Formula 51 Quotes

TV is a problem only if you’ve forgotten how to look and listen…My students and I discuss this all the time. They’re beginning to feel they ought to turn against the medium, exactly as an earlier generation turned against their parents and their country. I tell them they have to learn to look as children again. Root out content. Find the codes and messages... … [They say] television is just another name for junk mail. But tell them I can't accept that. I tell them I’ve been sitting this room for more than two months, watching TV into the early hours, listening carefully, taking notes. A great and humbling experience, let me tell you. Close to the mystical. … I’ve come to understand that the medium is a primal force in the American home. Sealed-off, timeless, self-contained, self-referring. It’s like a myth being born right there in our living room, like something we know in a dream-like and preconscious way. I’m very enthused. … You have to learn how to look. You have to open yourself to the data. TV offers incredible amounts of psychic data. It opens ancient memories of world birth, it welcomes us into the grid, the network of little buzzing dots that make up the picture pattern. There is light, there is sound. I ask my students 'What more do you want?' Look at the wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. 'Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it.’ The medium practically overflows with sacred formulas if we can remember how to respond innocently and get past our irritation, weariness and disgust. (50-51)

god of war, and was also sacred to other deities. Hermonthis lay on the opposite bank of the Nile to the Upper Kingdom’s capital city of Thebes and had immense prestige. An inscription from Hermonthis, recording the burial of this Buchis bull more than twenty years later, stated that: He reached Thebes, the place of installation, which came into existence aforetime, beside his father, Nun the old. He was installed by the king himself in the year 1, Phamenoth 19 [22 March 51 BC]. The Queen, the Lady of the Two Lands, the Goddess Philopator, rowed him in the boat of Amen, together with all the barges of the king, all the inhabitants of Thebes and Hermonthis and priests being with him. He reached Hermonthis, his dwelling place …3 Such inscriptions were formulaic, so that we need to be cautious about reading

Let’s look at the first example in the table. Remember, my formula is 90 percent of the old team rating + 10 percent of the True Game Performance Level. In that example, the True Game Performance Level is 14 (the net score) + the old power rating of the opponent (–4.2), and the net injuries (4.7 – 6.5 = –1.8). So the formula for the True Game Performance Level is 14 –4.2 – 1.8 = 8. TABLE 1 Updating Power Ratings Examples TEAM RATING TEAM INJURIES OPPONENT RATING OPPONENT INJURIES NET SCORE TRUE GAME PERFORMANCE LEVEL NEW TEAM RATING 8 4.7 –4.2 6.5 14 8.0 8.0 6.2 3.5 9.0 1.8 –10 0.70 5.65 –4.5 3.8 11 5.1 –8 1.7 –3.88 7.6 4.1 2.1 3.8 7 9.4 7.78 –2.8 1.9 6.4 2.8 –21 –15.5 –4.07 5.0 5.4 7.6 2.9 11 21.1 6.61 Thus, the new power rating is 90 percent of 8 (7.2) + 10 percent of 8 (0.8) for a new power rating of 8. Over time, you’ll get the hang of doing this.

Imprecations and Incantations Psalm 58 is known as an “imprecatory” psalm because it calls down curses (imprecations) on the enemy. In the ancient Near East, such curses were enhanced or activated by magical rituals and spells, but this sort of practice would have been unacceptable in the Biblical system. Imprecatory psalms can be best understood against the background of the Retribution Principle (see the article “Retribution Principle”). Since God’s justice was seen as requiring punishment proportional to the seriousness of the sin, the psalmist is calling down the curses that would be appropriate if justice were to be maintained. These are curses of the same magnitude that God pronounces on his enemies (Isa 13:15–16). The forceful language of this passage contains aspects of an East Semitic curse formula that relies on the deity to carry out vengeance on the enemy nations. An example of this type of indirect curse is found in the vassal treaties of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon as he calls on a host of gods to do the treaty-breaker harm. It is also employed, with the addition of ritual acts of execration, in the Aramaic Sefire Treaty that describes bows being broken with the expected result that their enemies’ bows will likewise be broken. The psalmist indirectly curses by imprecation, calling on God to “laugh at them” (Ps 59:8) in their puny efforts to menace Israel. He does not employ magical incantations or execration rituals against them, but instead relies on God to render them impotent, breaking their power and their weapons of destruction (cf. Jer 49:35; 51:56; Eze 39:3). ◆