Friday, January 18, 2008

Pigs Barf Upon Him

The Paradox: Because Muhammed is idolized by Muslims, they expressly forbid any drawing of him because this would idolize him. As trying not to idolize someone who you idolize is a universal paradox, an accurate picture of Muhammed would most probably cause a rift in time and destroy the universe. - Uncyclopedia.



Mohammed in Dante's Hell among the sowers of discord.
A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.

Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.

While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;

How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;

And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.

Pictures by Sooreh Hera.
Muhammed teddy bear.

( {} ;- {7->-<
ASCII Mohammed from Uncyclopedia: "Look! I've beaten the system. Its not drawn. Its written. Look!"


Jesus to Mohammed: Relax, dude. They draw me too.

Harris and Hitchens


Sam Harris: The End of Faith - Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason.

"The End of Faith is a genuinely frightening book... Read Sam Harris and wake up." - Richard Dawkins

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/74699023/Sam.Harris.-.The.End.of.Faith.pdf






Sam Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation

“I dare you to read this book…it will not leave you unchanged. Read it if it is the last thing you do.”
— Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, from his Foreward to the UK Edition

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http://rapidshare.com/files/44780208/Sam_Harris_-_Letter_to_a_christian_nation.pdf




Christopher Hitchens - God is not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything
Book Description
In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case
against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and
reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry
of the double helix. - Amazon.com

Wafa Sultan



Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Worth killing for?

Satanic Verses by Salman Rusdhie

Download link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/82384395/Rushdie__Salman_-_The_Satanic_Verses.pdf.html

Jyllands-Posten caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed




Submission by Theo van Gogh

Daniel Dennet - 2 Books

Daniel C. Dennett - Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
In his characteristically provocative fashion, Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, calls for a scientific, rational examination of religion that will lead us to understand what purpose religion serves in our culture. Much like E.O. Wilson (In Search of Nature), Robert Wright (The Moral Animal), and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), Dennett explores religion as a cultural phenomenon governed by the processes of evolution and natural selection. Religion survives because it has some kind of beneficial role in human life, yet Dennett argues that it has also played a maleficent role. He elegantly pleads for religions to engage in empirical self-examination to protect future generations from the ignorance so often fostered by religion hiding behind doctrinal smoke screens. Because Dennett offers a tentative proposal for exploring religion as a natural phenomenon, his book is sometimes plagued by generalizations that leave us wanting more ("Only when we can frame a comprehensive view of the many aspects of religion can we formulate defensible policies for how to respond to religions in the future"). Although much of the ground he covers has already been well trod, he clearly throws down a gauntlet to religion. Publishers Weekly

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Daniel C. Dennett - Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

"A surpassingly brilliant book" - Richard DawkinsOne of the best descriptions of the nature and implications of Darwinian evolution ever written, it is firmly based in biological information and appropriately extrapolated to possible applications to engineering and cultural evolution. Dennett's analyses of the objections to evolutionary

theory are unsurpassed. Extremely lucid, wonderfully written, and scientifically and philosophically impeccable. Highest Recommendation!

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Saturday, January 5, 2008

Forbidden Fruit

Khushwant Singh, the Indian man of letters and surely one of the most underrated Indian novelists writing in English, wrote of his visit to Pakistan:
"Prohibition is as much of a farce in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as it was in Morarji Desai's India.A drinking man can find liquor in the mirages of the Sahara desert. In Pakistan it does not run like the river Ravi in spate, but it does trickle in tumbler fulls in most well-to-do Pakistani homes. You may have whiskey served in metal tumblers or in a tea-pot and have to sip from a China cup. It costs more than twice as much as in India but also goes down twice as well because it tastes of sin."
Later Singh watched a debate on television between three mullas and the Pakistan Minister of Information. The next evening, Singh found himself sitting next to the same minister of information at a formal dinner. The minister read a speech welcoming Singh and the rest of the Indian delegation. In reply, Singh got up and told the minister that the next time he met the mullas, he should recite them the following verses: Mulla, if your prayer has power
Let me see you shake the mosque!
If not, take a couple of pegs of liquor
And see how the mosque shakes on its own.
"There was," continued Singh, "a roar of applause in which the minister joined. Then he whispered in my ear: 'If these fellows [i.e., the mullas] had their way, they would make our girls' hockey teams play in burqas.' " From Ibn Warraq's Why I am Not a Muslim

Lost and Delirious


Paulie quotes Shakespeare:

[Paulie enters the library in a fencing outfit carrying a sword, and stands on top of the table Tori is studying at]
Paulie: I shall make me a willow cabin at your gate and call upon my soul within the house; Write loyal cantons of contemned love and sing them loud even in the dead of night; Halloo your name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out 'Victoria!'
Eleanor Bannet: Paulie... why don't you come down from there?
[touches her arm]
Paulie: [flinches away] Don't ever touch a raptor

***

Paulie: Shall I abide in this dull world, which in her absence is no better then a sty?



Sagan's three final books

Demon-Haunted World

Eminent Cornell astronomer and bestselling author Sagan debunks the paranormal and the unexplained in a study that will reassure hardcore skeptics but may leave others unsatisfied. To him, purported UFO encounters and alien abductions are products of gullibility, hallucination, misidentification, hoax and therapists' pressure; some alleged encounters, he suggests, may screen memories of sexual abuse. He labels as hoaxes the crop circles, complex pictograms that appear in southern England's wheat and barley fields, and he dismisses as a natural formation the Sphinx-like humanoid face incised on a mesa on Mars, first photographed by a Viking orbiter spacecraft in 1976 and considered by some scientists to be the engineered artifact of an alien civilization. In a passionate plea for scientific literacy, Sagan deftly debunks the myth of Atlantis, Filipino psychic surgeons and mediums such as J.Z. Knight, who claims to be in touch with a 35,000-year-old entity called Ramtha. He also brands as superstition ghosts, angels, fairies, demons, astrology, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and religious apparitions. Amazon

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Billions and Billions

In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us. These luminous, entertaining essays travel both the vastness of the cosmos and the intimacy of the human mind, posing such fascinating questions as how did the universe originate and how will it end, and how can we meld science and compassion to meet the challenges of the coming century? Here, too, is a rare, private glimpse of Sagan's thoughts about love, death, and God as he struggled with fatal disease. Ever forward-looking and vibrant with the sparkle of his unquenchable curiosity, Billions & Billions is a testament to one of the great scientific minds of our day.



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Varieties of Scientific Experience

The late great astronomer and astrophysicist describes his personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos. Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, Sagan presents his views on a wide range of topics, including the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets, creationism and so-called intelligent design, and a new concept of science as “informed worship.” Originally presented at the centennial celebration of the famous Gifford Lectures in Scotland in 1985 but never published, this book offers a unique encounter with one of the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century

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http://rapidshare.com/files/81435120/VOSE_by_CS.doc.html

Friday, January 4, 2008

Hafsa: I'm my great granma


A page from Hafsa's diary:

Dear Diary
I am so confused! My dad just had to marry my darling step-grand-daughter even though she's only a kid. He threatened he'll break the Zam Zam well if her dad refused. People can be so childish at times. Anyways, now I'll have to call that little girl my step mom. Imagine! But since she's also my step-grand-daughter, wont that make my dad my step grandson in-law?

Another thing is, my husband Mohammed has become my dad's grandfather in-law. And so my husband is now my great grandfather in-law which in turn makes me his great grand father in-law. So finally I end up being married to my great grandpa (in law!! Who cares about the bloody in-laws by now?!) making me my own great grandmother. And all because someone cant control what's between his legs! Men!!

PS: Remember to write to the Grand Mufti asking him about marriage to a step-granddaughter.

PPS: Sadly no wedding photos were taken coz my husband was at the party and he's allergic to cameras. Go figure.

****

All this reminds me of this song.



By the way Islamically-speaking this marriage is haram. Although, according to unreliable Wikipedia, its historical validity is accepted by the majority of Muslims.

Fried Green Tomatoes



She... always been terrified of displeasing men, terrified of the names she would be called if she did. She had spent her life tiptoeing around them like someone lifting her skirt stepping through a cow pasture...Everybody had a group to protest and stick up for them. But women were still being called names by men. Why? Where was our group? Few people saw this plump, pleasant-looking middle-aged, middle-class housewife...she would make up a secret code name for herself...a name feared around the world: TOWANDA THE AVENGER!
Towanda was able to do anything she wanted. She went back in time and punched out the apostle Paul for writing that women should remain silent. Towanda appeared on "Meet the Press" and with a calm voice, a cool eye, and a wry smile, debated every man who disagreed with her until they became so defeated by her brilliance they burst into tears and ran off the show. She went to Hollywood and ordered all the leading men to act opposite women of their own age...she sent food and birth control methods, for men as well as women, to the poor people of the world.
Towanda ordained that: an equal number of men and women would be in government and sit in on peace talks...teachers and nurses would receive the same salary as professional football players...just yesterday Towanda had marched into the Pentagon, taken all the bombs and missles away and given the generals toys to play with instead while her sisters in other parts of the world did the same. And she'd personally see to it that all the sweet men and daddies, who had worked so hard, would each receive a trip to Hawaii and an outboard motor to go with it. And because of her vision and insight, she became known the world over as Towanda the Magnanimous, Righter of Wrongs and Queen without Compare."
***
Geneene the black nurse who prided herself on being as tough as nails, but really wasn't, said she was tired. She was working double shift today, and she had come in their room to sit down for a minute and have a cigarette. Mrs. Otis was down the hall in her arts and crafts class, so Mrs. Threadgoode was happy for the company.
"you know thata woman I talk to on Sundays?"
Geneene said, "What woman?"
"Evelyn"
"Who?"
"She's that little plump gray haired woman. Evelyn...Evelyn Couch.. Mrs. Couch's daughter-in-law"
"Oh. Yes."
"She told me ever since that man called her names at the Pigley Wigley, she just hates people. I told her, I said, 'Oh honey, it does no good to hate. IT'll do nothing but turn your heart into a bitter root. People cain't help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don't you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.'
"Evelyn said there are times when she is even beginning to hate her husband. He'll be sitting around doing nothing, looking at his football games or talking on the phone, and she has this terrible desire to hit him on the head with a baseball bat, for no reason. Poor little Evelyn, she thinks she's the only person in the world that ever had an ugly thought. I told her, her problem is just a natural thing that happens with couples after they've been together for so long.
"Poor little Evelyn, I worry about her. That menopause has hit her with a venegance! She said, not only does she want to hit Ed on the head, but lately, she's having fantasies in her mind where she dresses up in black clothes and goes out at night and kils all the bad people with a machine gun. Can you imagine?
"I said, 'Honey, you been looking at too many TV shows. You just get those thoughts out of your mind right now! Besides, it's not up to us to judge other people."
***

Ed Couch came home Thursday night and said that he was having trouble with a woman down at the office who was a "real ball breaker," and that none of the men wanted to work with her because of it.
The next day, Evelyn went out to the mall to shop for a bed jacket for Big Momma and while she was having lunch at the Pioneer Cafeteria, a thought popped into her head, unannounced:
What is a ball breaker?
She’d heard Ed use the term a lot, along with She’s out to get my balls and I had to hold on to my balls for dear life.
Why was Ed so scared that someone was out to get his balls? What were they, anyway? Just little pouches that carried sperm; but the way men carried on about them, you’d think they were the most important thing in the world. My God, Ed had just about died when one of their son’s hadn’t dropped properly. The doctor said that it wouldn’t affect his ability to have children, but Ed had acted like it was a tragedy and wanted to send him to a psychiatrist, so he wouldn’t feel less of a man. She remembered thinking at the time, how silly… her breasts had never developed, and nobody ever sent her for help.
But Ed won out, because he told her she didn’t understand about being a man and what it meant. Ed had even pitched a fit when she wanted to have their cat, Valentine, who had impregnated the thoroughbred Siamese cat across the street, fixed.
He said, "If you’re gonna cut his balls off, you might as well just go on and put him to sleep!"
No doubt about it, he was peculiar where balls were concerned.
She remembered how Ed had once complimented that same woman at the office when she had stood up to the boss. He had bragged on her, saying what a ballsy dame she was.
But now that she thought about it, she wondered: What did that woman’s strength have to do with Ed’s anatomy? He hadn’t said, "Boy, she’s got some ovaries"; he had definitely said what balls she had. Ovaries have eggs in them, she thought: Shouldn’t they be as important as sperm?
And when had that woman stepped over the line of having just enough balls to having too much?
That poor woman. She would have to spend her whole life balancing imaginary balls if she wanted to get along. Balance was everything. But what about size? she wondered. She never heard Ed mention size before. It was the other thing’s size they were so concerned about, so she guessed it didn’t matter all that much. All that mattered in this world was the fact that you had balls. Then all at once, the simple and pure truth of that conclusion hit her. She felt as if someone had run a pencil up her spine and dotted an i on her head. She sat up straight in her chair, shocked that she, Evelyn Couch, of Birmingham, Alabama, had stumbled on the answer. She suddenly knew what Edison must have felt like when he discovered electricity. Of course! That was it… having balls was the most important thing in this world. No wonder she had always felt like a car in traffic without a horn.
It was true. Those two little balls opened the door to everything. They were the credit cards she needed to get ahead, to be listened to, to be taken seriously. No wonder Ed had wanted a boy.
Then another truth occurred to her. Another sad, irrevocable truth: She had no balls and never would or could have balls. She was doomed. Ball-less forever. Unless, she thought, if maybe the balls in your immediate family counted. There were four in hers… Ed’s and Tommy’s... No, wait… six, if she counted the cat. No, wait just another minute, if Ed loved her so much, why couldn’t he give her one of his? A ball transplant… That’s right. Or, maybe she could get two from an anonymous donor. That’s it, she’d buy some off a dead man and she could put them in a box and take them to important meetings and bang them on the table to get her way. Maybe she’d buy four…
No wonder Christianity had been such a big hit. Think of Jesus and the Apostles… And if you counted John the Baptist, why that was 14 pairs and 28 singles, right there!
Oh, it was all so simple to her now. How had she been so blind and not seen it before?
Yes, by heavens, she’d done it. She’d hit upon the secret that women have been searching for through the centuries…
THIS WAS THE ANSWER…
Hadn’t Lucille Ball been the biggest star on television? She banged her iced tea on the table in triumph and shouted, "YES! THAT’S IT!" Everyone in the cafeteria turned and looked at her.
Evelyn quietly finished her lunch and thought, Lucille Ball? Ed might be right. I probably am going crazy.
- Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Esther Madge Veronica Louise Ciccone Ritchie

(To the tune of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious)

Because a monsterrific ego comes with wealth and fame
Some superstar celebrities adopt a single name
There's Bono and there's Lassie and there's Sting and Prince and Cher
But then you've got Madonna, who grows names like armpit hair
She's -Esther Madge Veronica Louise Ciccone Ritchie
Don't say just "Madonna" now or someone might get bitchy
Listen to her long enough, your underpants get itchy
Esther Vero Lou Madonna Penn Ciccone Ritchie
Umm Kabba-lahba-lahba humm Kabba-lite
Umm Kabba-lahba-lahba humm Kabba-lite
No singer-actress-dancer-author-stripper going gray
Should stay out of the news too long; you might get Swept Away
So reinvent your look, your sound, your bod, your faith, your name
And even write a children's book called "I Love Dick'n'Jane"
Ma-donna Esther Ritchie Vero Penn Louise Ciccone
Not much Like a Virgin or a Prayer, yeah that's balo-nay
Don't forget her days of riding Dennis Rodman's po-nay
Esther Vero Penn Madonna Ritchie Lou Ciccone
[Music stops for key change, tempo increase, andDEEP BREATH]
Ma-donna Lou Veronica Ciccone, now just "Esther"
Used to grind in latex; now she knits in polyester
Still she knows the goal's to make you worship or detest 'er
Madge Louise Veronica Ciccone Ritchie -ESTHER!

Taken from here.

Six books by Richard Dawkins




6 of Richard Dawkins' books and one article about the Improbability of God.


A Devil's Chaplain - Richard Dawkins has an opinion on everything biological, it seems, and in A Devil's Chaplain, everything is biological. Dawkins weighs in on topics as diverse as ape rights, jury trials, religion, and education, all examined through the lens of natural selection and evolution. Although many of these essays have been published elsewhere, this book is something of a greatest-hits compilation, reprinting many of Dawkins' most famous recent compositions.

The Ancestor's Tale - Just as we trace our personal family trees from parents to grandparents and so on back in time, so in The Ancestor's Tale Richard Dawkins traces the ancestry of life. As he is at pains to point out, this is very much our human tale, our ancestry. Surprisingly, it is one that many otherwise literate people are largely unaware of. Hopefully Dawkins's name and well deserved reputation as a best selling writer will introduce them to this wonderful saga.

The Blind Watchmaker - The title of this 1986 work, Dawkins's second book, refers to the Rev. William Paley's 1802 work, Natural Theology, which argued that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Dawkins: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way... it is the blind watchmaker."

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, tells of his exasperation with colleagues who try to play both sides of the street: looking to science for justification of their religious convictions while evading the most difficult implications—the existence of a prime mover sophisticated enough to create and run the universe, "to say nothing of mind reading millions of humans simultaneously."

The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition - Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.

Unweaving the Rainbow - Why do poets and artists so often disparage science in their work? For that matter, why does so much scientific literature compare poorly with, say, the phone book? After struggling with questions like these for years, biologist Richard Dawkins has taken a wide-ranging view of the subjects of meaning and beauty in Unweaving the Rainbow, a deeply humanistic examination of science, mysticism, and human nature.

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Sixth Century B.C.: Cambrian Era of the Human Mind?

And it may be noted here how important a century this sixth century B.C. was in the history of humanity. For not only were these Greek philosophers beginning the research for clear ideas about this universe and man’s place in it and Isaiah carrying Jewish prophecy to its sublimest levels, but as we shall tell later Gautama Buddha was then teaching in India and Confucius and Lao Tse in China. From Athens to the Pacific the human mind was astir. - A Short History of the World, H. G. Wells.

Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan

The Cosmic Calender

"The most instructive way I know to express this cosmic chronology is to imagine the fifteen-billion-year lifetime of the universe (or at least its present incarnation since the Big Bang) compressed into the span of a single year. Then every billion years of Earth history would correspond to about twenty-four days of our cosmic year, and one second of that year to 475 real revolutions of the Earth about the sun. On pages 14 through 16 I present the cosmic chronology in three forms: a list of some representative pre-December dates; a calendar for the month of December; and a closer look at the late evening of New Year's Eve. On this scale, the events of our history books-even books that make significant efforts to deprovincialize the present-are so compressed that it is necessary to give a second-by-second recounting of the last seconds of the cosmic year. Even then, we find events listed as contemporary that we have been taught to consider as widely separated in time. In the history of life, an equally rich tapestry must have been woven in other periods-for example, between 10:02 and 10:03 on the morning of April 6th or September 16th. But we have detailed records only for the very end of the cosmic year.
The chronology corresponds to the best evidence now available. But some of it is rather shaky. No one would be astounded if, for example, it turns out that plants colonized the land in the Ordovician rather than the Silurian Period; or that segmented worms appeared earlier in the Precambrian Period than indicated. Also, in the chronology of the last ten seconds of the cosmic year, it was obviously impossible for me to include all significant events; I hope I may be excused for not having explicitly mentioned advances in art, music and literature or the historically significant American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions.


PRE-DECEMBER DATES

Big Bang ~January 1
Origin of the Milky Way Galaxy ~May 1
Origin of the solar system ~September 9
Formation of the Earth ~September 14
Origin of life on Earth ~ September 25
Formation of the oldest rocks known on Earth ~October 2
Date of oldest fossils (bacteria and blue-green algae} ~October 9
Invention of sex (by microorganisms) ~ November 1
Oldest fossil photosynthetic plants ~November 12
Eukaryotes (first cells with nuclei) flourish ~November 15

DECEMBER 31

Origin of Proconsul and Ramapithecus, probable ancestors of apes and men ~ 1:30 P.M.
First humans ~ 10:30 P.M.
Widespread use of stone tools ~11:00 P.M.
Domestication of fire by Peking man ~11:46 P.M.
Beginning of most recent glacial period ~11:56 P.M.
Seafarers settle Australia 11:58*.M.
Extensive cave painting in Europe ~11:59 P.M.
Invention of agriculture ~11:59:20 P.M.
Neolithic civilization; first cities ~11:59:35 P.M.
First dynasties in Sumer, Ebla and Egypt; development of astronomy ~11:59:50 P.M.
Invention of the alphabet; Akkadian Empire ~11:59:51 P.M.
Hammurabic legal codes in Babylon; Middle Kingdom in Egypt ~11:59:52 P.M.
Bronze metallurgy; Mycenaean culture; Trojan War; Olmec culture: invention of the compass ~11:59:53 P.M.
Iron metallurgy; First Assyrian Empire; Kingdom of Israel; founding of Carthage by Phoenicia ~11:59:54 P.M.
Asokan India; Ch'in Dynasty China; Periclean Athens; birth of Buddha ~11:59:55 P.M.
Euclidean geometry; Archimedean physics; Ptolemaic astronomy; Roman Empire; birth of Christ ~11:59:56 P.M.
Zero and decimals invented in Indian arithmetic; Rome falls; Moslem conquests- ~11:59:57 P.M.
Mayan civilization; Sung Dynasty China; Byzantine empire; Mongol invasion; Crusades ~11:59:58 P.M.
Renaissance in Europe; voyages of discovery from Europe and from Ming Dynasty China; emergence of the experimental method in science ~11:59:59 P.M.

Widespread development of science and technology; emergence of a global culture; acquisition of the means for self-destruction of the human species; The first steps in spacecraft planetary exploration and of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. ~ Now: first second of New Year's Day.

The construction of such tables and calendars is inevitably humbling. It is disconcerting to find that in such a cosmic year the Earth does not condense out of interstellar matter until early September; dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28th; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M. on New Year's Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31; and the time from the waning of the Middle Ages to the present occupies little more than one second. But because I have arranged it that way, the first cosmic year has just ended. And despite the insignificance of the instant we have so far occupied in cosmic time, it is clear that what happens on and near Earth at the beginning of the second cosmic year will depend very much on the scientific wisdom and the distinctly human sensitivity of mankind." Excerpt from Sagan's Dragon's of Eden.

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Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan


"But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilization, ever king and peasant, every young couple in love, every moth and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."


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"I drink therefore I am"

A detail from Raphael's "School of Athens" showing Plato and Aristotle
Philosopher's Song
Composer: Eric Idle Author: Eric Idle
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whisky every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And René Descartes was a drunken fart.
'I drink, therefore I am.'
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he's pissed.

*

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Cosmos - Carl Sagan



"The story of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution transforming matter and life into consciousness, of how science and civilization grew up together, and of the forces and individuals who helped shape modern science. A story told with Carl Sagan’s remarkable ability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting, based on his acclaimed television series."

Matyr of Science (an excerpt)

The last scientist who worked in the Library was a mathematician, astronomer, physicist and the head of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy - an extraordinary range of accomplishments for any individual in any age. Her name was Hypatia. She was born in Alexandria in 370. At a time when women had few options and were treated as property, Hypatia moved freely and unselfconsciously through traditional male domains. By all accounts she was a great beauty. She had many suitors but rejected all offers of marriage. The Alexandria of Hypatia’s time - by then long under Roman rule - was a city under grave strain. Slavery had sapped classical civilization of its vitality. The growing Christian Church was consolidating its power and attempting to eradicate pagan influence and culture. Hypatia stood at the epicenter of these mighty social forces. Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, despised her because of her close friendship with the Roman governor, and because she was a symbol of learning and science, which were largely identified by the early Church with paganism. In great personal danger, she continued to teach and publish, until, in the year 415, on her way to work she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril’s parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed with abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint.

*

Tantalising shadow of a fourth dimension:


(for details watch this clip from the documentary Cosmos)


Download:

http://rapidshare.com/files/81124248/carl_sagan_-_cosmos__english_.pdf.html

Assumption of an Assumption?


The Assumption of the Virgin by Poussin

"People like to say that faith and science can live together side by side. But I don't think they can. They're deeply opposed. Science is a discipline of investigation and constructive doubt, questing with logic, evidence and reason to draw conclusions. Faith by stark contrast demands a positive suspension of critical faculties.

Science proceeds by setting up hypotheses, ideas or models, and then attempts to disprove them. So a scientist is constantly asking questions, being skeptical. Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

Let me give you an example of this with the story of the Assumption of Mary. Catholics believe that Jesus's Mother Mary was so important she didn't physicially die. Instead her body shot off into heaven when her life came to a natural end. Ofcourse there's no evidence for this. Even the Bible says nothing about how Mary died.



Assumption of the Virgin by Correggio

The belief that her body was lifted into heaven emerged about six centuries after Jesus' time, made up like any tale and spread by word of mouth. But it became established tradition. It was handed down over centuries. And the odd thing about tradition is that the longer it's been going the more people seem to take it seriously. It's as though sheer passage of time makes something that was to begin with just made up turns it into what people believe as a fact.

By 1950 the tradition was so strongly established that it became official truth. It became authority. The Vatican decreed that Roman Catholics must now believe in the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin. Now, if you had asked Pope Pius XII how he knew it was truth he would've said you had to take his word for it because it had been revealed to him by God.

He [the pope] shut himself away and thought about it. He just thought private thoughts inside his own head and convinced himself, no doubt on tortuous theological grounds, that it just had to be so."

From Richard Dawkins' documentary Root of all Evil. Watch clip here.

Touching the fountain of knowledge


"She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away."

From Helen Keller's The Story of My Life. Read here.

Bewitched by Bernini



Detail from Rape of Proserpina by Italian Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 - 1680)

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Sacred Stones


Statue of the Virgin, Lourdes, France.


Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, Israel.


Ka'aba, Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

God's Posterior: A Divine Mooning

Creation of the Sun, Moon and Planets, by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.