need to hear that?

9. In the end, Beck introduced a group of religious leaders (almost all Christian) who he called his new Black Robe Regiment, as if they were superheroes ready to fly off the stage and kick ass. They did not.

>>Episode 4,523 on why Glen Beck is Dangerous!
>>Glen Beck on Education (he calls it communist indoctrination)
>>

http://www.mediaite.com/online/glenn...zbollah-hamas/
Dangerous With Indoctrination” As Hezbollah, Hamas
by Eric Cunningham | 8:56 am, September 2nd, 2010

Last night, Glenn Beck had a textbook Glenn Beck-style address in which he hyperbolically dug into both progressive universities and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius within the same 30 seconds.

Target 1: Universities.
There was a time not too long ago in this country that we used to walk through walls of fire to make sure we weren’t funding Hamas or Hezbollah. I have news for you: there are a lot of universities that are just as dangerous with indoctrination of our children as these terror groups are in Iran or North Korea.

That is news. But what offense is Beck referring to that is on par greater than these paramilitary forces? Giving GPS cell phones to dehydrated illegal immigrants crossing through America’s southern deserts. So aiding a crime? Definitely. Does that make a professor from UC-San Diego worse than 2/3 of the Axis of Evil? Debatable.

Target 2: Kathleen Sebelius
Our Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just said, and I quote, “We need a re-education process on healthcare.” Oh. Well, how very Kim Jong-Il of you. Or dare I say it? Mao is the “in” one now, isn’t he?

Beck is using a pull quote from an interview where Sebelius explains the Obama administration failed to explain what was in the new health care law and is making it sound like they are setting up brainwashing camps. No, it isn’t Kim Jong-Il of anyone to say that the healthcare bill is confusing. That’s the one thing both sides of the issue actually agree on.

After that, Beck turns on his serious mode and again somberly warns against the re-education camps we call universities before throwing to commercial. Perhaps a promo for Beck University?

Clip via Media Matters [Update - we've added a longer video for fuller context]:
http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/4KB0DS0NQ3B3W7YP" width="420" height="421" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true"

http://www.mediaite.com/online/glenn...zbollah-hamas/

>>A case of facts getting in the way of hateful rhetoric
>>Gardeners, butchers, fruit and vegetables pickers, etc... are not involved in drug deals and organized crime
>>Their only crime is being brown when the hate- and fear-mongers wantto win elections.
>>
>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090106940.html

Number of illegal immigrants in U.S. drops, report says
By Tara Bahrampour
Wednesday, September 1, 2010; 10:15 PM

A deep recession and tougher border enforcement have led to a sharp decline in the number of immigrants entering the United States illegally in the past five years, contributing to the first significant reversal in the growth of their numbers in two decades, according to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center.
The number of illegal immigrants entering the United States plunged by almost two-thirds between 2005 and 2009, a dramatic shift after years of growth in the population, according to the report.

In the first half of the decade, an average of 850,000 people a year entered the United States without authorization, according to the report, released Wednesday. As the economy plunged into recession between 2007 and 2009, that number fell to 300,000.

The drop has contributed to an 8 percent decrease in the estimated number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, from a peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009, the report said. Of the 11.1 million, 60 percent came from Mexico, 20 percent from other parts of Latin America, 11 percent from Asia, and 8 percent from Africa, Europe, Canada and elsewhere. The new figures come amid a heated national debate over efforts by Arizona and other jurisdictions to identify people who are here illegally and push to have them deported.

Virginia, Florida and Nevada were among the states with the steepest declines in their populations of illegal immigrants. Large declines in illegal immigrants in Florida and Nevada were probably because of the housing crisis and the loss of thousands of construction jobs, which immigrants often fill, experts said. Florida's illegal immigrant population fell by 375,000, to an estimated 675,000, between 2008 and 2009, and Nevada's decreased by 50,000 to an estimated 180,000 during that period.

The number in Virginia fell by 65,000, to 240,000, a decline that Jeffrey Passel, an author of the report, attributed to the economy as well as to stricter legislation passed in Prince William County in 2007 and 2008.

Although the report's authors did not have information about population decreases at the county level, a 2009 University of Virginia study of the legislation's effect on Prince William showed a decline in the number of children enrolled in ESOL classes and in the number of uninsured mothers giving birth, both suggestive of the presence of recent and poor immigrants, said Audrey Singer, who specializes in immigration at the Brookings Institution.

Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and a champion of the legislation, said he was "proud" of the county's role in decreasing the illegal immigrant population. "Our resolution on illegal immigration resulted in thousands of illegal aliens leaving Prince William," said Stewart, who has called for Virginia to adopt a law similar to Arizona's.

But Stewart (R-At Large) predicted that the declining numbers of illegal immigrants in Virginia would be temporary without stricter enforcement statewide. "They're just going to come back once the economy recovers," he said.

Douglas Massey, a Princeton University sociologist who studies migration, said the recession and the lack of jobs are major factors in the decline of people entering the country illegally.

The unemployment rate for unauthorized immigrants is 10.4 percent, higher than that of either U.S.-born residents or legal immigrants said the Pew report, which used data from the Current Population Survey, a monthly report on 55,000 households conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.

Pew, a premier research organization on immigration matters, calculated the number of unauthorized immigrants by adjusting the statistics up by 10 to 15 percent to account for undercounts, said D'Vera Cohn√, an author of the report. The size of the undercount was determined by factors including Mexico's population size, U.S. mortality data and research conducted during the 2000 Census around the issue of undercounting, she said.

Massey also pointed to a rise in guest-worker visas, from 104,000 in 2000 to 302,000 in 2009, allowing more immigrants to come to the United States legally. The other likely reasons for the decline, he said, include an increase in law enforcement and deportations, and enactment of stricter legislation against illegal immigrants.

"Life's gotten pretty miserable for immigrants in the United States," he said, noting that even for legal immigrants, many of whom have relatives who are unauthorized, the increased scrutiny has been stressful.

Researchers noted that the return of illegal immigrants to their home countries also has leveled off in the past five years, as back-and-forth travel has become more dangerous and expensive.

But over the past decade, the flow of legal immigrants into the United States increased slightly, according to the report, which noted that the trends have reduced the percentage of immigrants who are here illegally, from 31 percent of all immigrants in 2007 to 29 percent in 2009.

Although an earlier Pew study pointed to signs of fewer illegal immigrants in recent years, the new report reveals the first statistically significant reversal in the growth of the population in the past 20 years, said Passel, a senior demographer at Pew.

"We know that it's harder to sneak across the border than it was four or five years ago, and especially than it was 10 or 15 years ago," he said. "Virtually everyone who sneaks across the border uses a 'coyote' now, and the cost has gone up. The increase of the Border Patrol around cities and ports of entry has pushed the flows across the border into more remote places."

The report's findings were hailed by Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates tighter immigration controls.

The figures contradict "the idea that the only options before us are mass expulsions or mass amnesty," he said. "This finding points to the middle way, of a consistent decrease of the illegal population over time through enforcement."

Nationally, the trajectory of the population is also likely to depend on the strength of the economic recovery and the level of enforcement of immigration laws, Passel said.

"In the past, the flows have moved in line with the state of the U.S. economy," he said. "But we have stepped-up enforcement right now. Right now, both are working in the same direction. If the economy turns around and enforcement is increased, we don't know."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090106940.html

In their continuing effort to sanitize school textbooks, the Texas School Board announced today that the title of the 1st grade reader "Dick and Jane” will be changed to "Dakota and Jen" due to the unintended Sexual and Drug references in the old title.





.

I have just started reading an excellent biography of Zheng He, the Chinese eunuch admiral who explored the Indian Ocean as far as the east coast of Africa. I’m reproducing the first bit of chapter two below. Chapter one sets the scene for the Ming Dynasty.

II
Zheng He’s Early Life and His Patron, Emperor Yongle

Zheng He was born in 1371 in Kunyang, in the central part of the southwestern province of Yunnan, across Lake Dian from the provincial capital at Kunming. His original name was Ma He, and he was one of many descendants of Saiyid Ajall Shams al-Din (1211–79) – “also named Umar” – a Central Asian Muslim descended from a distinguished family of Bukhara who had risen in the service of the Mongol emperors Mönke (born 1209, ruled 1251-59) and Khubilai. Khubilai appointed Saiyid Ajall Shams al-Din governor of Yunnan in 1274, and he served successfully as governor until his death, being followed by two of his sons, Nasir-al-Din and Mas’ud. Another son, Bayan, was the father of Hajji, whose son, also named Hajji, was Ma He’s father. The Chinese surname Ma often indicates, as it does in this case, a Muslim family, and the name Hajji is usually added to a Muslim name after the required pilgrimage to Mecca has been accomplished. Whatever their full names were, it is reasonable to conclude that Zheng He’s father and grandfather both made the pilgrimage. Zheng He came, in other words, from a devout Muslim family with a strong awareness of Islam’s religious heritage, which included a religious law that prohibited castrating or enslaving Muslims. His immediate family included an older brother and four sisters.

Very little is known about Zheng He’s emotions or inner life, but one thing that seems certain is the eclectic nature of his religious beliefs as an adult. His nickname Sanbao refers to the Buddhist “Three Treasures,” or Triratna, and his inscriptions of 1431 at Liujiagang and Changle show the intensity of his devotion to the Sea Goddess Tianfei. This eclecticism is all the more remarkable in that he lived the first decade of his life in a a probably pious Muslim environment, and he must have been aware of Islam’s strict prohibition of apostasy.

Yunnan was still under Yuan Dynasty rule when Zheng He was born, and it was left alone for a decade longer as the Ming empire consolidated. Yunnan’s ruler, Basalawarmi, Prince of Liang, was a Mongol prince descended from Khubilai, who had conquered Yunnan in the 1250s, before his own accession as emperor and his conquest of Song China. Yunnan’s population consisted largely of non-Chinese ethnic groups that preferred the continuation of Mongol rule to Chinese conquest. Nevertheless, the Ming army that invaded Yunnan in the autumn of 1381easily subdued Basalawarmi’s government. Kunming fell in January 1382, Basalawarmi and his immediate retinue commited suicide, and Dali in the northwest fell in April.

Zheng He’s father, Hajji, was killed (at age 39) resisting the Ming conquest, and Zheng He was taken prisoner and castrated for service as a eunuch. Soon afterward he was sent to join the household of the future Emperor Yongle, then governing Beiping, the future Beijing, with the title Prince of Yan.

Castration was often the fate of boys captured in war, and in this period of Ming history not only the immediate imperial family but also the households of princes and generals had staffs of eunuchs. In later Ming history only the emperor maintained an organization of eunuchs, by then swollen to tens of thousands, and large gangs of men who had castrated themselves in the hope of joining the eunuch household had become crime and security problems in Beijing. While it is hard to think of castration as other than traumatic, thousands of men in Ming history saw the eunuch career as a tempting route to wealth and power, and a handful of eunuchs rose to positions of such influence that officials saw them as dictators who were manipulating weak and pliant emperors. Thus Zheng He’s castration made him a member of a recognized personnel category in Imperial China, rather than an outcast.

The theoretical justification of the eunuch organization was that it could wait on the empress and other palace women without the risk of its compromising the genealogical integrity of the ruling house. Most of these service functions could also be performed by the palace women themselves, who in the Ming as in other dynasties had an elaborately bureaucratized organization of their own. But eunuchs were useful because they could also serve as imperial agents outside the palace, in the empire at large. Emperors tended to trust the eunuchs who had been their childhood playmates, and sometimes their adult lovers, through in this and in every other matter that concerns eunuchs it needs to be remembered that civil officials wrote all the historical sources and were invariably hostile to eunuchs. Civil officials felt obliged to protest policies they did not approve; eunuchs were dependent on the emperor and obeyed him. Eunuchs often served as directors of important and expensive projects that civil officials opposed, and for Zhen He to command the seven great naval expeditions was a special case of this general practice.

Before the Ming conquest, Zhen He might have expected to lead the life of a member of the non-Chinese local elite of Yunnan during the Yuan Dynasty. Now, despite the injury inflicted on him, he had been transported to a position that turned out to be an intimate personal relationship with a man who would become a forceful Ming emperor. Yongle’s wishes and commands turned Zhen He into the “admiral” who led seven voyages into the Indian Ocean. Understanding Zhen He’s life thus requires understanding the new context in which the young eunuch grew to maturity and the nature of his patron, Emperor Yongle, in whose reign the adult eunuch sent the most productive years of his life.

Dreyer, Edward L. (2007). Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433. New York: Pearson Longman, pp. 11-13.

The book is available from Amazon for $17.55
http://www.amazon.com/Zheng-He-Dynas.../dp/0321084438




.

I get the idea behind the changes in the archive, but I can say that some of the formatting of it seems to be a site killer.

The "fiction archive" disclaimer should probably be made shorter. Start with a short version along the lines of, "This is a fictional story archive, it contains adult themes and content... blah, blah, blah..." something a paragraph or so long. The put in a link to the full disclaimer if anyone cares to read it.

The link to the actual story archive needs to be more obvious as well. It should probably be at the top or close to the top of the page, not buried way down towards the bottom like it is now.

I've been in there a few times now, and it's still not obvious to me where to go when I enter the page, and I'm computer literate. Just imagine how it must seem to someone that is not as computer savvy as myself.

It's good you're making changes, just keep the idea of user friendliness in mind when you do so.

--LT

FROM MEDIA MATTERS...


I say, TAKE 'EM off the air!!!

Let 'ER RIP!!

!!!

From, the Smiling Chimp...


COMMENTS...?

>>Interesting, fascinating even
>>

Richest athlete hailed from ancient Rome
By Rossella Lorenzi
updated 9/1/2010 2:08:57 PM ET

Ultra millionaire sponsorship deals such as those signed by sprinter Usain Bolt, motorcycle racer Valentino Rossi and tennis player Maria Sharapova, are just peanuts compared to the personal fortune amassed by a second century A.D. Roman racer, according to an estimate published in the historical magazine Lapham's Quarterly.

According to Peter Struck, associate professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, an illiterate charioteer named Gaius Appuleius Diocles earned “the staggering sum" of 35,863,120 sesterces (ancient Roman coins) in prize money.

Recorded in a monumental inscription erected in 146 A.D., the figure eclipses the fortunes of all modern sport stars, including golfer Tiger Woods, hailed by Forbes magazine last fall “sports' first billion-dollar man.”

Diocles, “the most eminent of all charioteers,” according to the inscription, was born in Lusitania, in what is now Portugal and south-west Spain, and started his spectacular career in 122 A.D., when he was 18.

Life for a charioteer in Rome wasn’t easy. Often slaves who could eventually buy their freedom, these racers engaged in wild laps of competition at the Circus Maximum, running a total of about 4,000 meters (nearly 2.5 miles).

“After seven savage laps, those who managed not to be upended or killed and finish in the top three took home prizes,” wrote Struck.

Experienced charioteers drove hard-to-manage chariots driven by four or even more horses.

Their sporting equipment included a leather helmet, shin guards, chest protector, a jersey, a whip and a sharp knife with which to cut the reins if the chariot overturned.

Although drivers did not have their helmets or whips blessed by generous sponsorship, they could rely on stables or factions, basically teams similar to today’s Formula One: the Reds, Greens, Blues and Whites.

“The drivers affiliated with teams supported by large businesses that invested heavily in training and upkeep of the horses and equipment,” said Struck.

Diocles won his first race two years after his debut with the Whites, four years later, he briefly moved with the great rivals the Greens. But had the most success with the Reds, with whom he remained until the end of his career at the age of “42 years, 7 months, and 23 days.”

He is said to have won 1,462 of his 4,257 races and finished second 861 times, making nine horse “centenari” (100-time winners) and one horse, Pompeianus, a 200-time winner.

The inscription details his winning tactics: he “took the lead and won 815 times,” took the competitors by surprise by “coming from behind and winning 67 times,” and “won in stretch 36 times.”

Although other racers surpassed him in the total number of victories — a driver called Pompeius Musclosus collected 3,599 winnings — Diocles became the richest of all, as he run and won at big money events. For example, he is recorded to have made 1,450,000 sesterces in just 29 victories.

Struck calculated that Diocles’ s total earnings of 35,863,120 sesterces were enough to provide grain for the entire population of Rome for one year, or to fund the Roman Army at its height for more than two months.

“By today’s standards that last figure, assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period, would cash out to about $15 billion,” wrote Struck.

“Even without his dalliances, it is doubtful Tiger could have matched it,” he added.

>>Wowie, zowie, they paid well!

It's coming on Sept 4th,

River

An ad for scrotum enhancement from Saturday Night Live:

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-li...crotox/1228182





,

Here off the mid coast of "The O.C." we have only had about two weeks of Summer and now the smell of Autumn is in the air.
E-Friend up on the Oregon coast feels same.
Anyone feel an early Autumn coming on?
Moi
Possible Indian Summer coming but, I don't feel so.

----- Original Message -----
From: Subject: Ole & Sven


> Ole and Sven are the best of friends, and they have these two girls on the string -- Lena and Olga -- who live together in an apartment. One evening Ole and Sven are sitting in the bar getting drunk. Ole turns to Sven and asks, "Ven do you suppose dose girls are gonna make out vit us?"> > Sven says, "Donno, but I'm drunk enuf. Let's go ask 'em!" So off they go to the apartment where Ole knocks on the door.>

> Lena answers and says, "Vell, Ole and Sven, come on in!"
>
> Ole no more than gets in the door when he says, "Ve yust come to find out ven you girls are gonna make out vit us." Lena is really upset by this and throws them both out, slamming the door on them.
>
> Ole is persistent and knocks on the door again.
>
> Lena isn't stupid. She knows it's Ole and says, "Ole if you are gonna be so forward, you'll have to talk through the keyhole."
>
> Ole bends to the keyhole and asks, "Ven you girls gonna make out vit us?"
>
> Lena is really upset now. She drops her pants, backs up to the keyhole, and farts in it.
>
> As Ole is backing up and shaking his head, Sven asks, "Vell Ole, vat did she say?"
>
> Ole says, "Vell, I tink she said, 'FFFFffffrrriiddaay y,' but her breath is so bad, I'm not askin again!"
>
>

>>Go to the link at Huffington Post to see the photos. There's even some video.
>>
>>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_700518.html

OZREM, Serbia — In a remote Serbian mountain village, they're cooking up delicacies to make your mouth water – or your stomach churn. At the seventh annual World Testicle Cooking Championship, visitors watch – and sometimes taste – as teams of chefs cook up bull, boar, camel, ostrich and even kangaroo testicles.

"This festival is all about fun, food and bravery," said Ljubomir Erovic, the Serbian chef and testicles gourmand specialist who organizes the bizarre cooking festival and has published a testicle cookery book.

The food – politely called "white kidneys" in Serbian – is believed to be rich in testosterone. In the Balkans, it is considered to help men's libido.

>>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_700518.html

I think the answer is conclusively yes, even though I still have my penis. I theorize that even now, throughout America, there are thousands of men who have been penetomized emotionally and mentally, and yet, their wives or significant others would say that they love them. Thousands of mostly older men have been denied sexual intercourse and penis penetration by their wives or significant others. This denial has left them mentally penectomized and has led them to entertain themselves with secretive sexual deviations, such as spending time on this blog and reading about penectomies. So come clean, are you one of these mentally & emotionally penectomized men?

>>This is so misogynistic and sexist and yet funny.
>>Terrible, funny, ugly, silly,
>>Oh shut up and tell the joke!

Little Johnny asked Mom what 2 words mean that kids at school were using...........Pussy and Bitch. Mom inhaled sharply, but then said:
"Oh, that's easy. A pussy is a cat, like our little Chico . A bitch is a female dog, like our Sandy."
"Thanks, Mom.."
He then found his Dad out in the garage.
"Dad, the guys at school are using words I don't understand."
"What words, son?"
"Pussy and bitch. I asked Mom, but I don't think she told me the right meanings."
Dad said: "Son, never ask your mother about these things, ask me instead. Let me explain it like this."
He pulled a Playboy from his workbench, turned to the centerfold, drew a circle around the pubic area and said:
"Son, everything inside the circle is pussy."
"Okay, Dad. Then what's a bitch?"
Dad replied: "Everything outside the circle."

I have been giving this some thought, so here it goes.

Keep it civil,

Keep it nice,

You will receive a 2 week ban for name calling,

WARNING, if it starts to get like it did two years ago, I will shut the thread off until Thanksgiving.

If you make a statement you had better show your work, keep your opinions to yourself or make sure they are very polite.

Also, keep on topic or I will start closing threads if I no longer see where its going I will step in. This could include removing posts that are so far off topic. I may even start one to put them in called Posts that go nowhere from out in the blue.

River

HAPPY BIRTHDAY markle my friend :)

I thank you for helping me figure out my computer problems many times.
:lalala::lalala::lalala:

:manyclr::manyclr::manyclr:

:cake: :cake:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disc...rato-video.htm
"In Italy alone, over 4000 boys lost their testicles EVERY YEAR"!
OMG, that can't be true? If so many became unsuccessful and not really great opera singers, why were THAT many castrated?? You'd think the PTB did it for other prerverted reasons. Taking away someone's balls ends that person's 'eternal life'.