On the Gospel of Luke; Evangelist, Physician, Artist

Luke- A physician named Luke, born in Antioch was the author of the eponymous gospel account. His Greek language skills are flawless and he wrote Hebrew well. He was a companion of the Apostle Paul and writes in the most physically descriptive way of the synoptic gospels. He is mentioned in Paul’s epistles of II Timothy 4:11, Philemon verse 24 and Colossians 4:14.

 Luke like  Matthew, Mark and John was able to draw upon the collected experience of the disciples and church of the day. He is said to have died in 84 A.D., probably martyred. It is notable that the Apostles best suited for writing to select groups, in this case the Greek speaking world, produced the four gospels. Coordination in the early church to develop a Universal collection of writing explaining the Lord’s soteriological life and mission seems likely. The late Francois Bovon observed the gospel according to Luke’s ‘sense of joy’. Others have observed the artistic quality of the work as literature.

Luke may have been one of the 70 disciples sent out by Jesus into the world, or not. If he did not meet Jesus Christ in-the-flesh, he certainly meet many of his disciples and was well able to record with a shared feeling of compassion the meaning and purpose of the life of the Lord. Luke was a painter and reportedly produced the first Christian icons, as many as 600 raising.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_the_Evangelist

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/luke.html

Duck Dynasty's Phil Roberts Shot Down by L.G.B.T. Political Foes

The ugly censorious head of corporatism entered to take down an individual for expressing an off-the-job opinion. Phil Robertson being interviewed by a slick tabloid reporter made some disparaging remark about ‘homos, terrorists and drunks’. Classifying homos with other threats to male security was going too far for the Arts and Entertainment network management that choose succumbing to elite homo sponsor's will-to-kill expression of antipathetic political opinion. Such is the way of globalism.

http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=844242&gt1=28103

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/19/21969918-louisiana-governor-defends-duck-dynasty-star?lite

President Obama as a natural untouchable caste member may himself yield to India’s political elites and join the maid-beating politicians attacking American labor laws and immigration requirements to pressurize the federal prosecutor in New York that charged an Indian diplomat with lying on a visa application to get cheap imported labor. If the President takes the side of the Indian elites all of America’s poor and middle class may be on the slippery slope to the untouchable class too.

Free speech that disagrees with the LGBT corporate agenda is verboten, and so evidently are fair wages and good jobs in the U.S.A. for the poor and middle class.

Truck in Frost (poem)

Sad truck, black cab alone
air vacated, tire two-thirds deflated
spent souffle in frost

Indian Diplomat's Job Scam Lands Her in Jail-Double Standard for Rich Expected

Protests have arisen in India over an arrest in New York of an Indian diplomat for running an employment scam claiming she was paying an imported worker thousands per month instead of the actual $3.31 an hour. Makes one wonder how many U.N. diplomats are also claiming to pay good wages to menial workers in order to pocket the difference after a low actual wage is paid. Taxpayers in India should be glad that at least one federal prosecutor was intolerant of a double standard for the rich. It would have been good if contractors in Iraq being paid high wages by the U.S. Government for workers actually paid minimum wage were held to the same standard (see Halliburton's War).
 

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/17/21941866-arrest-search-of-female-diplomat-in-nyc-despicable-and-barbaric-indian-official-says?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=1

It is possible that the diplomat wasn't really scamming her own government as well as the U.S. Government claiming to pay 30,000 rupees per month ($4,500) to her maid. The Deputy Consul General of India didn't have diplomatic immunity because lying on immigration/visa applications to meet qualifications for domestic servants isn't an official part of the diplomacy business.

India has threatened retaliation as if they could find illegal aliens working for the U.S. State Department right away in time to make the news cycle. It was reported that there are some protests in India about the alleged strip search of the diplomat who they believed should have been treated better than other prisoners-especially because she is a woman and maybe rich. In India the police,  it was reported, manhandle only poor women and defer to the delicate criminal sensitivities (that wasn't reported) of the rich.

Plainly the cost of making arrest being in the thousands of dollars, India should be expected to repay the U.S. taxpayers for the cost of the arrest and trial if convicted, and pledge never ever to underpay domestic staff again if they are working in New York.

Corporate & Government Data Mining; Egress to the Orwellian State?

One area of spiritual decline for Americans is that of individualism vs authoritarianism. Ubiquitous federal and corporate data mining and surveillance isn't something that the founders would have believed good. It's a real contrast with the American ideals of individual liberty with privacy.

Advancing the Orwellian corporatist state is the way things are, setting up the possibility of distopian futures I would think. 
The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wrote another book besides Being and Nothingness. The Critique of Dialectical Reason is largely an analysis of social interaction and of the individual's place in groups and organizations. Large organizations such as governments and multi-national corporations have their own social golas, policies and codes of conduct for their minions. It is large organizations threatening the freedom and opportunities for enterprise of individuals. Too little taxation on wealthy individuals owning shares in corporations allows preferreed network location insider algorithms for concentrating wealth. Because the world economy and politics may become totally dominated by networks of corporate wealth and governments repressing individual liberty becomes second nature. It becomes routine to censor dissent through a variety of legal means and expropriate intellectual capital in the trickle up to the insider thugs phenomenon.

Then again, they may be monitoring your keystrokes and looking at you through your computer's camera lens.

U.S. Economic Growth Just 1.6% in 2013

Enriching the Wall Street Banks with zero interest Fed loans has enabled in part global investments to enrich Saudi Arabia, China, India, Argentina and other economies with hot economic expansion rates of G.D.P. In October 19^th The Economist reported the U.S. G.D.P. rate with a 1.6% rate for 2013, China’s at 7.5%, India’s at 4.4%, Argentina’s at 8.3% and Saudi Arabia’s at 5.1%. The U.S. rate is probably puffed up by the Wall Street bank and investor profits on investments in foreign economies.

Even a zero-quantitative rate of economic growth is o.k. if qualitative growth increases, public debt is reduced, the environment restored and the quality of living of the poor and middle class increasing. Such right-thinking policy are perhaps considered in some collegiate ecological economic colloquia yet definitely not in the U.S. Government or on Wall Street.

Since the Obama administration generally followed Bush II economic policy with permanent Bush II tax cuts the economic interests of the poor and middle class have continued to be stagnant if not downward. Nothing in the administration policy seems designed to counter that. The big question is; will the President get in his 200^th round of gold before January 1^st?

Applied Concepts of Transcendence (video/science fiction)

I've read an excerpt from my science fiction novel 'Temporal Cross Currents' a piece exemplifying applied concepts of transcendence.