ward's Blog

A couple days ago things looked sort of bleak.  How long before a shipping job opens?  How long will our savings last?  Then a phone call to the union and everything changes, here's a job, it's perfect, very nearly a dream job.  Yow!  I love it.

                                                    

It is just after six; my youngest son, six, and granddaughter, under two, both finally fell asleep on the couch.  It took some doing, but I got them both to lay down and I walk around here on pins and needles hoping they keep napping.  Especially that granddaughter: with her mother and her grandmother gone off to classes she raises hell with me while they are gone, as if it is my fault her mother is not here, nor her grandmother.  Jeez.

It's dark in the livingroom; I hardly make a sound and carry the cordless phone around with me in case somebody calls; that way I don't have to run for the phone on the wall to stop the "ring."  Phones don't "ring" anymore, but they signal a call coming in loud enough to wake two strong willed children.  Yikes!  My neck is stiff from trying so hard to be quiet!  Three hours until classes end, oh!

                                                   

 

 

 OK, Sam Harris speaks.

Oh my, it's been snowing lightly since mid-morning, looking like one of those Japanese prints you see sometimes.  It is so pretty; every window looks like a winter wonderland postcard.  One can sure appreciate a nice warm house on a day like this, windows are a real bonus.

A few years back I told my wife about the strange street signs I'd seen in Pompeii.  She didn't ever believe me I guess, so this afternoon we were finished in bed and she asked me about it again: were there really penises and testicles carved into the pavement there?  Yes, I described the images again, round testicles about fist size with a penis extending as you'd expect, carved into the surface;  then we plugged "pompeii phallus" into a search engine and got plenty of pics people had posted.  It was fun to revisit Pompeii and she was amused at the prominence of phalluses all around the city.  Apparently the penis emblems there in those times were non-sexual, meant to ward off evil spirits or something.

Yeah, things are looking pretty bleak.  It's not a good time to lose a job or be looking at retirement in a few years either. 

Well, we've made it through rough times before, so, why worry?

 

Finally going back to work!  Yeah!  Am leaving for a ship in Singapore right now, am waiting in Detroit to fly to Japan, then on to Singapore, six months, don't know if I'll get back to EP for a while.  This ship is a little surveillance vessel run by merchant mariners under contract with the US Navy.

If it works out I would be in good shape for employment as these ships have to run for national defense.  That means steady work, right up until I finish with seagoing in four or five years.  Yeah!  We'll see what happens.

The last time I worked on government ships like this one we had email use but nothin' else, probably hasn't changed much.  This wireless access probably won't work overseas...plus, we'll be at sea a lot, I'm sure of that.

I'll miss my family but it's always good to make money.

16 April 08

Dear sweet Daughter,

    Yesterday when you left it was hard to say goodbye, and I couldn't bring myself to say "I love you."  It was hard because you were leaving and taking your baby, it was going to cause a lot of grief around here; I knew that and I knew it was hurting your mother to see you go too, so I didn't say "I love you" when you came downstairs for your last "goodbye." 

    Of course I do love you very much Girl, and I know some of the reasons you had to leave us.  We all hated to see you go but you want to be independent: that is a healthy thing.  I should be pleased that you are so grown up and I am pleased about that, but it is hard to see you go, and hard to see your mom so sad when you are gone.

    She says she doesn't blame me for your leaving but I still blame myself.

    Come on back to visit whenever you can.  We'll be glad to see you and that baby, and your boyfriend too.  Oh, and thanks for cleaning up the kitchen after you fixed that last meal the other night.

    Much love to you,

        from your dad ward    

It's great to be home, sit around, and not have to worry about where we'll stay tonight, where we'll eat next time, whether everyone is having fun, that sort of thing.  Vacations are no picnic!

There were some great moments this vacation, seeing the Sierra Madres, following my daughter horseback riding (she looked so natural), Disneyland parks of course, the Getty museum, the redwood forests, Napa county winery tour, taking kids on their first airplane trip, a couple quiet afternoons in a bowling alley, a desert museum visit... 

I guess everyone had fun; but after four weeks living out of suitcases, the whole bunch wanted to go home, sleep in their own beds, see the baby.

It was a real vacation and lots of fun.  Can't beat that! 

The Dragon In My Garage
by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floates in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.

Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative-- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing about invisible ones--you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages--but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence"--no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it--is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

I put this first in a comment after ArmyWifeUK's story but here it is again:

There is too much about religion that doesn't make sense to me.

For example: theists say you pray and are communicating with god, but isn't that silly? What is the carrier for the prayer message? Radio and television signals travel on modulated electromagnetic radiation, an invisible wavelength of light. What carries prayer? Why do you have to bow your head when you pray? Is that supposed to send the message faster or something? Does god pay more attention to people with bowed heads?

Theists say there had to be a "first cause," that something had to create the place we live, the universe; but then, if there has to be a first cause for everything, who or what caused god?

Theists say we all have a "soul' but nobody has ever observed a soul. Where is it within our bodies? Where does it come from? When does it join our bodies, and how? How does it get there, fly, float, walk, airplane, hot air balloon, how? Where does the soul go when we die? When does it leave us? What is the soul made of? Has it been studied, measured, proven to exist at all?

If god is so perfect and all powerful, why did he make such a breakable world and us to inhabit it? Didn't he see that we were going to do our best to ruin it? What is god made of? Where does he live? How is he/she nourished? How about the different religions of the world, if there is only one god, which religion names the right one, islam, christianity, judaism, some other religion?
Why did he make humans that could be so evil? Theists argue that he gave us free will and it is therefore our fault, but why did he do that, give us free will, if he could have, and should have, known it was going to turn out so badly? Besides that, organisms do not have free will, which has been proven and verified in the laboratory.

Those are all the questions about theism that I can muster off the top of my head. As far as I know, none have been answered satisfactorily by theism, ever.

de·lu·sion  (di loo zhen), n.
1.    an act or instance of deluding.
2.    the state of being deluded.
3.    a false belief or opinion: delusions of grandeur.
4.    Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.
[1375-1425; late ME < L di loo zhen- (s. of dilusio), equiv. to delus(us) (ptp. of di ludere; see DELUDE) + -ion- -ION]
-de·lu' sion·al, de·lu' sion·ary, adj.
-Syn.1. deception. See illusion.

de·lude (di lood'), v.t., -lud·ed, -lud·ing.
1.    to mislead the mind or judgment of; deceive: His conceit deluded him into believing he was important.
2.    Obs. to mock or frustrate the hopes or aims of.
3.    Obs. to elude; evade.
[1400-50; late ME deluden < L deludere to play false, equiv. to de- DE- + ludere to play]
-de·lud' er, n.
-de·lud' ing·ly, adv.
-Syn.1. beguile, cozen, dupe, cheat, defraud, gull.

 Bluecollerchick left this as a comment in my story...but I didn't think it would get seen there so I thought it deserved a story of it's own (hope you don't mind bluecollerchick?)

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

John: "Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."

Mary: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's *** with us."

Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss His ***?"

John: "If you kiss Hank's ***, He'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, He'll kick the **** out of you."

Me: "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"

John: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do whatever He wants, and what He wants is to give you a million dollars, but He can't until you kiss His ***."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."

Mary: "Who are you to question Hank's gift? Don't you want a million dollars? Isn't it worth a little kiss on the ***?"

Me: "Well maybe, if it's legit, but..."

John: "Then come kiss Hank's *** with us."

Me: "Do you kiss Hank's *** often?"

Mary: "Oh yes, all the time..."

Me: "And has He given you a million dollars?"

John: "Well no. You don't actually get the money until you leave town."

Me: "So why don't you just leave town now?"

Mary: "You can't leave until Hank tells you to, or you don't get the money, and He kicks the **** out of you."

Me: "Do you know anyone who kissed Hank's ***, left town, and got the million dollars?"

John: "My mother kissed Hank's *** for years. She left town last year, and I'm sure she got the money."

Me: "Haven't you talked to her since then?"

John: "Of course not, Hank doesn't allow it."

Me: "So what makes you think He'll actually give you the money if you've never talked to anyone who got the money?"

Mary: "Well, He gives you a little bit before you leave. Maybe you'll get a raise, maybe you'll win a small lotto, maybe you'll just find a twenty-dollar bill on the street."

Me: "What's that got to do with Hank?"

John: "Hank has certain 'connections.'"

Me: "I'm sorry, but this sounds like some sort of bizarre con game."

John: "But it's a million dollars, can you really take the chance? And remember, if you don't kiss Hank's *** He'll kick the **** out of you."

Me: "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to Him, get the details straight from Him..."

Mary: "No one sees Hank, no one talks to Hank."

Me: "Then how do you kiss His ***?"

John: "Sometimes we just blow Him a kiss, and think of His ***. Other times we kiss Karl's ***, and he passes it on."

Me: "Who's Karl?"

Mary: "A friend of ours. He's the one who taught us all about kissing Hank's ***. All we had to do was take him out to dinner a few times."

Me: "And you just took his word for it when he said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to kiss His ***, and that Hank would reward you?"

John: "Oh no! Karl has a letter he got from Hank years ago explaining the whole thing. Here's a copy; see for yourself."

From the Desk of Karl

Kiss Hank's *** and He'll give you a million dollars when you leave town.

Use alcohol in moderation.

Kick the **** out of people who aren't like you.

Eat right.

Hank dictated this list Himself.

The moon is made of green cheese.

Everything Hank says is right.

Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.

Don't use alcohol.

Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.

Kiss Hank's *** or He'll kick the **** out of you.

Me: "This appears to be written on Karl's letterhead."

Mary: "Hank didn't have any paper."

Me: "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."

John: "Of course, Hank dictated it."

Me: "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"

Mary: "Not now, but years ago He would talk to some people."

Me: "I thought you said He was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist kicks the **** out of people just because they're different?"

Mary: "It's what Hank wants, and Hank's always right."

Me: "How do you figure that?"

Mary: "Item 7 says 'Everything Hank says is right.' That's good enough for me!"

Me: "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."

John: "No way! Item 5 says 'Hank dictated this list himself.' Besides, item 2 says 'Use alcohol in moderation,' Item 4 says 'Eat right,' and item 8 says 'Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.' Everyone knows those things are right, so the rest must be true, too."

Me: "But 9 says 'Don't use alcohol.' which doesn't quite go with item 2, and 6 says 'The moon is made of green cheese,' which is just plain wrong."

John: "There's no contradiction between 9 and 2, 9 just clarifies 2. As far as 6 goes, you've never been to the moon, so you can't say for sure."

Me: "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon is made of rock..."

Mary: "But they don't know if the rock came from the Earth, or from out of space, so it could just as easily be green cheese."

Me: "I'm not really an expert, but I think the theory that the Moon was somehow 'captured' by the Earth has been discounted*. Besides, not knowing where the rock came from doesn't make it cheese."

John: "Ha! You just admitted that scientists make mistakes, but we know Hank is always right!"

Me: "We do?"

Mary: "Of course we do, Item 7 says so."

Me: "You're saying Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no different than saying 'Hank's right because He says He's right.'"

John: "Now you're getting it! It's so rewarding to see someone come around to Hank's way of thinking."

Me: "But...oh, never mind. What's the deal with wieners?"

Mary: She blushes.

John: "Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It's Hank's way. Anything else is wrong."

Me: "What if I don't have a bun?"

John: "No bun, no wiener. A wiener without a bun is wrong."

Me: "No relish? No Mustard?"

Mary: She looks positively stricken.

John: He's shouting. "There's no need for such language! Condiments of any kind are wrong!"

Me: "So a big pile of sauerkraut with some wieners chopped up in it would be out of the question?"

Mary: Sticks her fingers in her ears."I am not listening to this. La la la, la la, la la la."

John: "That's disgusting. Only some sort of evil deviant would eat that..."

Me: "It's good! I eat it all the time."

Mary: She faints.

John: He catches Mary. "Well, if I'd known you were one of those I wouldn't have wasted my time. When Hank kicks the **** out of you I'll be there, counting my money and laughing. I'll kiss Hank's *** for you, you bunless cut-wienered kraut-eater."

With this, John dragged Mary to their waiting car, and sped off.

The quote pasted below is from The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; partly cited is a statement attributed to the anthropologist Pascal Boyer; it is as amusing as it is enlightening.  It is taken from pages 177-179.

"The findings of anthropologists seem weird to us only because they are unfamiliar.  All religious beliefs seem weird to those not brought up in them.  Boyer did research on the Fang people of Cameroon, who believe...

...that witches have an extra animal-like organ that flies away at night and ruins other people's crops or poisons their blood.  It is also said that these witches sometimes assemble for huge banquets, where they devour their victims and plan future attacks.  Many will tell you that a friend of a friend actually saw witches flying over the village at night, sitting on a banana leaf and throwing magical darts at various unsuspecting victims.

Boyer continues with a personal anecdote:

I was mentioning these and other exotica over dinner in a Cambridge college when one of our guests, a prominent Cambridge theologian, turned to me and said: 'That is what makes anthropology so fascinating and so difficult too.  You have to explain how people can believe such nonsense.'  Which left me dumbfounded.  The conversation had moved on before I could find a pertinent response--to do with kettles and pots.

Assuming that the Cambridge theologian was a mainstream Christian, he probably believed some combination of the following:

- In the time of the ancestors, a man was born to a virgin mother with no
  biological father being involved.

- The same fatherless man called out to a friend called Lazarus, who had
   been dead long enough to stink, and Lazarus promptly came back to life.

- The fatherless man himself came alive after being dead and buried three
   days.

- Forty days later, the fatherless man went up to the top of a hill and then
  disappeared bodily into the sky.

- If you murmur thoughts privately in your head, the fatherless man, and his
  'father' (who is also himself) will hear your thoughts and may act upon
  them.  He is simultaneously able to hear the thoughts of everybody else in
  the world.

- If you do something bad, or something good, the same fatherless man sees
  all, even if nobody else does.  You may be rewarded or punished
  accordingly, including after your death.

- The fatherless man's virgin mother never died but 'ascended' bodily into
  heaven.

- Bread and wine, if blessed by a priest (who must have testicles),
  'become' the body and blood of the fatherless man.

What would an objective anthropologist, coming fresh to this set of beliefs while on fieldwork in Cambridge, make of them?"

Yeah, my unmarried teenaged daughter is having a baby tonight.  She's been real good about taking care of herself, going to all the prenatal classes with her boyfriend, and I think she really wants to be a responsible mother and she probably will be!  She will be. 

It will be hard on her and her boyfriend, so young.  We're trying to make it go well for them, but they are in for a lot of work.  The other grandparents are in it for the long haul too; so we're all involved and it feels like a good family thing. 

I guess I'm excited.  Both grandmothers are at the hospital and the doctor was planning on inducing labor about the time I left to return home.  I'll be a grandfather tomorrow.  It seems like just yesterday my wife and I were lustfully leering at each other in the campus hallways at the university. 

Now we're going to be grandparents!  Holy Shit!  Where'd the time go?!