Reason's Greetings!

Happy Newtonmas!

Sir Isaac Newton, PRS

(25 December 1642 – 31 March 1727)

English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, and philosopher

One of the most influential scientists in history

Most importantly, Newton wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica wherein he described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from this system, he was the first to show that the motion of bodies on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws. The unifying and deterministic power of his laws was integral to the scientific revolution and the advancement of heliocentrism.

Among other scientific discoveries, Newton realised that the spectrum of colours observed when white light passes through a prism is inherent in the white light and not added by the prism (as Roger Bacon had claimed in the 13th century), and notably argued that light is composed of particles. He also developed a law of cooling.

Newton, often regarded as an "unrivalled mathematical genius", shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of integral and differential calculus, which he used to formulate his physical laws. He also made contributions to other areas of mathematics, for example proving the binomial theorem. The mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), said that "Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.

from Wikipedia

On Earth, Peace!

Brahmanism: This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.: Mahabharata 5:1517

Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.: Matthew 7:12

Islam: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother what which he desires for himself. Sunnah

Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.: Udana Varga 5:18

Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowmen. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.: Talmud, Shabbat 31:a

Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you.: Analects 15:23

Taoism: Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.: T’ai Shag Kan Ying P’ien

Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good: for itself. : Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5

Blessed Be!

Somethings require no comment

Thanks to doghouse riley at Bats Left, Throws Right for the image.

I just had to share.

OH GREAT, another just trust us from BushCo

from BBC:

Bush spying claim causes US storm

Bush's top aides say he did not break the law

Allegations that President George Bush authorised security agents to eavesdrop on people inside the US have caused a storm of protest.

The New York Times says the National Security Agency was allowed to spy on hundreds of people without warrants.

The NSA is normally barred from eavesdropping within the US.

Republican Senator John McCain called for an explanation, while Senator Arlen Specter, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, said he would investigate.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Mr Specter, also a Republican, adding that Senate hearings would be held early next year as "a very, very high priority".

The allegations coincided with a setback for the Bush administration, as the Senate rejected extensions to spying provisions in the Patriot Act. (more)

Robert Sheckley 1928-2005

from WikiPedia:

Robert Sheckley (born July 16, 1928, died December 9, 2005) is an American author. He first appeared in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s with stories and novels, fantasies that are often moralistic (in the sense that they have a moral), but more often absurdist and broadly comical

During a recent visit to Ukraine for the Ukrainian Sci-Fi Computer Week, an international event for science fiction writers, Sheckley fell ill and had to be hospitalized in Kiev on April 27, 2005 [1]. His condition was very serious for one week, but he appeared to be slowly recovering. The official web site of Robert Sheckley [2] ran a fundraising campaign to help cover Sheckley's treatment and his return to the USA. However, only a large donation from a Ukrainian businessman allowed him to pay the hospital bill and return home.

On November 20 he had surgery for a brain aneurysm, and on December 9, 2005 he died.

from Locus Online:

SF writer Robert Sheckley died today in Poughkeepsie, New York, at the age of 77. One of the field's great humorists, Sheckley was a prolific short story writer beginning in 1952 with titles including "Specialist", "Pilgrimage to Earth", "Warm", "The Prize of Peril", and "Seventh Victim", collected in volumes from Untouched by Human Hands (1954) to Is That What People Do? (1984) and a five-volume set of Collected Stories (1991). His first novel, Immortality, Inc. (1958), was followed by The Status Civilization (1960), Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Mindswap (1966), and several others. Sheckley served as fiction editor for Omni magazine from January 1980 through September 1981, and was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001. Sheckley was hospitalized earlier this year in Ukraine, then recovered sufficiently to return to the US, though he was unable to attend the World SF Convention in Glasgow where he'd been scheduled Guest of Honor.

from SFWA site:

*************************** Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) ***************************

Robert Sheckley passed away at Vassar Brothers Medical Center Poughkeepsie New York on Friday, December 9, 2005. He was 77.

He was first hospitalized while in the Ukraine in April of this year. He returned to the US in late May, and recovered in the summer. On November 20, he had surgery for a brain aneurysm at Mount Saini Hospital.

Robert Sheckley wrote scores of novels and hundreds of short stories. When Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America honored Sheckley as Author Emeritus in 2001, then President of SFWA Paul Levinson said that Sheckley's "writing helped our genre grow up by giving it an irresistible sense of humor."

Funeral information will be available later today. The arrangement is being handled by Simpson-Gaus Funeral Home of Kingston, New York.

Funeral Arrangements:

Arrangements by:

Simpson-Gaus Funeral Home
411 Albany Ave
Kingston, NY 12401
845-331-0631
http://www.simpsongaus.com/

Blog Against Racism Day.

from Rexroth's Daughter at the dharma bums, this sad and wondrous meditation on racism as the American disease. Read it and take a moment to remember those who gave their lives for freedom in this their own country. And weep for your country.

We Still Have a Dream

Chris over at Creek Running North has asked that bloggers blog against racism today. I was trying to come up with something that was current and meaningful, but kept tripping back to 1963: The year that changed my life. It wasn't the war in Vietnam that radicalized me when I was a kid in the 60s. It was the civil rights movement. There was something about the image of fellow human beings being attacked by police dogs or with fire hoses that seared the brain of this eleven year old. There were things that happened in 1963 and 1964 in this country that were so horrific, so inhumane, so abjectly cruel that it shook our country to its constitutional roots. How do I blog against racism today? I invoke the names Medgar Evers; Carol Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson; and Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. They paid for our racism with their lives

.

Medgar Evers was assassinated 6/12/63

(more)

chris at Creek Running North adds his own essay on a life lived in a society suffering from racism in the small and in the large things of life

Racism in Pinole

Pinole is a town under siege. An island of rusticated charm in a burgeoning megalopolis, our traditional way of life is under attack. We are hard up against the deepening crime of Richmond, the most dangerous city in California according to recent rankings. A short ride on the local bus, or in a (presumably stolen) car along Interstate 80, and the barbarian hordes are at our gates, had we gates, which we do not. So we are vulnerable.

Or so some of my neighbors would have it.

Two years ago we fought a development on church land immediately behind our house. Those neighbors who, like us, were adjacent to the project, thought mainly of engineering and traffic concerns. The plan would have shunted storm runoff into our property - likely destroying our foundation – and killed the live oak that overhangs our yard. Landslides would have threatened others' houses. Our next door neighbor would have had the project's traffic driving five feet from her bedroom window. We killed the project for those reasons. (more)

from Neil Shakespeare, this visual tribute to Fredrick Douglas:

Happy Hurlidays!

Time for my annual Xmas rant.

One from the vaults.
(Daily Blatt 12/17/04)
Yeah, a retread, but I figure if they can give us that damned Rudolph every year, I can recycle this.

I truly hate this time of year. All the forced jollity, the commercial bonhomme, the insipidness of the music, and the false once-a-year concern for 'Christian' values all combine to make me ill. I am filled with so much bile against my fellow humans, I fear for the health of my liver at Xmas time.

I am what I would describe as a secular Taoist, a observer of the lifestyle of Taoism without any belief in the supernatural aspects thereof. I haven't been a Christian for many years now. I left the faith in my teens after an argument over evolution with the minister of my family's church. Can't say that I've missed it much, nor do I spend much time looking over my shoulder for the iron fist of God out to smite my sinful ass.

But the dominant culture of these United States, being largely derived from a candy-ass bizarro version of Protestant Christianity, insists on inflicting this Xmas stuff on me.

If I have to hear the blasted Little Drummer Boy one more time while out shopping for a book I swear that I'll tear out my own eardrums. And who out there can deny that the playing of the Barking Dogs doing Jingle Bells should be a crime punishable under the Geneva Convention? Or that the wanton infliction of 24/7 Xmas music warrants the mass fire bombing of radio stations all across the country? And please, please, won't someone kill Troy before he can skreech again?

And what's with this insanity of every show on TV being some sort of Xmas special, beginning right after Halloween and continuing on for the next 8 weeks? What happened to Chaunukah, Yule, Solstice, and Kwanzaa? Suddenly everyone in in America is expected to be interested in the artificially fixed date of birth of the 'miraculously' conceived child of the God of some of the Americans. It is a puzzle.

I mean the idea of most of the folks on sitcoms commenting on (Ch)Xmas is obscene to begin with. Raymond, whom everyone DOES NOT love, by the way, is even more obnoxious when he remembers that this is the time of year that he's supposed to be nice and for some reason goes out of character and is. Right. Or the folks on Will and Grace will smirkingly remind us to be happy and Gay. It is to retch. Or the kids on South Park will ask Santa NOT to kill Kenny. All in the spirit of the season.

And how many times do we have to save bloody Bedford Falls, find the missing Rudolph, and listen to Bing Crosby dream of a White (preferably segregated) Christmas? Or, horror of horrors, why must we glimpse, even briefly, the spectacle of Jim Carrey in Grinch drag gnawing on every piece of scenery in sight? It's only a short while until we'll have Survivor: Arctic Ice Cap to suffer through as well, I predict.

We also have the all singing all dancing parade of the International Has-Been Pop-Stars Xmas Specials to live through. I daresay that most of them wouldn't know a good old fashioned Christian ethic if the damned thing bit them on the bum. Kenny G playing the love theme from Handel's Messiah. Andy (I Left My Talent in Sheboygan) Williams tottering across the stage and singing I'll Be Home for Christmas.

Now there's a threat that will keep me up nights.

Don't get me wrong. I do know people for whom Christmas is a source of genuine joy and religious wonder. To them I say good for you. Enjoy the season.

My former Mother-in-Law was one such person. It was great to see the happiness Christmas brought to her life. Her faith had not been buried by the excesses of the American Xmas celebration. Yes she bought gifts for everyone, often going to great lengths to find something special, but to her this was just a part of the observance of a day most holy.

Which makes the overall cultural Xmas even more offensive in my eyes.

Give me a good Yule log, a nice drum circle and a ritual sacrifice or two. Ah, that would be a Solstice gift to remember!

Till then thankfully, we have the antics of the killer Robot Santa on Futurama or there would be no hope at all during this season.

Cool Yule to you all.

Blessed Be!

Cheer Up!

Looks like Dubya's gonna have to hide out in the Bitterroots when it's all over. Even Texas is turning on him.

Happy Thanksgiving !

WOO-HOO!

62 lbs!

That's 62 lbs since January 5th this year.

So sayeth my Doc!

There'll be a lot less of me to me to kick around this New Year's Eve.

And he took me off of one of my bloodpressure meds as well.

Only a one pill a day wonder now.

WOO-HOO!

Poem of the Day

A Hole In The Floor by Richard Wilbur

for Rene Magritte

The carpenter's made a hole
In the parlor floor, and I'm standing
Staring down into it now
At four o'clock in the evening,
As Schliemann stood when his shovel
Knocked on the crowns of Troy.

A clean-cut sawdust sparkles
On the grey, shaggy laths,
And here is a cluster of shavings
>From the time when the floor was laid.
They are silvery-gold, the color
Of Hesperian apple-parings.

Kneeling, I look in under
Where the joists go into hiding.
A pure street, faintly littered
With bits and strokes of light,
Enters the long darkness
Where its parallels will meet.

The radiator-pipe
Rises in middle distance
Like a shuttered kiosk, standing
Where the only news is night.
Here's it's not painted green,
As it is in the visible world.

For God's sake, what am I after?
Some treasure, or tiny garden?
Or that untrodden place,
The house's very soul,
Where time has stored our footbeats
And the long skein of our voices?

Not these, but the buried strangeness
Which nourishes the known:
That spring from which the floor-lamp
Drinks now a wilder bloom,
Inflaming the damask love-seat
And the whole dangerous room.

Joyeux Anniversaire

François-Marie Arouet Voltaire
(1694 – 1778)
French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher.

René François Ghislain Magritte

(1898 – 1967)
Surrealist artist
Born in Lessines, Belgium.

What Kind of Humanist Are You?

Handholder

You go out of your way to build bridges with people of different views and beliefs and have quite a few religious friends. You believe in the essential goodness of people , which means you’re always looking for common ground even if that entails compromises. You would defend Salman Rushdie’s right to criticise Islam but you’re sorry he attacked it so viciously, just as you feel uncomfortable with some of the more outspoken and unkind views of religion in the pages of this magazine.


You prefer the inclusive approach of writers like Zadie Smith or the radical Christian values of Edward Said. Don’t fall into the same trap as super–naive Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge who declared it was okay for clerics like Yusuf al–Qaradawi to justify their monstrous prejudices as a legitimate interpretation of the Koran: a perfect example of how the will to understand can mean the sacrifice of fundamental principles. Sometimes, you just have to hold out for what you know is right even if it hurts someone’s feelings.

What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

Poem of the Day

Postscript by Seamus Heaney


And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open

Happy Birthday

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe
( 1887 – 1986)

American artist
One of the greatest modernist painters of the 20th century.

Cartoon of the Day

Poem of the Day

Old Man by Neil Young


Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life,
Twenty four and there’s so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things that don’t get lost.
Like a coin that won’t get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that’s true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn’t mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.

I’ve been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I’m all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that’s true.

Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I’m a lot like you were.

Happy Birthday

Neil Young
(1945- )

Canadian singer-songwriter
One of the most influential musicians of his generation.

Better to burn out than to rust away...

Nice little town you have here - would be a shame if something were to happen to it.

via PZ Myer's Pharyngula:

Thugs for God

Hey, gang, this quote from Pat Robertson is not a joke.

On today’s 700 Club, Rev. Pat Robertson took the opportunity to strongly rebuke voters in Dover, PA who removed from office school board members who supported teaching faith-based “intelligent design” and instead elected Democrats who opposed bringing up the possibility of a Creator in the school system’s science curriculum.

Rev. Robertson warned the people of Dover that God might forsake the town because of the vote.

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

I like it. The message is clear, it's not hard to figure it out…Christianity is like an extortion racket, see, and if you don't cough up, well, Lew here might have a little accident with your car, or your house, or your little girl. And then Mr Big wouldn't be able to do nothin' for you. He doesn't mean nothing by it, he likes you, see, but if you don't show him a little respect, you can't expect him to trouble himself with your worries, OK? Me and Vinnie'll be by tomorrow, and you will have that little donation ready.

Poem of the Day

Elegy by Joseph Brodsky

About a year has passed. I've returned to the place of the battle,
to its birds that have learned their unfolding of wings
from a subtle
lift of a surprised eyebrow, or perhaps from a razor blade
- wings, now the shade of early twilight, now of state
bad blood.

Now the place is abuzz with trading
in your ankles's remnants, bronzes
of sunburnt breastplates, dying laughter, bruises,
rumors of fresh reserves, memories of high treason,
laundered banners with imprints of the many
who since have risen.

All's overgrown with people. A ruin's a rather stubborn
architectural style. And the hearts's distinction
from a pitch-black cavern
isn't that great; not great enough to fear
that we may collide again like blind eggs somewhere.

At sunrise, when nobody stares at one's face, I often,
set out on foot to a monument cast in molten
lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth "commander
in chief." But it reads "in grief," or "in brief,"
or "in going under."