YOU CAN KNOW A RELIGION BY ITS PRACTICIONERS

I know very little about Islam so I can only judge the religion by Muslims who I see around me and what kind of people they are. Do they act in a mature manner? Do they treat those around them with kindness and empathy? Would I like to invite them into my home? Would I fear them or be able to love and like them? How do they treat people who are not of their faith? Are they law-abiding citizens and do they respect the laws of their nation and faith? Are they peaceful and decent people? What kind of children do they raise? Do they raise up hoodlums or self-respecting, law-abiding children? One can tell a lot about a religion by the kind of young people it produces. Anyhow, using the yardstick I listed above, with all due respect and praise to Allah, I will not judge. I'll let the children of Allah speak for themselves. Far be it from me to judge them. Let them judge themselves by their actions. Praise be to Allah.










One thing I don't quite understand about the pictures. One of the marcher's signs shows a dislike of freedom. Why, then, do so many of them cover their faces? If they lived in a dictatorship, like they claim they want to live in, then that means they want to be beaten up and imprisoned for rioting in the streets. But they don't seem to want to be identified and maybe arrested or beaten up. How can they live in freedom and protest like free people do when they don't respect the laws and culture which has developed the ideas of freedom of speech and assembly? Something almost insane and irrational about their behavior. Ah, well—Allah be praised, these are His people and they represent His religion. They must judge for themselves what kind of people they are, what kind of people their religion has made them to be. We certainly can't judge them. It would be impolite to do so, eh?

Happy Belated New Year!!!!!!!!!! or RETURNING AFTER AWHILE

I finally finished The Singularity Is Near. If even one-hundredth-thousandth of what Kurzweil imagines happens, the future, not too distant, will be quite a place to live in for hundreds of years each.

I've begun reading, writing and having fun with haiku. I just hope I don't get too serious about it and ruin it for myself. My biggest mistake was going onto Craigslist and finding the forum, haiku hotel where people enter, read and judge each other's haiku (haiku is both singular and plural).

Here's a science haiku which few people appreciated at haiku hotel:

DNA computes
on off on off on off on
switch hitting the rose

These are two more normal ones:

for sale or for trade
one serviceable haiku—
missing a foot

snow turns to rain
my umbrella opens to
syncopated rhythms

My next science read is The Stuff Of Thought by Steven Pinker which I just shoved into my backpack to tote around Clark County with me. Today, I'll go over to the Luepke Center to play cribbage for a couple of hours. Also in my backpack is Walt Whitman's America, a book I've been carrying around for months, trying to finish. It's almost too intellectually detailed to be a fun read, but it was meant to be studied more than read for enjoyment. A man called Reynolds wrote it.

It's been awhile since I've made an entry here, but I'm not dead yet, so my mind keeps turning over these eternal [infernal] problems that mortal men have. Mark Twain knew well enough, as the following words show us.

A FEW INCONSISTENCIES

"...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell—mouths mercy, and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!" —Mark Twain