Juxtaposition

After reflecting on Ma Ying-jeou's words I come across this photo essay of Benazir Bhutto's assassination narrated by the photographer. It is a stunning and shocking narrative of images.

Guru Sage

Today, courts in Taiwan ruled that presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou is not guilty of corruption. Which means this popular candidate can continue with his campaign - which is nice. But what caught my eye in the article was Ma's response to the verdict and expression of confidence in the justice system.

"No matter how high the mountain, it cannot block the sun," he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters. "I feel at peace right now. But this is just a beginning because the road ahead will be difficult."

"No matter how high the mountain, it cannot block the sun." We just don't hear these eloquent bits in North American politics, no reference to an ancient non-religious yarn of wisdom. Ma's words are somehow beautiful and calming. But that might be because I'm kinda Chinese.

Debunking

I love truths, especially those that are obscured by popular myth. Naturally, I feel it is necessary to share the British Medical Journal's recently released list of common medical misconceptions.

-Turkey doesn't make you any more tired than beef would
-Cell phones don't frack with medical devices and kill people in hospitals
-Put down that 8th glass of water

Oh, and there's more...

Original list from the BMJ
CBC article

Gone Baby Gone

Known internationally as the best jazz pianist ever to lay fingers on keys, Canadian legend Oscar Peterson died today from kidney failure. Peterson performed with the likes of Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole and Stan Getz. He collected countless awards, distinctions, and titles around the world, founded schools, made over 200 recordings, and never left Canada. And let's face it, the dude was just cool.

"It's the group sound that's important, even when you're playing a solo." -Oscar Peterson



CBC
canada.com

Hack The Earth

From Wired, The Year's 10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Earth.

While they are interesting, I'm not a fan of anything that has us trying to maintain our destructive way of life. Instead of coming up with all these crazy ideas, why don't we just make some relatively minor adjustments to our personal existences? These are all just cop outs and misdirection of responsibility...and I guess that point is actually made throughout - thank the gods.


That said, one of them, Vertical Farming (in the No. 10 spot), seems pretty responsible, effective, logical, and pretty to look at (see pic to right). Plus, the idea that traditional farm fields could be then returned to forest? Slam dunk.

Random Quote #6

"It was the least pleasant experience I've ever had due to weather." -Wookiee, on boarding 7th Heaven at Blackcomb

Sets Galore

I've uploaded a bunch of new sets to my Flickr site as well as added to the Dave Work Tour ("Under Construction") set and Life In Macro collection.

New sets include:

• The Question Jar Tour (Vancouver)


• Hollywood Bowl 2007


• Gorge (WA) 2006


• NYC Summer 2006


• Gorge (WA) 2005


• Red Rocks (CO) 2005


• NYC Summer 2005


• NYC Winter 2005


• Following The Band - Toronto (ON), Darien Lake (NY), & Saratoga Springs (NY) 2006


• Riding to Lillooet & Cache Creek (BC)


• Alpine Valley/East Troy/Milwaukee (WI) 2006
  

...and there's lots more to come. But for now my eyeballs - and 'copy & paste' shortcut fingers, need a little break.

List Excerpts

While Google searching for something entirely unrelated to what I found, I came across CBC.ca Arts' The Top 100 of 2006 list.

There's a lot of stuff there, but skimming it I saw a few highlights that I thought rocked for one reason or another...they're old, but they're still true!

Check it:

"9. Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. When U.S. President George W. Bush sat down at this annual gathering of Washington reporters, he was no doubt expecting a light ribbing. What he got from Colbert, star of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, was a punch in the gut. This was satire at its ballsiest — ballsier even than Borat, for the simple reason that the leader of the free world was sitting only a few feet away. “I believe that the government that governs best is the government that governs least, and by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq,” Colbert quipped at one point. The room responded with a gasp. Comedy so devastating it took your breath away." <-true dat. I thought Bush was so freaking angry that he wasn't even going to wait for Colbert to leave the stage before having him disappeared. The full 24 min video here.

"11. Watching The Wire on a string. One of us waited until early December to see a single episode of David Simon’s Baltimore crime series — and then plowed through all four seasons in two weeks. Yes, it’s true, Omar (Michael K. Williams) is 21st-century TV’s most excellent antihero. The Wire’s main draw, though, is its unblinking view of the war on drugs, the struggles of the working class, political corruption and the collapse of public education. HBO’s grand gift to devil-in-its-details, dystopian storytelling." -I watched the first episode and immediately decided to wait and watch them all "on a string" too



"13. Robin Sparkles, Let's Go to the Mall. The writers of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother created this genius, faux-1980s music video upon revealing that one of the show’s characters, Robin, is hiding a dirty secret from her past: the Canadian ex-pat was once a bubble-gum popstar. For those who lived through Alanis Morrisette: the Early Years, this hysterically funny video — which boasts the line, “I’m gonna rock your body till Canada Day” — is dead-on in the details: rubber bangles, cheesy white-girl rap, synthesizers, a toy robot, moonwalking and name checks of Brian Mulroney and Wayne Gretzky. It’s awesome, eh." <-um, yeah it is!



"87. Tyra Banks. With her eponymous talk show and evermore me-Me-ME, dammit! appearances on America’s Next Top Model, the poor person’s Oprah has become the ego that ate television. Girlfriend is the guiltiest of pleasures." -"the ego that ate television"!

"94. David Caruso versus acting. It’s not that we enjoy Caruso’s performance as Horatio Caine on CSI: Miami. Rather, we are comforted by its existence. Shatner’s Kirk impregnated fewer pauses; Al Pacino eats less ham; and what — what? — is with the sunglasses? Proof positive that you can be a spectacular failure, and millions of people might love you anyways. So inspiring."

Brabe Asks #2

"...On that note, does our solar system have an actual name like magnatar 38 or something equally cool?" -Brabe

I did a little searching and confirmed that no, our solar system does not have a name like Magnatar 38. According to NASA, the IAU (International Astronomical Union), etc., we just capitalise the words to make them personal pronouns. Our solar system is called the Solar System. The galaxy is commonly referred to as the Galaxy (rather than the Milky Way). Our moon is just the Moon. It seems this is because we live on Earth so they are just our system and galaxy. If we started to live on other planets or in other galaxies, we might either give those new places unique names or perhaps change the names of Earth's neighbourhood. Hard to say at this point! A nice little paragraph (or so) explains that all here.


More links:

Wikipedia on the Solar System

From the University of Arizona's now incorrectly titled Nine Planets FAQ:

Q: Does our solar system have a name? Does our moon have a name? Does our sun have a name?

A: No. No. No. Sorry. They should. But they don't. At least not in English. There are, of course, many words used to refer to the Sun and the Moon in other languages. "Sol" and "Luna" are often thought of as proper names but they're really Latin, not English. So far there hasn't been a need for anything more. Maybe when we start living on other places besides the Earth....

Know The Players

The cover story of the current Entertainment Weekly is "The 50 Smartest People In Hollywood: It's Not About Power Anymore" and features a head shot of Will Smith. In the corner of the cover it asks,

"Who Are the Brains Leading the Film Business Forward? Will Smith Ranks #5 on Our List. Who's #1?"

"Could it be Judd Apatow by any chance?" I said aloud to myself, "Or will they make a statement and say Tyler Perry?"

I flipped to the cover story, and lo and behold, the #1 person is Judd Apatow. And Tyler Perry? He's #7.

Dudes, I read too much about the industry.

Man Overboard

This guy, in downtown Vancouver, took the local flood warning very seriously.

Monotheism, Rome, and Democracy

Why can't God be more like us?
by: Richard Handler

Christopher Hitchens, the British-born contrarian and atheist, has written a best-selling book called God is Not Great in which he thumbs his nose at Allah, Yahweh and all religion for that matter.

I don't know if God is great or not but I 'm sure of one thing: He/She/It isn't a democrat.

Now, this isn't meant as a frivolous remark. Leaving our Western worldview aside for the moment, a vast literature exists on the subject of polytheism, the belief in many gods who jockey for power.

Ancient gods litter the historical landscape. Witness the huge statuary that oversaw once mighty empires like the Hittites and Assyrians.

Present-day Hindus worship a collection of deities. And at one not-so-distant time in the West even, many gods were the rule. I was reminded of this, in the run-up to Christmas, while watching HBO's epic series, Rome.

In between the conspiracies and casual brutality, Romans worshipped both big and little gods with enthusiasm and piety. You want your business to prosper (or an enemy killed), you pray to the right deity for help.


A parliament of dieties

I have heard it said that the Romans, or the Greeks before them, hardly believed in their gods: They were seen more as just mythic characters in the literature of the day.

But as the American classical scholar Mary Lefkowitz reminds us in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the ancient Greeks believed that their gods were real and that they constantly intervened in human affairs.

The Romans inherited their panoply of gods from the Greeks: Zeus, the head god, became Jupiter, and so on down the line.

Zeus did not communicate directly with humans but his children — Athena, Apollo and Dionysus — did so continually. A mortal could have the support of one god while angering another. Belief and obedience were, at heart, political.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were always bargaining, praying and beseeching their gods for favours. Their world was a place where human beings were courtiers to a veritable parliament of deities.

Smart operators like Odysseus (Ulysses to some) knew how to play the game. Others, like the suitors he slaughtered when he returned home from Troy, were not so cunning.


Divine limitations

The gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans weren't sweet and gentle. They were often bad tempered, lustful and petty.

But they had two characteristics that ordinary humans envied: They were powerful and they were immortal.

These gods fought among themselves just like we do. Living forever, it seems, gave them no monopoly on wisdom. Even Zeus was not all-powerful or completely wise. He lived within his divine limitations. He had his favourites and his dreadful temper.

Still, there are advantages to believing in a polytheistic universe, as Lefkowitz tells us.

For one, it eliminates the problem of theodicy: Why would a good god create evil?

The monotheistic religions of the world — such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have to explain to their followers why God created cyclones and blood thirsty murderers. (After four thousand years, there's hardly a good answer, except, perhaps, have faith and mind your own business.)

The Greeks didn't believe in sentimental, loving gods. (When their gods loved, mortals had to watch out for their daughters!)

As Lefkowitz tells us, the classical gods made life hard for humans. They weren't out to improve our condition. The only things they seemed to have a true interest in were valour and human achievement.


Understanding fallibility

The Greeks, and the Romans who followed them, understood human fallibility. They believed mortals could question their gods, who were as imperfect as they were. They believed that all beings — divine and human — were prone to error.

The second great advantage to polytheism is its openness. It gave the ancient world a modern, Canadian virtue — diversity.

The Greeks were the original multiculturalists. There was always room in the temple for a new god, as long as his or her highness didn't want to take over the place.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are downright exclusive when it comes to sharing the limelight. Have no other gods before Me, say the opening commandments (depending on your Bible).

People nowadays talk about wanting to encounter God in nice little gardens and in the joys of nature. But the God of the Hebrew Bible was a jealous God. The ancient Hebrews were always running from Him. Indeed, He was something of a holy terror.


In search of a democratic deity

Of course, Christians have the benefit of a meeker intermediary, a deity (Christ) who suffers, like the rest of humankind.

Still, their God is a rather mysterious being, an omniscient deity with control over his dominion yet who has allowed bad things to flourish.

Then there is the God of Islamic radicals who wants His enemies to convert or be struck dead. He keeps His compassion strictly for His believers.

A Greek would be puzzled by monotheism. But the Greeks understood the world as a complicated, savage and less than perfect place. Even their democracy was imperfect: It excluded women, slaves and many working people.

I've always found it puzzling that democracy, with all its ragged, free-for-all imperfections, is heralded as the supreme political model while our Western religious traditions are so monotheistic and narrow.

God is a dictator, demanding perfection from his underlings. OK, He gives us free will to make ourselves miserable. But if political life should be democratic, why shouldn't religion? If we were created in God's image, why can't God be more like us?

The Greeks and the Romans that I see in Rome understand the world is a quixotic and perilous place. They make allegiances and hope to command a smidgen of honour for their family, friends and community.

The ancient world lived as if all creation was a permanent minority government. Life tottered on the edge of a no confidence vote by the powers that be.

As coarse and politically incorrect as those ancient people were, at least to our way of thinking today, their many gods prepared them for a steely-eyed life without illusion.

We have progressed in many ways since then, especially in our science and technology. But perhaps those ancient peoples were wiser than us.

Today, we seem to live in a world of fierce moralists and one-God believers. Maybe we should take a lesson from the Greeks and Romans and allow more democracy into our modern religions. Then we might all rest a little more easily.