MOVIE REVIEW AND BIBLE SENDUP

Dear Editor,

Jeez! I can hardly wait not to see that heart warming comedy/horror flick, “Evan Almighty”, based on that mythological Bible story in which the Judeo-Christian-Islamic hypothetical superbeing murders the entire human race for daring to exercise its hypothetical free will. Hunh? A free will that can only be used to not use free will? Ah—these religious guys—they’re certainly some kidders, eh?

I must admit that the murder of everyone in the whole world whose willfulness disagrees with mine is an interesting concept, but, given my economic limitations and my powerlessness in the face of the immense numbers of humankind who disagree with one or another of my ideas, I guess I’ll just have to stick to my sturdy imagination for my titillation just as the writers of the Noah fiction and other Bible fantasies used theirs. I’m rather intrigued, however, by the fact that so many of my fellow beans would derive a kick out of the story of their own murder and the murder of all their family and friends. Could it be that just way too many of my fellow humans imagine themselves of an hypothetically superior morality? Free even of the sin of pride?

Laughingly Yours,

Geo

MORE ‘MISSING LINKS’ DISCOVERED or
FISH AS FINGER FOOD OUT ON A LIMB

I remember when this first came out about a year ago, and, now, the discovery is bearing more detail, but since almost all Creationists are “ignorant”, they, of course, will “ignore” the facts. You see, all Creationists aren’t unintelligent, they just have a tremendous capacity for ignoring the facts.


[SNIP]
[A] study, published in the journal Nature, follows the recent discovery of a fossil described as showing the "missing link" between fins and limbs.

In 2004, the fossilised remains of the Tiktaalik roseae revealed an animal with fins that were equipped for a life in the water but also for support on land.

The crocodile-like creature, which lived about 380 million years ago, was said to "blur the distinctions" between land- and water-dwelling animals.
[PASTE]



PS: LIVING TO A WISE OLD AGE HAS SOME DRAWBACKS
BESIDES BECOMING A PRETENTIOUS BORE
WHOSE “I TOLD YOU SO’S” MAKE CERTAIN FUNDAMENTALISTS SICK

I’ve been sick awhile and missed an entry or two and, because of travel, might miss a few more.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING WAY OF TWISTING
YOUR BRAIN
TO LOOK AT HUMAN CULTURE

I’m ashamed but. . . this is not my idea. It’s something I scribbled down on a yellow pad and forgot where it comes from. (Another drawback of older age.) But imagine human beings linked together into a vast creature, much like colonies of bees and ants are linked to their groups, by language. Think how ideas travel around the globe, nearly instantaneously now, from brain to brain, giving us direction and purpose. This echoes the meme idea that I’ve mentioned before, but instead of looking at a language meme as a germ, traveling through the human colony, it’s a more macrocosmic view, looking down on the globe as a huge termite hill. We are signaling by language as bees and ants in their colonies signal each other through other means.

DOCTOR WHO DUCKS

I came across a doctor's card here in Vancouver. It says, "We treat. God Heals." I called and asked them if they charged less than doctors who do the complete job themselves. No such luck. They told me to go to a faith healer, but I soon realized that would probably cost me more.

A VERY MOVING POSSIBILITY

The following is from p. 206 of Dancing Wu Li Masters. I can’t guarantee that the info contained in them is not already outdated. The book is 20 years old, and that’s a long time in the study of the Cosmos.

[SLASH]
For example, if black holes are as we have speculated them to be, whatever disappears into them reappears somewhere. Is it possible, therefore, that there are black holes in other universes which are sucking matter from those universes into our universe? This is a seriously considered possibility. There are objects in our universe that appear to be the reverse of black holes. They are called white holes (of course). These objects are quasi-stellar radio sources, or quasars for short.

Quasars are extraordinarily intense energy sources. Most of them are only several times the diameter of our solar system, yet they emit more energy than an entire galaxy of over l50 billion stars! Some astronomers believe that quasars are the most distant objects ever detected, yet their incredible brightness allows us to see them clearly.

The relationship between black holes and quasars is purely speculation, but the speculation is mind-boggling. For example, some physicists speculate that black holes swallow up matter from one universe and pump it either into another universe or into another part and time of the same universe. The "output" side of a black hole, according to this hypothesis, is a quasar. If this speculation is correct, then our universe is being sucked into its many black holes, only to reappear in other universes, while other universes are being pumped into our own universe, which is being sucked through black holes and into other universes again. The process goes on and on, feeding on itself, another beginningless, endless, endless, beginningless dance.
[STITCH]

As I read those paragraphs I feel the poetry of the Cosmos and sense the energy around me. It’s a very interesting imaginative leap which only the imagination, aided by the limbic system, can do. This is no place for the logical mind. I wrote the following poem many years ago when my fears took up a bigger part of my psyche than currently, but it expresses for me something of the wonder and fear of treading on thin ice in new territory.


















SKATING THIN ICE

Stepping from the landlocked trees to ice,
On thin, steel blades, the skater leaves
His two sure feet and sails;
He skims the grey-smooth ice on out

To places where the firmness softens and water's deep.
There, black holes gape and bubbles rise
Through thick, black water like thoughts of gods.
That far out on flying edges,

The skater's body quails with soaring fear,
And shore fires cast a fitful light
On small musings that freeze like cubes of ice;
That far out

The rugged shore and threadbare trees
Seem dreams that edge a frozen universe
Where bubble thoughts drift up through thick
Black air on spumes of mist to burst away,
And water's deep.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO BOSTON. . .

A distinguished vulture was boarding an American airlines flight to Boston, carrying a dead raccoon under one wing and a dead skunk under the other. A young flight attendant rushed up to stop him: "I'm sorry, sir, but you're allowed only one carrion."

IN THE SAME SPIRIT

A long long long time ago, I went to one of those new age conventions that are annually held in Spokane and other cities around the nation. For the fun of it, I had a photo taken of my aura which I am sharing with you today. Yes, that’s me, under the brilliant halo.

As the woman stared into my eyes and gave me the following interpretations, I managed to keep a straight face, though I knew that a skeptical smile was plastered on my lips even as I tried to be respectful of what she was telling me:

COLOR
 INTERPRETATIONS

The following is a guideline for interpreting the meaning of the colors in your energy field:

BLUE: Blue in your energy field indicates high certainty or a lot of creativity. In most cases, this represents that the individual's creative channels are clear.

WHITE: This individual is a highly evolved being who has the ability to focus or concentrate his/her energy in or around the body. [Highly evolved? I can't argue with that, but could this also mean I am selfish?]

(You will note, however, dear reader, that no matter how silly I felt the entire exercise to be, I have managed to keep the photo and the interpretations about my person ever since—and that was at least 15 or more years ago.)

I GUESS I DID A BAD THING, YOU BETCHA

Is this an adult lawyer or a bad little Christian girl caught with her panties down? Look at her expression on the right. Hasn’t she just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar—O, dear, yes, humn? On the left, she’s just been told that she’s a cute little girl and not to fear, so she toys with her hair and offers a winning smile. This woman is so full of guile and deceit, I can’t tell you! But how else is a good Christian woman, who should be home with the kids making meals for her hubby, supposed to act when out in the big world, beguiling a panel of wooden men (i.e. surrogate husbands)? Her expressions speak a thousand words. I wouldn’t trust her to be my lawyer in a serious case, but I’d trust her to lie for me if she were my secretary or underling, just like the young secretary who lied for Ollie North—remember him—who, by the way, is shown here swearing to those lies himself.

THE MAN AND THE SCAM

These passages are the last I have taken from Holy Blood, Holy Grail to titillate your interest in, perhaps, reading the entire book. It was from this book that the book, The DaVinci Code, was made and upon that book, the movie was made. The following snippet briefly outlines how the Christian “message” and the man, Jesus, became separate. You have to read the entire book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, to understand some the references which are included in these paragraphs.

[SNIP]
We were well aware, of course, that our scenario did not concur with established Christian teachings. But the more we researched, the more apparent it became that those teachings, as they have been passed down through the centuries, represent only a highly selective compilation of fragments subjected to stringent expurgation and revision. The New Testament, in other words, offers a portrait of Jesus and his age that conforms to the needs of certain vested interests—of certain groups and individuals who had, and to a significant degree still have, an important stake in the matter. And anything that might compromise or embarrass these interests—like the "secret" Gospel of Mark, for example—has been duly excised. So much has been excised, as a matter of fact, that a sort of vacuum has been created. In this vacuum speculation becomes both justified and necessary.

If Jesus was a legitimate claimant to the throne, it is probable that he was supported, at least initially, by a relatively small percentage of the populace—his immediate family from Galilee, certain other members of his own aristocratic social class, and a few strategically placed representatives in Judaea and the capital city of Jerusalem. Such a following, albeit distinguished, would hardly have been sufficient to ensure the realization of his objectives—the success of his bid for the throne. In consequence he would have been obliged to recruit a more substantial following from other classes—in the same way that Bonnie Prince Charlie, to pursue a previous analogy, did in 1745.

How does one recruit a sizable following? Obviously by promulgating a message calculated to enlist their allegiance and support. Such a message need not necessarily have been as cynical as those associated with modern politics. On the contrary, it may have been promulgated in perfectly good faith, with thoroughly noble and burning idealism, But despite its distinctly religious orientation, its primary objective would have been the same as those of modern politics—to ensure the adherence of the populace. Jesus promulgated a message that attempted to do just that—to offer hope to the downtrodden, the afflicted, the disenfranchised, the oppressed. In short, it was a message with a promise, If the modern reader overcomes his prejudices and preconceptions on the matter, he will discern a mechanism extraordinarily akin to that visible everywhere in the world today—a mechanism whereby people are, and always have been, united in the name of a common cause and welded into an instrument for the overthrow of a despotic regime. The point is that Jesus' message was both ethical and political. It was directed to a particular segment of the populace in accordance with political considerations. For it would only have been among the oppressed, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, and the afflicted that he could have hoped to recruit a sizable following. The Sadducees, who had come to terms with the Roman occupation, would have been as loath as all the Sadducees throughout history to part with what they possessed, or to risk their security and stability.

Jesus' message, as it appears in the Gospels, is neither wholly new nor wholly unique. It is probable that he himself was a Pharisee, and his teachings contain a number of elements of Pharisaic doctrine. As the Dead Sea Scrolls attest, they also contain a number of important aspects of Essene thought. But if the message, as such, was not entirely original, the means of transmitting it probably was. Jesus himself was undoubtedly an immensely charismatic individual. He may well have had an aptitude for healing and other such "miracles." He certainly possessed a gift for communicating his ideas by means of evocative and vivid parables—which did not require any sophisticated training in his audience, but were accessible, in some sense, to the populace at large. Moreover, unlike his Essene precursors, Jesus was not obliged to confine himself to forecasting the advent of a Messiah. He could claim to be that Messiah, And this, quite naturally, would have imparted a much greater authority and credibility to his words.

It is clear that by the time of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem Jesus had recruited a following. But this following would have been composed of two quite distinct elements—whose interests were not precisely the same. On the one hand, there would have been a small nucleus of "initiates"—immediate family, other members of the nobility, wealthy and influential supporters, whose primary objective was to see their candidate installed on the throne. On the other hand, there would have been a much larger entourage of "common people"—the "rank and file" of the movement, whose primary objective was to see the message, and the promise it contained, fulfilled. It is important to recognize the distinction between these two factions. Their political objective—to establish Jesus on the throne-would have been the same. But their motivations would have been essentially different.

When the enterprise failed, as it obviously did, the uneasy alliance between these two factions—"adherents of the message" and adherents of the family—would seem to have collapsed. Confronted by debacle and the threat of imminent annihilation, the family would have placed a priority on the single factor that, from time immemorial, has been of paramount importance to noble and royal families—preservation of the bloodline at all costs, if necessary in exile. For the "adherents of the message," however, the family's future would have become irrelevant; for them survival of the bloodline would have been of secondary consequence. Their primary objective would have been perpetuation and dissemination of the message.

Christianity, as it evolves through its early centuries and eventually comes down to us today, is a product of the "adherents of message." The course of its spread and development has been too widely charted by other scholars to necessitate much attention here. Suffice it to say that with Saint Paul "the message" had already begun to assume a crystallized and definitive form, and this form became the basis on which the whole theological edifice of Christianity was erected. By the time the Gospels were composed, the basic tenets of the new religion were virtually complete.

The new religion was oriented primarily toward a Roman or Romanized audience. Thus, the role of Rome in Jesus' death was, by necessity, whitewashed, and guilt was transferred to the Jews. But this was not the only liberty taken with events to render them palatable to the Roman world. For the Roman world was accustomed to defying its rulers, and Caesar had already been officially instated as a god. In order to compete, Jesus-whom nobody had previously deemed divine—had to be deified as well. In Paul’s hands he was.
[PASTE]

BLINDSIGHT





"A
Creationist
studies
the
fossil
evidence."














"Then
he
studies
the
fossil
evidence."






THE MAKEUP OF 60 PERCENT

Several days ago, I heard something on TV that still jolts me. Seems that 60% of Americans still believe the Earth was created in 6 days. Well—I came across the following information in a collection of writings by John Updike and it goes a long way toward explaining the intelligence of that 60%. These statistics were part of an address he gave to MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science on its 25th anniversary in 1988.

“Just a few days ago, perhaps you saw, as I did, the item in the Boston Globe which revealed that twenty-one percent of adult Americans, according to a telephone poll, think the sun goes around the earth instead of the other way around, and seven more percent answered that they were undecided. Of the seventy-two percent who answered that the earth does orbit the sun, seventeen percent said that it takes one day, two percent one month, and nine percent could not guess at any time span.”

Let's see, that adds up to: 21 + 7 + 17 + 2 + 9 = 56 That's nearly 60% that don't understand the motions of our own solar system. Leaves 4% unexplained.

You see—if our American fundamentalists don’t even know the simple basics of the motions of their own planetary system, how can we expect them to understand evolution? I know it’s cold comfort, but at least we can be certain about the average Christian’s ignorance and hope that in the millennia to come, they’ll be brought to their senses, but by that time, most of the rest of us will have accepted that we’re actually genetic robots with little or no freedom. Wait'll they have to swallow that information! That'll take another millennium or two.

AN ATHEIST’S MEDITATION

Recently, I’ve been rereading Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. I first read it a long time ago when I was failing to complete my first attempt at graduate school in Carbondale, Illinois. And of that whole book of which my memories are quite fond, I came across this brief piece of dialogue that struck me as true for myself and others at different times of our lives. Doc Reefy tells George Willard’s dying mother, “I had come to the time in my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented gods and prayed to them. I did not say my prayers in words nor did I kneel down but sat perfectly still in my chair.” Since I know for a fact that all gods that people believe in are made up, Doc Reefy’s words are quite powerful.

Well, there are no longer gods in my life to sit still in a chair for, but I’m learning, at age 69, how to sit still on a park bench (or in my living room at home) and silently open myself in a sensible and wonderful way, and, some days, down by the Columbia River now, I can so clear my mind of all gods and so inhabit my body that I become blissful and want to stand and reel, twirling down the street with my face tilted to the sun. And, though I don’t actually reel down the street, I stand and walk with squinted eyes, or sometimes closed when no one is approaching to run into, and I find myself in a state of bliss when I get into these meditative states of mind, and it’s a very wonderful sense of being alive that rushes in to fill me up and every animate and inanimate thing around me verges on the mystical. Who needs gods who are mere copies of mortals with all a mortal’s failings?

GENETIC TESTING—MAKING SPACE FOR IT

The trip to Mars and back is taxing NASA’s imagination. Below you’ll find a few snippets of info from a “NASA document on crew health” that I clipped from a news article released by the Associated Press who obtained it, using the freedom of information act that liberals passed way back when in the Vietnam era. Thank you, AP, for your diligence in obtaining the info and thank you, liberals, for putting such a law in place so that the AP can use it.

The trip to Mars and back will take three long years. Being still a healthy, normally-functioning male animal, one of the two items that really pricked up my ears (pardon the pun) was sex—what’ll a mixed sex crew do about that ancient temptation or, at least, for privacy for masturbatory urges? Read on MacDuff:

[SNIP]
How do you get rid of the body of a dead astronaut on a three-year mission to Mars and back.
When should the plug be pulled on a critically ill astronaut who is using up precious oxygen and endangering the rest of the crew? Should NASA employ DNA testing to weed out astronauts who might get a disease on a long flight?

Sex is not mentioned in the document and has long been almost a taboo topic at NASA. Williams said the question of sex in space is not a matter of crew health but a behavioral issue that will have to be taken up by others at NASA.

Mars-bound astronauts will not always be able to rely on instructions from Mission Control, since it would take nearly a half-hour for a question to be asked and an answer to come back via radio.

NASA will consider whether astronauts must undergo preventive surgery, such as an appendectomy, to head off medical emergencies during a mission, and whether astronauts should be required to sign living wills with end-of-life instructions.

Already, NASA is considering genetic screening in choosing crews on the long-duration missions. That is now prohibited.
[PASTE]

The one truly most interesting issue NASA is thinking about, as far as the human race is concerned, is genetic testing to weed out potential health problems. Here’s the elephant nose under the circus tent. Not that I oppose genetic testing. I’m semi for it. I don’t believe I would have minded much had I been aborted in my first trimester if it turned out that I had a 90% chance of becoming a serial killer or of having MS. It’s what would have happened in my later years had I survived that would be causing me the most travail now.

I know that what I’ve just said will cause great anguish to serial killers and people with serious health problems and those that love them, but the excruciating anguish is because these genetic defects survived the first trimester. Once one of us human animals is conscious, of course the whole damn debate takes on different dimensions and different sensibilities, and I know that and I hope so do you. Some day, if we survive overpopulation, we’ll need to discuss these issues like reasonably reasonable adults. I doubt that most of the human species is up to that discussion yet. I’ll long ago have returned to the same state of being as that of an aborted fetus by that time.

IT DON’T MATTER—MUCH—SO JUST BUDDHA OUT

From pages 199-200 of Dancing Wu Li Masters:

[RIP AND TEAR]
We have said, up to now, that matter distorts, or causes a curvature of, the space-time continuum in its vicinity. According to Einstein’s ultimate vision, which he never "proved" (demonstrated mathematically), a piece of matter is a curvature of the space-time continuum! In other words, according to Einstein's ultimate vision, there are no such things as "gravitational fields" and "masses". They are only mental creations. No such things exist in the real world. There is no such things as "gravity"—gravity is the equivalent of acceleration, which is motion. There is no such thing as "matter"—matter is a curvature of the space-time continuum. There is not even such a thing as "energy"—energy equals mass and mass is space-time curvature.

What we considered to be a planet with its own gravitational field moving around the sun in an orbit created by the gravitational attraction (force) of the sun is actually a pronounced curvature of the space-time continuum finding its easiest path through the space-time continuum in the vicinity of a very pronounced curvature of the space-time continuum.

There is nothing but space-time and motion and they, in effect, are the same thing. Here is an exquisite presentation, in completely western terms, of the most fundamental aspect of Taoist and Buddhist philosophies.
[GLUE AND TAPE]

OK—ain’t that fun?! Hope that—if you haven’t already—you’ll read the book. It’s better than the movie—“What The Fuck Do We Know?”—that was encouraged by the book. For the prudish among us, substitute “bleep” for “fuck”. There, does that help?

SPEAKING OF DISTORTIONS OF MATTER, MEET THE SUPREMES

What I see in this picture are three smug faces of men who have just farted in a room full of women, the poor and the least powerful among us. Just look at their expressions! Don’t we frequently see the same expression on Bush’s weasel face? Though they won’t say it aloud, these men are thinking as they release their little fart bubbles, “Let them eat cake.”

These fops are the stinking lackeys of the Bushes of the world, and, now, whatever the Dems try to do to increase the welfare of the poor, to strengthen the middleclass and empower the unions of America, these farts will cut them back down to size—the size which will allow the rich, through these dunderheaded bamboozlers, to disenfranchise most Americans for at least the next 50 years. PS: The photo's clipped from Newsweek magazine.

ANOTHER FORM OF DEADLY SUPERSTITION

[SNIPHERE]
Boy Who Fought Cancer Treatment Dies

CANTON, Ohio (AP) - An 11-year-old boy whose parents won court approval to treat their son's leukemia with an unconventional method has died after five years of fighting the cancer. Noah Maxin died Thursday at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, said Rinda Schelat of Reed Funeral Home in Canton.

Noah's parents, Greg and Theresa Maxin, won the right in 2002 to abandon chemotherapy treatment for their then-7-year-old son. County child welfare officials had accused the couple of neglect after the Maxins told Akron Children's Hospital they were pulling Noah out of chemotherapy three months into a 3 1/2-year treatment plan.

The couple said they were concerned about the long-term effects chemotherapy would have on Noah, whose cancer had gone into remission. After researching alternative treatments, they found a doctor specializing in holistic medicine who recommended a healthier diet along with supplements to boost Noah's immune system.

The parents put him back on chemotherapy after the cancer returned four months later.
[PASTEHERE]

SO THESE FLAMINGOS CHOSE TO BE GAY?

[SLASH]
A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organization said Monday.

Carlos and Fernando had been desperate to start a family, even chasing other flamingos from their nests to take over their eggs at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge near Bristol.
[PASTE]

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM DIARRHEA BLUES

So Mertie and I went to the Portland Art Museum and we paid and entered, then we looked at the Asian section first—horses, then horses, and, of course, horses, bronze and ceramic, and bowls and pitchers, bronze and ceramic (BCE, CE) and some more bowls, then some horses—our feet and ankles and balls of our feet already going numb on the hard floors, eyes skimming over the ink drawings of plum blossoms, and we skipped so much and went down under into the Morris (?) Building and rising up to the Post 60’s and Impressionism and Expressionism, Minimalism and the photography section, and here’s a name and there’s a name, and, with my diarrhea, several trips back down and into the restrooms on the bottom floor between the two buildings by the piled up polished sculpture, several trips, and, then, back up to find Mertie and sliding past the works and the names and getting lost from one another and only a few names making a dent, right, like Monet and Gauguin, and Lautrec, and Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Morris, Warhol—of course—and colors blending into colors and so tired, the feet and ankles, and, at 69, it’s not so easy looking at art anymore, specially an entire museum full of the stuff—like a basketball player—it’s the museum-goers legs that go first—until our heads ached as much as our feet and the big elevators were really exciting, big enough to raise and lower large pieces of art so that we felt like little pieces of art forgotten in the corner of the elevator until, finally we have enough, too much, too much, and can’t look at another piece of art ‘cause it’s too sweet, it’s just too damned much, too much for the eye and, so, out quickly, not seeing everything, can’t see everything, in one trip, and how great the slight drizzle rain fell on us outside, like soothing balm of cure for the art museum blues. The diarrhea ending—I may be done with art museums for the rest of my life.