Faith and Facts

Fact of the day : The Grand Elected Knight Kadosh, Knight of the Black and White Eagle, is the official title of a 30th Degree Freemason.

Science is belief in the fact.
Faith is belief without facts.
Or is it?
Do any of us really have faith in God, without any sort of fact? Most of us point to the Bible. Isn't the existance of the Bible a fact, a piece of evidence, a proof?

No sane person has perfect faith. We'd end up believing in Dracula and moon men as well.
We aren't geared for perfect faith. We need a little proof.

Rosa Parks

Remember this, children, if you remember nothing else.
Remember the lesson of Rosa Parks.

Honors have been heaped upon her, buildings and streets named for her. She changed America, and changed the fate of millions.

And all she ever did was refuse to give up her seat to a bully.

Courage. You don't need style, intelligence, money, or connections to change the world.
You just need to say no, when all the cowards are saying yes.

Role Model

Trivia note: The oldest registered dot-com address is SYMBOLICS.COM, registered on 15 March, 1985.

Who's your role model?

Is it a rock diva, a person whose only claim to fame is that they can follow a tune and dance at the same time (although Jennifer Simpson even broke THAT necessity)? Do you look to them for opinions on everything from dating to wardrobe, even though they have their clothes chosen for them, and their relationships crash and burn more often than not?

Is your role model a politician, whose motto is "Stay in power, whatever the cost."? Do you form your opinions about the world based on what they say, even though their words are written for them by professional spin doctors bent on selling you ideologies?

Is your role model an actor, a professional player of make-believe, whose job it is to look and talk like whatever their boss needs them to look and talk like, right at that moment? Do you accept their word as gospel, even though they may not understand themselves what they are saying, having been paid to say those very things, and may very well say the exact opposite next week, depending on who is paying them now?

Is your role model an athlete, an individual whose job it is to play a game? A man expected to win at any cost to his body, mind, pride, or family? Do you strive to imitate a man whose career will end within 10 years due to burnout, leaving him another 40 to sell autographs and aftershave?

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Fame

At one point in the mid-Sixties, The Dave Clark Five were bigger than the Beatles, and much bigger than their other rival, The Rolling Stones.

Next to money and power, fame is the thing we desire most. Fame is the name of the game, and many would put fame above the other two.
Why, then, do we treat fame so roughly. Fame lasts for a few years at most, and often no more than the proverbial 15 minutes. We all want to be members of the next N'Sync, and yet . . .
And yet we have already forgotten about the Bay City Rollers; Vanilla Ice is now a Surreal Life reality show joke; and we are already beginning to forget about the Spice Girls.
Why do we devote ourselves, our lives, and sometimes our health, for something that won't last past our thirties?

Santayana - "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

Small World

We all live in a small world of our own.
Even the world travellers among us don't truly see the scope of the world, or our effect upon it. We look outside, see the sun shining, the grass on the ground, and feel that the world is rolling along just fine. We cannot see what effect, good or bad, we are having.
You read the news and you don't comprehend what you read. You don't know the thousands who died in a disaster, so it doesn't strike you. You don't see the defaced landmark, or the burned forest, so it has no emotional effect.
The greatest mental quality that humans have is Judgement - the ability to determine true importance and true proportion despite the level of any emotional impact or personal interest, if any. A judge that passes a fair sentence, even if he personally thinks the guy should be burned at the stake, shows judgement.
More than ever today, we need to cultivate and value good judgement. We need to see the world as it is, not as we would have it, and act appropriately.

One of the myths of our age is that the Great Wall of China can be seen from space. Well, yes, if you use a telephoto lens and a spy satellite.

Men into Space

Today's trivia fact:
The concept of the space elevator was invented in 1895 by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky - a scientist who was later honored by Star Trek - The Next Generation with the name of a science ship. Full of crazy people.

NASA has announced a competition to design the first space elevator. Like the X-Prize, the competition is open to anyone who wants to try and build the thing.
The concept is simple. Take one really tough cable. Send one end into orbit. Attach the other end to the ground. Attach a cable car.
No rockets, no explosions. No G-force - the cable car can move at automobile speeds.

Hurry up, people. I want to get into space before I die, and my bones aren't getting any tougher, you know.

Thought for the day - What purpose does mankind have, other than to figure out what purpose mankind has?

Mr. God.

Quote of the day:
"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then is an empty desk?" Albert Einstein.

One of my favorite books, bar none, is a simple little paperback with the title "Mister God? It's me, Anna." It's the story of a pre-teen progidy in pre-war England, and if all the members of the Christian Right worldwide would only read this quiet little tale and take it to heart, their message, outlook, and maybe even their tactics would become a lot closer to what Jesus had in mind, I'm sure.

The soft drink Mountain Dew was originally created to be a chaser for Tennessee whiskey.

Ban the Pros

Today's fun fact - always spit on a new baseball bat before using it, to make it lucky.

Why do we bother with professional sports?
We, as taxpayers, end up spending millions on stadiums for the right to host a team that goes 3-20 every year. We spend more on sports than on movies. Television spends more on sports than on the news.

And for what? College football is as exciting as pro ball, college basketball ditto - why wouldn't college baseball, hockey, soccer, etc. be as exciting?
We could spend that stadium money on colleges. Our admission fees would go to furthering education, rather than polishing some exec's learjet. Our outstanding running backs, knowing that there would not be any contracts after graduation, might actually work towards a degree and become a valuable member of society after his playing days are done, as opposed to guest starring on bad sitcoms during sweeps week, or giving color commentary.

Ban the pros. Go State!

School

Today's fact: The Bible has about 500 verses on prayer, and almost 500 verses on faith, but over 2000 verses on posessions.

Should we have a school voucher system, allowing parents to decide where to send their kid to school?

The financial drawbacks are obvious. The people sending their kids to private school will want their school taxes to be spent on that school. As a result, the upper class schools will get the best equipment, books, and teachers, while the public schools will get diddly.
Scientists will come from the upper class schools - dishwashers from the public schools.
Or will they?
One of the reasons people are pushing for vouchers is because they don't like what's being taught in public schools. They want their own schools with their own curriculum. That's fine.
So the Wicca will have their own schools, the Scientologists will have their own schools - that's fine, too. Freedom is freedom.
But how do we judge what they've learned? What is the measure of a high school diploma if different things are taught?
What happens when you get five applications for medical school, from five different high schools, and find out they have five very different educations? What happens if some of those educations are a little, well . . .
"Drugs are a hoax. I learned that only meditation can cure the body."
"I can't read this text. It has pictures of undressed people in it, and I was taught never to look at such things."
"Sir, this text implies that blacks are equal to whites. In MY school, we learned . . ."
And so on.
Think it won't happen? Look at the fight over Intelligent Design. Imagine that kind of fight in EVERY subject.
"There is no such thing as insanity. It's the Thetan inside you."
"There are only two classifications of life - humans, and everything else."
"The Earth is only 4000 years old. Fossils are the remains of the great Flood."
"There are no atoms in the Bible."
"We can only know what we are meant to know. If the god has not revealed it to us, then we are not yet ready to learn it. Therefore research is useless."

A voucher system will divide us into a thousand separate societies, each with different beliefs.
Are you ready to live in such a country?

Vigilantes

The phrase "It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman!" did not come from the comics. It came from the Superman cartoons created by Max Fleischer during the Forties. The cartoons also originated the catch phrase starting with "Faster than a speeding bullet . . .".

American culture has contributed one unique character archetype to literature - the superhero. What separates this archetype from everything previous is not super powers - superhuman characters are as old as Gilgamesh - but the way they relate to society; a difference that says a lot about America. Whereas previous "inspirations" of the superhero - Robin Hood, Zorro - fought against cruel laws and evil rulers, the superhero fights FOR law and order - without joining the forces of law and order. A pro-order vigilante - practically an oxymoron.
The superhero is an extension of the cowboy hero. The cowboy works alone, and although he trusts the law, he doesn't trust authority. He will work as part of a group, but only in a group of his peers - the posse will consist of his friends; easterners and Indians are not invited.
The superhero is the same. Batman is not a policeman, although they can consult him by shining a searchlight into the clouds. He takes great pains to make sure the authorities cannot find out who he is, and therefore coerce him into working for them full time. He helps when it suits him.
Here is the American psyche in full bloom - fiercely independent, distrustful of Big Business and Big Government, confident in his ability to go it alone, no matter what the odds.
Ladies and gentlemen, here is the ideal American. Uncle Sam wears a mask and cape.

Flap your arms

"I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive." Mel Brooks.

So, what did YOU do today that was noisy and colorful?
Too often we allow our everyday lives to overwhelm us. We go to work, we come home, and when someone says "What happened at work/school today?", we usually say "Nothing."
Nothing. You spent a whole day of your far too fleeting life doing something you can't even remember.
Was it worth doing?
If it wasn't, isn't it time to do something else?

We Don't Read Enough

As the most advanced culture that has ever existed on the face of the earth, replete with free public education, almost universal college diplomas and university degrees coming out our ears,
We are incredibly, criminally, ignorant.
We are as specialized as termites. We know chapter and verse about how to do our day to day jobs, both those related to our professions, and those related to our home lives.
And nothing else.

This blog exists to educate you.
It's obscure information that will not help you earn more, or speed up your chores, but it WILL make you think a little more about the world you're spending your mortal existence upon.
Perhaps making that existence a little more enjoyable, a little more interesting, and a little more productive to this great culture that has created you.