Star Trek, Prejudice & Sarajevo Syndrome

     In the Star Trek universe there was no prejudice.  There were blacks, Chinese, Scots, and a couple of white dudes.  There were no religions unless they were weird alien religions like Spock's weird sex fiend religion.  All the nations were peaceful and everyone worked together.

     We all want to live in a Star Trek universe.  We are raising kids in America who can live in that world.  When I was growing up, I never heard any racial, religious, or nation-of-origin slurs.  The first time I heard anyone talk like that was when I watched "All In The Family".  I am still shocked at the anti-semitism of people like Mel Gibson when it erupts from under the surface of a seeming well adjusted person.    But how do we raise a nation of children who don't hate, in a world of people who do?  It seems a disservice to our children to raise them to believe they are living in a Star Trek universe when there are truly horrific racial and religious prejudices.

   I just read the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a Jewish prayer book, that has been saved over its life by a Catholic priest, and two Muslims.  First it was saved from burning by a Catholic priest in Venice.  In Sarajevo, it was saved, by Muslims, during the second world war from the Nazis and during the Bosnian War from bombing.  This story is always told as an uplifting tale of people working together to save something beautiful even when the book is from a faith that they disagree with. The thing that is missing from this tale are the terrible acts which forced these people to save the book.  These great acts of courage would not be necessary in an atmosphere of peace, prosperity and lack of prejudice.  The forces that caused these acts of courage were forces of unimaginable horror.

      The first recorded salvation of the book was in Venice.  The book was saved from burning by a Catholic priest during the burning of Jewish holy books.  Why was it saved? Who knows?  But we know what it was saved from - hate and prejudice.

     The book was saved by a Muslim museum curator in Sarajevo during WWII.  The Nazis were burning Jewish holy books and the Nazi general who came for the book was told the book had already been picked up by another German officer.  Brave, yes, ecumenical, yes, but the reason he had to be brave was the genocidal hate toward all things Jewish.

    During the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina another Muslim museum curator had to risk his life to save the book.  The Serbs had placed a siege around Sarajevo and proceeded to bomb the capital, killing tens of thousands and reducing the city to Medieval sanitary standards. The city was being bombed everyday and no building was spared including the National Museum where the book was held.  This modern war was the equivalent in hate motivated massacres and atrocities to WWII, albeit in microcosm.  Both sides strived to cleanse their areas of ethnic and religious minorities.  As the war came to a close these efforts intensified.

     Sarajevo was the home of the 1984 Olympics and the people of Sarajevo felt that they had a new type of city, one where Jews, Christian, and Muslims could live in peace forever.  They were horribly wrong. Neighbors turned against neighbor.  Young snipers targeted and killed school mates.  This, Sarajevo Syndrome, the belief that this time it can't happen here, to us, because we are civilized, has proved to be wrong time and time again.

     So how do we raise Star Trek kids in a Sarajevo world?  Creating a world without prejudice and hate requires the right kind of people to fulfill the vision.  Do we inoculate our children to know there is hate when we really don't want them to know it?  Are we really what is on the surface or is there a world of hate just bubbling beneath ready to break free?

Abortion and cognitive dissonance

     On Nov 3rd, right after the Republican big win in the mid-term elections, a group of women started tweeting to an #ihadanabortion hash tag.  The purpose was to publicly come out about their abortions and encourage other women to do the same.  Apparently women who have had an abortion are very stupid about how the laws on abortion work because they didn't know that it is extremely unlikely to overturn a Supreme Court ruling just because one house in congress switches to the Republicans.  They didn't know that even if it was overturned, the state laws would then take precedence if Roe V. Wade is overturned.   Seventeen states have legal abortion,  most of them on the heavily populated east and west coasts.

    

Apologetica - Penn Jillette

     Penn Jilette gave his reasons why he is an atheist on Redeye (Nov 9, 2010).  He started out by saying that he just doesn't believe. Fair enough. Belief in God requires faith and you have it or you don't.    But, then, he went on to give really bad reasons why he is an Atheist. 

      He doesn't believe because his mother suffered when she was dying and he can't believe in a God who lets people suffer.  I couldn't believe in a God who deliberately makes people suffer either.  But I don't believe in that God.  I believe in a God who made a world that requires suffering for the world to work.  We eat animals to live and that requires suffering of the animals.  In order for life to happen, death also has to happen.  Death requires the breaking down of our body.  God doesn't make suffering happen because he likes it.  Suffering happens as the result of the normal and natural process of dying.  Pain is required so that we know when our bodies are broken or to keep us from doing things that will hurt our bodies.  This same protective force also creates suffering.  I wish I could fly but gravity prevents this from happening and makes it hurt when I fall down.  Gravity also keeps the Earth revolving around the Sun.  In order for life to happen on Earth, I can't fly: In order for my body to be protected from injury, I must suffer pain when it breaks down.  God created a world that worked, there are some bad things that happen as a result. 

     God could make all deaths painless and beautiful, negating the natural and normal processes.  Perhaps you would like God to make us all get hit by the No.  5 bus or freeze to death ( a very peaceful death )?  That would be nice but that would negate the need for faith.  If, suddenly, at the end of life, all normal natural processes were suddenly suspended, wouldn't everyone believe in God? Isn't that really the whole deal with God: belief?  How can we have free will to love God,  if God uses a sledge hammer at the end of life to change all we know about the world?

    Penn also brings out the old "there is not enough evidence" argument.  This is the weakest of all arguments of atheism.  All of us goes through life believing very important things with no evidence at all.  Penn wants proof on the very thing which absolutely requires faith.  How many of us have had a DNA test to know for sure if our parents or siblings are actually our parents or siblings.  Wouldn't you want to know if your children are your children?  Yet, almost no one actually requires proof. Almost everything important we believe in life can be proved, yet I am sure that Penn does not go out of his way to actually get that proof.  Why the different standard for God?  He requires proof of God because he simply doesn't believe it.  Why does he have to muddy the waters with this pseudo intellectual argument?  So, Penn, until you start requiring proof of everything you believe, can you leave God out of it?

     Penn then says that if we need a God then we don't have enough love on earth.  Wow, I don't know about you but I don't really feel a lot of love from God everyday.  I don't know a lot of believers who do. Anybody read the Book of Job?    The love Penn says he received from his parents, I see as the love of God, channeled through his parents.  Atheists always believe we can live in this world with morality alone, not understanding how unloving and cruel the world is without the Judeo/Christian God.  Can Penn name one civilization he would have wanted to live in as a normal, average person with a Pagan or even Athiest world view?  I can't.  Not today and certainly not in the past.  We Love because we believe.  Penn is living off the leavings of a believing Judeo/Christian people.

    Penn, if you don't believe, then don't.  But these are weak arguments for atheism.

Link to Penn Jillette's comments here. http://fxn.ws/aqBJVy

Bill Clinton and Ms. O'D get naked and no sex happened

     No one really has any idea what happened when the Lady Bug was flitting from flower to flower but if the story is true then Christine O'Donnel has some very bizarre notions of what sexual abstinence is.  She went to a man's apartment, went out drinking with him and then wound up in his apartment with her tongue down his throat and in his bed naked.  At some point she must have known where this was leading.  She waited until she was naked and in bed to bring up her sexual ethics.  This seems like bad planning but mostly poor thinking.   I have no issue with adults engaging in adult activity but I do have a problem with intellectual dishonesty.  This intellectual dishonesty in sexual ethics spans from Bill Clinton who "did not have sex with that woman" to "born again virgins" to teens who are redefining sex.


     The point of sexual abstinence is to protect the heart not the hymen.  Sexual promiscuity leads to building walls around your heart to protect yourself from rejection. Most woman and men, (I want to believe that ) still equate sex and intimacy.  I heard someone say that men form relationships to have sex and women have sex to form relationships.  Abstinence is to protect our ability to form relationships, intimate relationships, by keeping us from forming relationships based on shallow pretenses.

     I am not suggesting that this is true of everyone or that it is even desirable for everyone,  but the "born again virgin" crowd claims that it is.   is to being rejected again and again generates suspicion of new potential partners.  Keeping your heart free to love enables the building of long term relationships.   Deciding to go to bed with someone she barely knew had long term consequences that must have affected how she relates to men over the long term.  She had to put up with this guy she woke up with while dating his roommate for a year.  That is awkward even with out the tell-all blog post.

  I have problems with a woman claiming to be a born again virgin, and then engaging in sexual activity. It is as if she is saying: I will put anything, anywhere but not a penis in my vagina.  What?  Why is that sexual abstinence?  Being a virgin implies some sort of inexperience and innocents.  I am sure there are plenty of dewy eyed, inexperienced 40 year old virgins out there, but she does not appear to be one of them.

     If she wanted a long term relationship that involved marriage and children, and I am assuming she did if she is a Christian, then why stay in a relationship for a year without a commitment of marriage?  Was there no sexual activity for the entire year of any kind or was it the no "p in the v" but anything else goes?  If it was every thing else goes then she was engaged in a sexual relationship, not an abstinent one, and she is not a born again anything.

    When Bill Clinton said he "did not have sex with that women", he was engaging in the same sort of intelectual dishonesty as Ms. O'D.  Believing that we can redefine sex and therefore make it is so adultery didn't happen or that you can claim to be a virgin leads to moral dilemmas.  Real people get hurt 


If it wasn't sex, then what was it,  a very intimate massage?

     More and more teens are redefining sex as only vaginal sex and choosing to engage in risky oral sex; risky for their hearts and bodies. Oral sex is still sex and girls and boys can be used and abused emotionally to perform for their partners.  Oral sex is risky physically because syphilis and gonorrhea are easily transmitted orally.  Redefining sex as only vaginal sex allows vulnerable people to be manipulated into activities they don't want because it is not "sex" and therefore o.k

     I knew a guy in college who said that if a girl was dancing around naked on his bed and she said "No" or "Stop" then it was his duty as a man and a gentleman to stop.  I always appreciated that and was glad there are men like that around.  I think there are a lot more of them than we think and hear about.

http://usat.ly/97jWX5

Why I don't have a Significant other

The Drake equation of finding intelligent life in the Universe can also calculate the probability of finding an acceptable mate.

So using the link below I plugged in the numbers.
the number of potential men in Utah County, Utah.  545,307
R - the rate of population formation - 5.3%
Fm - fraction who are men - 49.7%
Fu - fraction living in Utah County = 1 ( included in population above)
Fa - age appropriate - years from 40 - 55 (too wide?) 5%
Fu - Education level = 1 (I don't care)
Fb - physically attractive = I am kind of picky I guess and this is fairly important to me.  I would say 1 in 10 men are attractive to me. 10%
L = 47 years old

G= 545307 *.053*.497*.05*.1  = 71 total!! ( see correction below, it is really 27!)

That is a  .013% probability that any person I meet would be a potential mate.  Good luck to me.

Correction:  I forgot to include that they must be single!   40% of males are single in the US.  I assume the rate is the same in Utah County.   This changes the total to 27 total people out of 545,307 who could be potential mates.  Can you all call me to arrange an interview?

Use the link below to find the equation with explanations.:  http://bit.ly/ay0ou4

Brett Favre - My Buddha with a Football - also Brats

I heard that Randy Moss was traded back to the Vikings today which made me think of my time in Wisconsin during the prime Brett Favre/Packer days.  I lived there when they went to the Super Bowl twice.  The Vikings were the Packer's nemesis.  Now, Brett is QB and Randy will be catching the ball... Sweet, if it were 10 years ago.  They would have been unstoppable.

I  loved watching Brett Favre play.  He is my Buddha with a football.  He always played in the moment, forgetting the score, his last play, or the next play.  He seemed to ride the wave of the moment, passing into double and triple coverage if the moment dictated it.

Brats
Brats, the grill, tailgating and Packer football will be forever linked in my mind.  If you want to impress your neighbors in Wisconsin, serve a Johnsonville brat.   I feel better buying a named brand brat.  I just don't trust what goes into generic or store brand sausages.

In Wisconsin, the way to cook a brat is to boil it in beer and then finish it off on the grill.  This gives the brat a unique, sticky, sweet, flavor.   I never liked this method because beer smells bad when boiled on the stove and we always cooked with coals and it took too long to fire up the grill.  I am no longer a slave to boiling beer smell and messy grills because I don't live in Wisconsin anymore and lightning will not strike me dead if I don't.

The question was how to get that sticky, sweet, flavor without putting up with the beer smell and starting the grill for a family dinner.  In Utah, I cook brats, in a pan, on the stove, in fruit juice.  I use apple or cranberry juice for my brats.  Put the brats in the pan and then put enough juice in the pan to cover half-way up the brats.  Simmer until all the juice is gone and the brats brown slightly.  Turn the brats to get the sticky goodness on all sides of the brat.  Use spicy brown mustard to offset the sweetness.

Worst canned soup ever!! - Campbell's Select Harvest Light

I have now tried two varieties of this soup and they are both very bad.  I tried the Italian Wedding soup and it was terrible and I tried the Vegetable Beef & Barley soup tonight and it was also terrible.  The use by date on the Veg soup was September 30 2011, so it is not even that old.  It wasn't that something was missing that could easily be added; there was a distinct flavor that made it taste bad.  I tried to add salt and pepper to make it taste better and then I just started adding crackers.  I tried to get my 8 year old to try it and he wouldn't eat it either.

The can would contain 160 calories in two cups of soup and is a "Good source of fiber" and "No MSG Added".  I read the ingredients and there really is nothing in this soup to account for the awful metallic taste.

On the other hand a really good, quick and easy soup for people trying to watch their weight is the Tortellini soup recipe my freind gave to me.

Tortellini/Spinach soup
1/4 tsp minced garlic
29 oz fat-free chicken broth
4 oz frozen cheese tortellini, without sauce
4 1/2 oz chopped frozen spinach, thawed
14 1/2 oz canned, STEWED, tomatoes, undrained.

Brown garlic in large saucepan coated with cooking spray over medium heat, about 1 minute.
Add broth and tortellini, cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
Add spinach and tomatoes and simmer uncovered, 5 minutes.

Note:   The tomatoes must be stewed tomatoes, not just regular diced tomatoes.