God help us all.

Next time you meet a proponent of Intelligent Design, ask him to prove Allah is not the designer. Non-religious, huh?

The Intelligent Design eople really need to rethink their "faith".
Science is about proof. It is a mental exercise where we look at the evidence of our senses and try to categorize what we perceive.
God is not about proof. Far from it. He could provide us with all the proof that we could ever want - birthmarks in the shape of "God Lives"; a visible heaven, or angels walking visibly beside us. He doesn't.
He wants us to act ethicly and morally WITHOUT proof of rewards.
And, for that matter, without proof of punishment.

Fundamentalists - and these people are fundamentalists - believe that God is going to punish any and all non-fundamentalists. They are absolutely convinced that an omnibenevolent God, whose mercy is neverending, whose forgiveness is infinite and eternal, is still going to throw souls into a firey furness unless they believe a narrow doctrine - one that does not match the teachings of either the Old Testament God or the New Testament Christ, but which does incorporate pagan, Eurocentric, and Reformation ideas. Moreover, they also believe in the damnation of those who believe what they believe, but HAVE NOT JOINED THEIR FELLOWSHIP. In other words, being one of them is not just about your religion.
The Intelligent Design movement is, in part, their attempt to save everybody. They cannot and will not believe that anyone can be saved unless they become a fundamentalist - and you can't do that by learning about the scientific method.
They are trying to save us all.
God help them.
God help us.

When Alexander the Great passed through Turkey to fight the Persians, he stopped at the site of Troy. On the Plains of Illium, Alexander stripped naked in front of his men and ran around a mound called the "Kesik Tepe", where Achilles and his friend Patroclus are supposed to be buried. This was to pay his respects. Other generals have also done this.

I highly recommend this book: http://www.StellaAwards.com/book.html

I also recommend this website: http://jeremystoll.typepad.com/weblog/

Multiculturalism. And comics.

I'm about to start adding a comic strip to this title - if I can get Blogger to accept the downloads.
Bear with me for a while.

Multiculturalism is an oxymoron.
It is the belief that we should take all our cultures - our beliefs, our customs - and merge them into a single system. That single system, however, would be a single culture.
Some of us have different customs, and not all of them are equal. While respecting the rights of a person to live any lifestyle he or she chooses is correct, that right ends at the person's nose. Forcing another to live by your lifestyle, or inflicting pain/damage upon another because of your lifestyle's values - is wrong.

Unfortunately, many people see multiculturalism as relativism - or worse, as just allowing foreign restaurants to open up on main street. It isn't. Multiculturalism is "I live my way, you live yours, and we keep the fence up."
As for me, I like Italian cooking, Japanese art, Navaho jewelry - and freedom of expression.
What do you like?

Every Culture has a trickster figure. Anansi (africa), The Monkey King(china), Coyote(plains indians), Raven(west coast indians), Kokopelli, Maui(polynesia), Hermes(greece), Loki(norse).
Ours is Spider-Man.

Remember

My father fought in the war.
He spent a year in hospital because of it. He nearly died.
He never regretted it.

Travel

Today's trivia: A book called Stray Leaves from Japanese Papers consisted of 400 pieces of antiseptic toilet paper, for use in emergencies while travelling.

Travel broadens the mind.
Feel free to disagree with that statement.

Travel broadens the mind if you try to broaden it. If your idea of travel is to stay in a hotel from a US chain, eat in their restaurant, treat your surroundings as obstacles to the places you want to go, spend all your time shopping, and wish the locals could talk properly, then you might as well have stayed home. The most you got out of your holiday was warmer weather.
When you travel, go out. Learn a few words, and let the locals teach you how to say them properly. Tour the museums and the galleries. Try the local foods. Step a little ways away from the beaten track.
Is it dangerous? Probably. So's your home city. There's lots of safe places to travel to, where you can learn a little. Find one.

Science Lesson

Today's trivia: pH is short for Potential of Hydrogen.

What we all want is to be rich.
Materially rich, first of all. We want to be able to sit around the pool all day, spending the interest our huge bank accounts earn. We also want to be rich in freedoms. We want to do what we want, when we want, and to not have anybody do anything to us.
Finally, we all want to be spiritually rich. We want to be free of guilt, free of worry about the future.
Most of the hate and fear in the world comes from poverty. The black kid on the corner talking about hating the white man, wouldn't give a damn about the white man if he made as much. Certainly the black lawyer don't feel quite as much hate. The hate he does feel is because he doesn't have the same level of freedom that his white colleagues have. If he was invited to the same parties, addressed with the same deference, he wouldn't care what whitey did.
On the other side, the KKK is mostly made up of poorer folk, who think that if blacks weren't taking all the jobs, then THEY would have a shot. Instead of having to live in a trailer park, stretching the welfare check to cover a luxury or two, they would live in a house, with a car and a suit and a proper paycheck.
There are two ways out of this.
First, make everyone richer. Science and The Enlightenment has been trying to do this for centuries. The guy in the trailer park would cringe if he saw how he would have lived four centuries ago - or even two. (Maybe they should make Charles Dickens required reading in public schools again - if only to show people how good they've got it now.)
The second way is to become satisfied with what you've got now. It is very hard to be satisfied with a crust when all around you have cake, but it has been done. You just have to be a saint.
It's easier to make everyone richer, than to make everyone contented. That's why we need more scientists in our society, and more science.

90% of all scientists in TV and movies are portrayed either as nerds or madmen.

Giles

The Hundred Years War lasted 116 years - 1337 to 1453.

I am a big fan of the late British cartoonist Giles.
He contributed a cartoon to the London Daily Mirror nearly every week, starting just after WW2 and ending just before the millennium. Every year the Daily Mirror would publish that year's collection of cartoons in a softcover book, and they are still publishing "best of" collections yearly.
I am still missing several of the earliest books - I think my collection starts with #10 - and I still need a few of the later years. But I've got most of them.
It's not that the cartoons are funny - well, they are, although they are quasi-political cartoons, and cover many now-forgotten topics - but because of what is in the drawings.
The Giles collections are a week by week, year by year LOOK at England - the clothing, the cars, the attitudes, the home decor, the jargon, the customs, everything. I look through the books and see how Christmas shopping has changed over 50 years, how the store layouts have changed, how the products have changed. His cartoons are full of details, to the point that they are the best examination of British life that you could ask for. They should publish the entire set in one huge volume, called The Illustrated History of Britain 1945-2000.

Reading Material

Today's fun fact: Piers the Plowman, by William Langland, is a 14th century spiritual allegory, similar to Pilgrim's Progress - and is significant in being the first work of fiction to mention the character of Robin Hood.

The Ten books I think everybody should read, which you have probably never heard of. (Don't stop with just ten, though.)

The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkein. So that you can see what imagination can do with words. Even without optical effects.

The Art of War, by Sun Tzu. Used as a guidebook for everything from business dealings to terrorist attacks, this book is best described as a strategy guide for everyday living. Especially if you are living in a war zone. Which, since 9/11, you are.

The Book of Style, by Strunk and White. If you cannot communicate, you are autistic, whether by congenital disease or by ignorance. This book contains the rules for communicating in the English language. Know them.

Journey to the West, by Wu Ch'eng-en. A serviceable translation is Monkey by Arthur Waley. This 16th Century story of the monk Tripitaka's travels to India and back, is one of the central pieces of Oriental fairy tales. Just as a Westerner knows Robin Hood and King Arthur, so Easterners know The Monkey King, Pigsy, and Sandy. To be fully conversant in world culture, you need this piece.

The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. Even more important than Cosmos, this book is Sagan's warning about the importance, the need, for science in our lives and education. And what will happen to us if we don't retain it.

The Prince, by Machiavelli. Agree with him or not, this is the book that explains how governments think and handle things. And how people are handling you.

Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku. Fifteen chapters, 334 pages. The best explanation of modern physics in writing, explained so simply that even I understand it. This is the 1994 edition of Reality's user guide.

Asimov's Guide to the Bible, by Isaac Asimov. A very thick book by one of humanity's most prolific and knowledgeable authors, explaining all those phrases in the Bible you didn't understand, (Who was Pul, King of Assyria, anyway?) or only thought you understood. (Belial is not a demon. It's a word meaning worthless) Memorize this book, then reread your Bible, and have it come to life again.

The Davis Drug Guide, by F.A. Davis. Written for nurses and medical personnel, you'll probably need to read a couple of textbooks in order to make out most of what this book tells you. What this book tells you is the name of (just about) every medication on the market, both prescription and over-the-counter, along with how it works, side effects to look for, dosages, contraindications (why you shouldn't use it), and what you should be eating and doing (or not doing) while taking the drug. With the doctor shortage, we are all essentially healing ourselves. Here's the take-charge book.

Chariots of the Gods, by Erich von Daniken. Hard to believe that this book, written in 1968, is still making the rounds. Or that von Daniken is still writing more books (his latest is called Eyes of the Sphynx). Read this classic meander of half-truths, leapt conclusions, and curios, and remind yourself how easy it can be for someone to fool the unschooled, the credulous, and the uncritical.

Have fun.

Capability

On Savoy Street, in London, cars drive on the right, not the left.

Have you ever stopped and considered how much you are able to do?

You are literate in at least one language.
You can walk.
You can climb stairs, ladders, hills, and maybe even cliffs.
You can use at least 16 hand tools competently, from a claw hammer to a garden rake.
You can operate any number of devices, ranging from light switches to DVD players. You operate at least 20 every day.
You know where to find information, both at a library and on the internet.

And this is just the beginning.
Go back over your life. Look at your old Scout/Guide uniform, and see what badges you earned. All that information is still lurking in your brain somewhere. Look at your sports trophies and club memberships.

You are a lot more capable than you think. Our society tends to make cogs out of us, arranging for us to perform only a few functions, day in and day out. But we are capable of more than that. We have options we don't even recognise.
Don't sell yourself short.

Futurists

Want to learn the future? The technique of divining the future by interpreting laughter is called Geloscopy, while divining by interpreting currents in water is called Bletonism.

We all engage in divination of one sort or another. We buy lottery tickets based on "lucky" numbers, we invest in stocks we think will rise due to the prediction of a stockbroker, we read the horoscopes.
None of these things work. We don't need research to prove this - we KNOW they don't work. So why do we keep buying lottery tickets and stocks?
We are, at heart, optimists, one and all. We all live with hope - hope that our number will be picked, that we'll find true love today, that the third time's the charm. We cannot live without it.

They say that a man with no water will survive, if he has hope, but a man without hope will die, even in a mansion. If you want to make a name for yourself, or do some good in this world, inspire some hope.


In ballet, a pas des deux is a dance for two people, and a pas de quatre is a dance for four. However, a dance for one is a variation.

Halloween's Over.

. . . and not one kid came to the house.
Kids in the neighborhood don't trick or treat anymore.
They now only go to parties that are a) family or friends only, or b) at school.

It's apparently the only way to keep them safe. After 20 years of stories about drive-bys, apples with razor blades, serial killers, and kidnappers, there is no way that a sensible mother lets her kids out at night.

Halloween began as a way of warding off the Devil and his servants. How strange that we no longer fear the Devil, but are terrified of our neighbors.