Ho hum

Champ wrote

I'll do Solomon.

 

is Beelzebub actually in the Bible?

Methuseleh: TOG

 

'Cmon. What other kind of god would you want to be? If it was me I
would certianly Blight a few of my followers with illness, sprinkle a
few fossils and some 3.8 billion year old rocks around, then bung some
stuff in the bible about the capacity of faith to heal people and the
world being young. Rising Christian population in Africa? Here, have
some Aids.

You could argue the wealth of evidence that contradicts with the Bible
is proof that there is a God because it's inevitable that someone with
that kind of power would use it for a few wind ups.

 

Sort of (the Pharisees accuse Jesus of healing by the power of
Beelzebub). And that's the *only* reference.

Nothing about anything to do with a supernatural power of eveil..

Phil

 

Dunno if this is of interest: "In Mark 3.22, the Pharisees accuse Jesus
of driving out demons by the power of Beelzeboul, prince of demons, the
name also appearing in the expanded version in Matthew 12.24,27 and
Luke 11.15,18-19. The name also occurs in Matthew 10.25. It is
unknown whether Symmachus was correct in identifying these names or not
since we otherwise know nothing about either of them. Zeboul might
derive from a slurred pronunciation of zebûb; from 'zebel', a word
used to mean 'dung' in the Targums; or from Hebrew zebûl found in 1
Kings 8.13 in the phrase bêt-zebûl 'lofty house' and used in
Rabbinical writings to mean 'house' or 'temple' and also as the name
for the fourth heaven."

 

Take some cinnamon each day. It does wonderful things to your
blood/sugar level. My mum uses 1 tea-spoon of the stuff on her
breakfast.

 

AOL
Carbs = blood sugar and fast. The NHS dietary advice is a killer. Read:
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316099066/qid=1141233961/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_2_1/202-2007767-2162216
It will help you enormously. Watch out, there are an incredible number
of quack dietary guides in the marketplace.

After 3 years I get by on 30mg of Actos Pioglitazone a day and keep to a
pretty strict Atkins style of existence. Daily exercise, or at least
swimming 3 times a week, is a MUST with the diet and condition though.

Watch the cholestorol count too.

It's all a bit of a ****, it gets slowly worse over time, but it isn't
the worse thing in the world Phil.

 

Oh, I do. So far all is well; I don't like the idea of losing my bike
licence due to blindness.

 

Must have made doing the shopping a tad difficult. Did she sit in the
trolley and lean out?

 

Pineapple juice.

 

Not just the cinnamon. If one's glucose is high for a while it leaks
into the semen and turns salty into sweeter....which they like.

 

"Hey baby, I'm diabetic ... fancy a gobble?"[/QUOTE]

<cough>

 

I've already informed the dogs that I will be forcing them to go
walking in the local park a lot more. Interest was shown.

Now there I got the good side of the genetic lottery - my cholesterol
counts have always been very low (as in only just scraping the standard
minimum).

Indeed.

Phil

 

Mine gets looked at annually anyway - with a -11.5 reading on the short
sight my chances of glaucoma go up markedly so the place I get my
contact lenses does the full eyeball check annually.

Phil

 

Ah - well y'see I go to a proper opticians.. one that does all the
checks.
I wouldn't trust my eyes to people like VisionExpress!

Phil.

 

Actually, they're the only "high street" opticians that I *would* rate. I
certainly wasn't happy with the Boots eye exam (Sit here and let this
machine work out your prescription. That'll be £200 for the glasses).
Specsavers was visited more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, and
I wouldn't go near them again.

VE on the other hand were very thorough and took ages to get my prescription
just right. When I went back for contact lenses I was there for over an hour
whilst they gave me more than a dozen pairs to practice with, then 10 free
pairs to take home and try before I committed to buying any. Once I went
ahead with it and bought my first batch of lenses, they also gave me the
prescription in case I wanted to try and find them cheaper elsewhere.

 

Ah - OK. I've been going to opticians since I was about 5 and so have
always gone to 'proper' ones.
In fact I was referred to my current one by my previous one (in London)
on the basis that if you didn't get referred you had no chance of
signing on there because of the parctise popularity.

I stomped out of Boots - I had got a prescription from them when I was
working away from home and (having lost a lens) wanted a replacement.
Despite the fact that it was less than 9 months since I'd had the tests
done they insisted that they couldn't give me a replacement without
testing my eyes again (£24).
I agreed to the test on the basis that they order the replacement and
have it ready for me to pick up at the same time - which they agreed
to.
When I turned up for the test not only had they not ordered the
replacement but claimed that they knew nothing about me asking for a
replacement at all!
I made some remarks (loudly) about going back to an opticians that
actually treated it's customers as patients and not just a source of
easy revenue and stomped out.

Phil

 

I'll tell them about it at the next checkup to make sure they do make
the tests and the results get sent to my GP. But since the place I go
*is* the place that my GP will send me to get the eyetests done I'm not
that worried.

Phil.

 

That's a good sign. TBH if I was still in my home town I would still be
using my local independant optician, but since I moved up to Bristol I had
no local knowledge and nobody could recommend anyone, as they all did the
high street thing.

I can't say too much (having occasionally got Boots as a client!), but as
with most large organisations quality of service will vary massively from
place to place. A qualified, experienced optometrist that *also* has people
skills *and* is prepared to work in Boots is a rare thing. Often you may
find that such a person used to have their own practice until the chains
undercut them and forced them out :-(

 

I've a mate who is an optician at Asda (!) in Brizzle and he's very good
indeed. Ask for Andy B.

Ali