Steve Green: Fiction, Foolery & Frauds

Posted on October 27, 2018 by Professor Taboo

By now you have likely heard or read about the fake Dead Sea Scrolls or forgeries inside the recently opened Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. The museum was built and stocked by retail chain Hobby Lobby owner and multi-billionaire, evangelical Steve Green. What many might not know or have forgotten is that this foolery is not the first time Steve Green has knowingly bought and promoted fake, fraudulent artifacts from the Classical and Antiquity Eras in the Near East. Similar to the 19th-century Old West medicine and “miracle elixirs” touring-shows of magical tricks, musical acts, jokes, and fantastical storytelling, smarter discerning people today can certainly argue that Mr. Green has an addictive sweet-tooth for fantasy and hoaxes.

In 2011 a FedEx package from an Israeli antiquities dealer labelled “hand-crafted clay tiles” with a stated worth of less than $300 drew the suspicious attention of U.S. Customs officials. They opened it and instead of home or bathroom decor it was 300 cuneiform clay tablets in Assyrian and Babylonian languages stolen in great numbers during the U.S.-Iraqi War and its aftermath over the last few decades then sold on the black market.

In 2014 while visiting the Vatican’s Verbum Domini II exhibit of antique Bibles and Bible-related artifacts, an Italian papyrus expert immediately noticed a tattered fragment containing verses from Galatians 2 written in Coptic. It was being sold on eBay many months earlier by a Turkish dealer known to be unreliable and dishonest. Several of his colleagues believed he was a smuggler of anything that would sell to evangelical buyers, fake or otherwise.

Both the clay tablets and the papyrus were dubiously purchased and owned by Steve Green.

This month Steve Green’s Museum of the Bible was forced to publicly acknowledge that five (and probably seven) of their “Dead Sea Scrolls” are forgeries. Continued scientific examinations on the museum’s remaining scrolls, perhaps other artifacts if the Greens allow, will probably reveal more similar results. Why? Because from 2009 to 2014 word spread rapidly throughout Antiquities dealers (of any sort) in the Near East that authorized dealers of the multi-billionaire Green family were purchasing around 40,000 ancient biblical-religious artifacts for their future museum in Washington D.C. This whirlwind of money and hyper fast-track purchases ignited a buzz in the market never before seen. The New York Times in 2010 reported “[t]he buying [had] also spawned some skepticism about the overall quality of purchases made in such rapid-fire style.”

“The Hobby Lobby of Biblical Fakes n Frauds” in Washington D.C.

Joel S. Baden of the Yale University School of Divinity described Green’s incompetent acquisitions this way:

Every antiquities seller knew the Greens were buying everything and not asking questions about anything.

Aside from the hap-hazard amateur acquisition methods the Greens employed, there is another serious problem: the unprincipled, unethical intent to show in their museum fraudulent items as factual originals rather than labeling them modern replicas.

These practices by the Greens soon put them in the cross-hairs of the U.S. Justice Department. Hobby Lobby had to pay a $3-million fine as well as surrender and return the thousands of illegally acquired ancient artifacts from Iraq that were knowingly smuggled into the U.S. by Mr. Green. The Hobby Lobby tycoon, however, has his evangelical agenda working in several other areas of public life.

The Greens have spent massive amounts of money to confuse, redefine, and rewrite our clear Constitutional lines between church and state and their separation. In the 2014 Supreme Court decision of Burwell vs Hobby Lobby, “closely held for-profit” corporations like Hobby Lobby can refuse their employed women contraceptive medicines and/or care which was once mandated by the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The Greens have also funded a controversial nation-wide Biblical curriculum for American public schools as well as dumped millions into private Fundamentalist Christian institutions and colleges domestically and abroad. But this is not all.

The executive director of the Society for Biblical Literature, John Kutsko, speaks to this evangelical corporate movement with heightened concern:

There is no such thing as ‘the’ Bible… We [Americans] are a melting pot, and there are many religions here […] The [Green’s] museum could be a showcase for how we and our texts are different and can coexist peacefully. That would be a wonderful message to bring to bear, particularly in the environment we live in, an environment of absolutists and polarization.

But that is not Green’s intentions as evidenced by his artifact purchases and practices.

There is another disturbing concern: the simple truth. There are a large number of historical, biblical, archaeological, paleographical, and other scholars and experts, all of which have many decades of study and acclaimed lifetime careers that know too well how “pseudo-biblical archaeology” is replete with amateur scams, frauds, and wild claims meant to prove to buyers and audiences, at least through misleading visuals, that stories in the Bible are historically accurate when in fact they are not. These same scholars and academics are just as bothered by the man hired as the Bible museum’s director who was former director of the outlandish Creation Museum in Kentucky. This further undermines the museum’s credibility. And still there is more disturbing news.

The museum blatantly misleads, even lies about recent American history. In a dramatic promotional video for the museum it alleges that the Founding Fathers designed our government and civil culture to be Bible-centered; that is Christian-centered. The video states that George Washington himself said:

It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.

The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington in Mount Vernon, VA (click here) is a resource for “scholarly research about George Washington and the Founding Era, while collecting original Washington books and manuscripts.“ The library has already determined beyond doubt that this is a misquote or complete fabrication. When Mr. Green and his leadership team were presented with this correction, he was unphased, indifferent and insisted that our U.S. government was purposefully created as Bible-centered; that is Christian-centered. In my May 2015 blog-post The Mistaken Identity of the U.S. I go into great detail — from months and years of research utilizing resources like the Smith National Library – George Washington — about how this belief or fable Mr. Green persists in propagandizing is unfounded and simply not true.

At a 2014 interview at the Vatican, Steve Green imparted a rallying call to Christians, especially evangelicals that “The fact of the matter is, the [Bible] is under assault today.” It seems to Mr. Green and many Fundy-Evangelical Christians that there are other ways of starting and fighting a Holy War, or Jihad as the militant Islamists would call it, and it is covertly changing this democracy into a theocracy by whatever means necessary, similar again to Islamic nations of today. Based on Steve Green’s practices and museum, theocracizing includes smuggling, deception, diversion, well-funded propaganda that rivals even Joseph Goebbels’ tactics, and most of all the M.O. that the end always justifies the means. Principles of accuracy, due process, fact-verifying, truth or pro-truthiness, doesn’t matter. Force the “right end” to happen whatever the cost, literally.

Mr. Green seems ignorant of his unethical track-record. Being forthright from the very beginning will always be more valuable, more historic to the greater good and demonstrate higher levels of dignity and honor. So I say to all concerned, be astute and warned when you happen upon any involvement with Hobby Lobby or the Museum of the Bible: their owner, Steve Green, continuously exhibits that he possesses none of the great noble virtues.

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Now, if you are one for euphoric feel-good truths, fly-by-night veracity, and fantastical stories hyping life-changing memories in this life and the next, this is for you: 😎

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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Tin Can Connections

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Professor Taboo

A few weeks back a very dear friend to me wrote and published on WordPress a most magnificent poem about chemical, ethereal, human connections, synapses, and interactions that are not so common and in my opinion come around and manifest themselves once, twice, maybe three-four times in a lifetime. When it magically occurs it hits you in the chest deep and almost paralyzes your brain, speech, and body. Esmeralda Cloud or Esme Upon the Cloud is how everyone knows the Madame. Here is her masterpiece, Melding a Small Cache of Electric, Eclectic Synapses:

The first blast came from nowhere,
To her heart . . . and to her hands.
Hands that touched his,
Palm to palm, finger to finger.
Every digit leaning gently upon the others,
Melding a small cache
Of electric, eclectic synapses
Softly between them.
Yet it came as no surprise –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

The first blast came from somewhere,
In his heart . . . and in his hands,
Hands that touched hers,
Palm to palm, finger to finger.
Every digit leaning gently upon the others,
Melding a small cache
Of electric, eclectic synapses
Softly between them.
Yet it came as some surprise –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

The initial pillows of the explosion
Were numb with silent, sonic, relinquishment.
It blasted them light years apart . . . apart.
Apart from one, singular golden thread:
A chain of tenacious fire which endured;
Linking, binding. Holding fast.
Continuing the continuum, palm to palm,
Stretching out across vast, immutable distances.
At first of space,
And then later, time –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

Together, yet alone, they hurtled backwards,
To be caught warmly, effortlessly,
By personal terra firma of autonomous worlds:
Comfortable fields of bright corn,
Arm in arm with solid landscapes of contentment.

And so it came to pass,
That the universe and its incalculable, enchanting
Dimensions were countless aeon away.
Yet the swirls on their fingertips tingled,
Mourning their loss, and reaching for the stars;
Every morning when they awoke,
And again, every evening, before they slept,
Falling into the arms of Morpheus –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

Upon each diurnal course their planets revolved;
The cogs of every hour rotated.
Ticking, tocking, clicking, clocking, onwards.
Decades, then centuries, burgeoned with life’s roller-coasters;
The pages of each life turned, emitting
Joys and happiness, loves and fears
For those who lived.
Tears and heartache
For those who died.
Passions, curiosities, trials, guiles and smiles,
All ensconced firmly within their hearts.
Ticking, tocking, clicking, clocking, onwards –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

They died, and were reborn:
In multifarious myriadal, twisting times,
Beyond quantification.
Different lives; differing planets;
Alternate worlds; alternative dimensions.
Male or female, alike and unlike alike.
Aeons arose and insouciantly passed,
Yet still, regardless of time’s toll,
The chain of fire between them remained;
Its warm glow oscillating back and forth in animated, rapacious pulses –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

The fire burned them painfully at times.
And so it was that measures were undertaken:
He took a blowtorch to his end of the chain,
She an angle grinder to hers.
In fervid despair, they, in turn, had tried
Hammers, sickles, gelignite, flint and steel,
Hatchets, guillotines and pick-axes,
Chewing and stretching, gnawing of teeth,
Acid baths, anvils dropped, dynamite, grenades.
In fact, the whole cartoon’ish caboodle of ACME warehouse
Weaponry was wily waved and yet . . .
All to no avail – the chain remained just as it was:
Immutable. Perpetual.
And elements of their souls were relieved –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

Sometimes, within certain lives
One would twang the line,
Causing untold vibrations to electrify with joy,
Or dampen the other soul’s heart.
Sometimes, the other would do just the same.
And this was welcomed,
For it conjured pockets of remembered smiles;
Times when the stars waved at them as they flew,
Through the night skies with pounding, childlike hearts and eyes –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

One day, when innumerable aeons had passed,
And they were both distant copies of their original selves,
A spontaneous contraction of the chain occurred;
Like a cord shuttling back into a cosmic vacuum cleaner,
And BOOM!
Suddenly there they were once again;

Heart to heart.
Hands touching hands;
Wrinkled palm against palm;
Aged finger to finger.
Every digit leaning gently upon the others,
Melding a small cache of electric, eclectic synapses
Softly between them.
One set of murky cataracts
Gazing into the other’s.
Toothless smiles;
Radiant gums.

And it came as no surprise.

And the time was right now.

And it was beautiful –

It was, as it has always been . . . forever and a day.

Please stop over to her most enjoyable, provocative, witty Imaginarium upon the Cloud. I promise you will not regret it! Tell her that her favorite suave, Steampunk, pervert Professor Taboo sent you. It will make her heart go pitter-patter and her knees wobbly. 🤭

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Blog content with this logo by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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Being Natural

Posted on September 20, 2018 by Professor Taboo

A brief interruption of my current, “serious” blog-series to get a little more… human. Natural.

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It is very simple. And you’ll never understand if you don’t get out and swim in the marrow of life.

There was a boy
A very strange, enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far
Very far, over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day,
A magic day he passed my way
While we spoke of many things
Fools and Kings
This he said to me

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return. — Eden Ahbez

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Live Well — Laugh Often — Love Much — Learn Always

If It Tastes Good

Posted on August 9, 2018 by Professor Taboo

Oh to be young again.

Has anyone found the Fountain of Youth? Because I’m running out of time here! And don’t give me that long-ass sales line about working out and eating a consistent healthy diet. I did that for 45-years being a very active young boy. Several athletic activities such as swimming, volleyball, baseball, and ultimately soccer/futebol that I pursued from secondary school, collegiate, and pro to semi-pro before retiring. During all of those years was that “strict healthy diet,” with occasionally ~~light~~ normal alcohol consumptions. It all worked rather well — complete physicals always ended with the doctor stating, “An excellent bill of health for your age sir.“

Then came the big 5 – 0.

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Injuries sustained over a lifetime soccer career — both knees, one shoulder, one ankle, and 2-3 concussions… that I can remember — began limiting my physical activities, or at least the particular sports I enjoyed playing. Time to adapt.

I quickly discovered, however, that it really, really helps if you HAVE the time TO adapt! And as I also soon learned at that point, it all comes down to shuffling around, tossing out, plugging in various “priorities” within a 24-hour day. No more, no less. Twenty. Four. This is a workout in itself!

By the time I perfect this time-management, advanced calculus equation, I am 55-years old. My hair, what’s remaining on my crown and has moved en masse to my ears, nose, and neck, has turned essentially all silver-white. My daughter says I am now ready to be accepted into a band of gorillas as a silver-back — not to be confused with THE silver-back, she clarifies. Apparently in the years it took me to become a near replica of Sean Connery, in 30-seconds my daughter became a Primatologist with an acute sense of reality-checks. I will spare everyone the long list of “medical checks” and prevention measures men over 40 should (sometimes must) be alert to and inevitably embrace. Several methods are quite humbling and challenge even the most sturdiest of dignities.

Then with a vengeance came varicella-zoster. But at the time I had no idea why I felt like my left side head, neck, left tonsil, and left inner-ear were about to explode. My friend tells me I kept mumbling over and over “It hurts, it burns, I see Kate Beckinsale with Jessica Biel.“ This was rumour of course, and after all I was running a 103° temperature. An aging man cannot be held responsible for an unhinged subconscious!

After 3-days of total hell consciously and subconsciously, I had had enough. I was a defeated silver-back-n-top. Despite my long history of fainting at the sight of syringes, scalpels/lancets, needles, blood, and the occasional speech impediment around Nurse Goodbodee in librarian glasses, to the doctor I went. As I expected, this did not go as expected.

The nurse performed all the usual pre-diagnosis rituals, showed me my examination room and cushy table to place my buttocks to await the doctor. A few minutes pass, he enters, he corrects me 3-4 times about “Pugach,” pops the rubber gloves on, checks my head, stethoscope to the chest and back, then sits on his stool-with-rollers. “Your shingles“ the doctor from Belarus or Ukraine with an impossible last name to pronounce explained, “will go away in 4-6 weeks. But that’s not your biggest problem.“ I immediately start remembering the earlier pre-diagnosis checks: weight scale? Ear thermometer? Prostate check? Whew! Didn’t do that one. Pulse check? Blood-pressure monitor? The constant popping of 1500-2000 MGs of Extra Strength Tylenol for the Kate Beckinsale/Jessica Biel ailment? Are there severe side-effects for that? I just wasn’t sure what could be worse than my damn head and pain.

“Your blood-pressure is high; abnormally high.“ I was slightly relieved when he said that. I thought of many things much worse! “We’ll need to put you“ he continued “on some blood-pressure medications right away.“ I think cool, not a problem. “You’re closely approaching stroke-risk status.“ Great, let’s do it — the meds that is. “We’ll also need to do some lab work too… to check on enzyme levels and blood electrolytes, lipid profile, etc.“

Now we have a problem. “Well, if we don’t do lab work you’ll likely have bigger problems than the one in your head and on your head.“ He winked at me with a smirk. I thought, that’s not funny.

In the room ladened with every sort of life-threatening utensils and signs warning not to touch, discard here, and In Case of Emergency Do… I managed to get through the whole slapping the inside of the elbow, sterilization rub, needle enters, blood gushes out, fills the vile, undo the rubber strap off the arm, and then band-aid with a candy-lollipop. I walked out of that office a proud survivor and veteran of many floor deployments!

A day or two later the lab calls with my results. “Everything looks normal“ the kind lady informs me “but your liver enzymes are elevated.“ Okay, elevated is not all bad with a man’s body, right? “You need to cut-down on your carbohydrates, go on a low-carb diet, and probably cut way down on your alcohol consumption.“ I felt my body sink when she said the last part. Like… ALL alcohol, I asked her. “Wine, preferably reds, in moderation — say two or three glasses per week or one 8 oz glass per day — should be fine.“ However, she pretty much said no liquors in excess or heavy moderation. When I researched the low-carb diet, it wasn’t too bad, although several foods I’ve loved all my life — cheeses, breads, whole milk, coffee with gourmet creamers — had to go.

This felt as if I was loosing my closest dearest friends and even the ones that get you into untold troubles and complications of particular day-after regrets. Bye-bye. Gone. Send a postcard.

Then my follow-up doctor visit happened.

Same routines as previously with the marvelous exception of items designed to poke, puncture, probe, or cause general discomfort such as fainting and peeing (in a cup or in your pants) all remained out of eyesight and out of my body. I was thrilled! The soft knock-knock on the door and my doc with the impossible last name enters. All my problems and ailments are in decline — the fun news. We then begin discussing the low-carb diet and what it encompasses. He covers the “Okays to eat/drink” first, perhaps wanting to make me feel better… as most doctors are supposed to do. He names off a dozen or so and all of them I enjoy eating. It’s quite a tasty list of options. “Do you have our Low-Carb Diet pamphlet?“ No I replied. He walks over to the wall of pamphlets next to the big laminated poster entitled “Causes of Hypertension to the Human Body,” grabs my future meal plan and hands it to me.

There in green-ink I see the side of “Okay to eat/drink” list. Yep, check. Then on the other side of the page is the “Avoid – Do Not Eat/Drink.” In a most drabby voice I share my assessment of the diet, “Umm, the red Avoid side is noticeably longer.“ He acknowledges my keen observation; apparently he has heard this tone before. “Yes, a big reason for that are the enormous choices shoppers have at grocery stores and restaurants.“ Yeah, that’s true I say to myself, still mopey. I try to finagle some exceptions, or certain conservative amounts, frequencies, and volumes, but my doctor with the impossible last name is having none of it. He goes into a more extensive spill as to what exactly is best and what is iffy, wrong, and call the undertaker. I try one last attempt to skirt by, just on the edge, and he interrupts me. I guess he’s on a schedule?

“Basically, if it tastes good, spit it out!“

I look at him astonished with eyes bulging, mouth frozen. I’m unsure what to say. Then he begins chuckling, and explains he wanted to get me refocused on what is important. He then modified his hammering gavel to a softer “If it tastes sweet, spit it out.”

Well there, I felt much better. My doctor (and I suppose my body) put me on top of the geriatric world, only after one-hour… a bit older listening to my exhilarating new lifestyle! Strike up the marching band, but leave off the flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, the entire percussion section, and the tubas.

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always — But Don’t Over Do It 😶

Unsung Songs

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Professor Taboo

Several years ago I wrote a blog about how sound moves not only through the air and aether, but also through our bodies, our eardrums, and our hearts, and deep into your memory. Since even before recorded history on stone tablets, humanity has had an intimate relationship with sound, notes, melodies and harmonies, and rhythm. It should come as no surprise that vibrations resonate through every one of us.

We live on a planet of rhythm and time. A planet that completes its cycle around the sun every 365 days, with a moon that cycles around us every 28 days, and we rotate around our own axis every 24 hours. These cosmic cycles and our bodily ones, all connected to the circadian dance of day and night. The mystery of rhythm and time found for a moment in the soul’s drum. When it is right, you feel it with all your senses, every thread of your being. It is the ‘sweet spot’ of connection.

If the rhythm is right, if the translation between inner mood and the drum membrane are perfect, then you know it instantly. “Ah, this goes with my body tempo, this connects how I feel today, how fast my heart is beating, what my thoughts are, what my hands feel like.”

When the rhythm is right you feel it with all your senses, every corner of your soul and being. You don’t fight it, but instead allow yourself to be propelled and consumed by its insistent yet familiar feeling. All sense of the present moment disappears, the normal categories of time become meaningless. —— Mickey Hart, Drumming At the Edge Of Magic – A Journey Into the Spirit of Percussion

I’d imagine that most species on this magnificent planet experience the same thing as we do with sound, vibrations, and music. In some ways it is how we navigate through life. Imagine the endless beauty of all the world’s songbirds, whales and dolphins in the oceans, herds of mammals guiding their young, and all of humanity’s greatest concertos, bands of every genre, instruments from many cultures, and the powerful significance it all brings to life on Earth.

Now, imagine a world, a life, with no sound.

This is very hard for me to do. I can’t frankly. Sound, rhythm, and music are so deeply woven and engrained in my family heritage and my DNA it will never be silenced! At least for several generations or more; both my kids are crazy about their music, much of it they fell in love with from their parents. But imagine a life where none of these sounds, vibrations, or rhythms exist. How would our human bodies react? How would others react to us?

There is also a paradox here. Or maybe not a paradox, but a potential paradox, or a limit. Overkill. Excessive sound or noise. Is silence better than noise, interference?

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence…
—— Simon & Garfunkel

When a human being expresses their feelings, right or wrong it doesn’t matter at the time, is it better than silence, than omission? Are feelings typically honest and raw? From Paulo Coelho:

Telling the truth and making someone cry
is better than telling a lie and making someone smile.

What sort of perceived reality is achieved when one is fed half-truths, half-lies, or full-blown lies, or a more common form of silence: omission. Is it human nature to express these forms of non-reality or blurry reality? Is it human nature to trust, or trust too much too easily? How often do we practice these techniques?

I’m in the dark, I’d like to read his mind
but I’m frightened of the things I might find
Oh, there must be something he’s thinking of
to tear him away
when I tell him that I’m falling in love
why does he say…

If we deny other humans — our dear friends, family, lovers, partners, spouses — OUR sounds, vibrations, words, feelings, rhythms, and “music” is it fair to expect or demand THEIR free expressions of sounds, vibrations, words, feelings, rhythms, and “music”? Where does silence, hush-hush leave us?

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always — Listen to Songs Unsung