Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Carlo Rovelli is great. I try to imagine everything as a “field” of quantum entities. I had this as a “coffee break video” a few months ago. It is basically a reading of his excellent book “Reality is not what it seems”.

[Daniel W.Participant]

Thank you @regthefronkeyfarmer for your thoughtful list of links, as always.

It’s not Sunday now, but a boy’s gotta play some time.  So I’m reading it now.

That book from one of your previous posts – The Orphanmaster’s Son – wow, how depressing!  Still a vivid image of an Orwellian life based on a modern country.  Then Amazon had an international theme sale and I bought “A River in Darkness” by Masaji Ishikawa, a man with Korean father and Japanese mother who was “repatriated” to N Korea as an early teenager, when through hell on earth there, and escaped.  I thought it would be an uplifting book about how he overcame adversity and made a new life for himself…  but no, it was almost as horrible as The Orphanmaster’s son.  Damn!  I never read The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, but apparently it’s one of the top selling books on earth, so will give that a try.    But thanks for sharing your readings – you got me back into a reading mode again, which ended my unhealthy obsession with internet news sites.

 

I do, however, read the vast majority of your links.  That’s for sharing them.

 

I just read there’s a new Ebola outbreak in Congo.  I think we need to send one of America’s foremost medical practioners, the esteemed Dr. Oz, to provide care up close and personal to the victims.  We need for him to nip this problem in the bud, pronto!  Before it spreads to more victims.  He could take Gwyneth Paltrow to assist him, again, hands-on care for these patients.  I’m sure vaginal steaming will be the answer!  /s

 

 

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by  Daniel W..

[StregaModerator]

@danielw The Shadow of the Wind is a wonderful book.  It stands on its own, but there are two more books in that series and they make a very satisfactory tale.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by  Strega.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Thanks @regthefronkeyfarmer, that looks fascinating.  He (and people like him) really seem to have got a long way through the use of mathematics.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Thanks everyone. There seems to be a deep “mythical” side to the Spanish psyche. In the sense of feeling a connection to the “other world” where fantastic beasts reside. It can be seen in much of their art and literature, in the works of Goya and Dali or expressed in films like Pan’s Labyrinth (put it on your list to watch if you have not seen it) and books like “The Shadow of the Wind” which I have on mine but not gotten to read yet. I will over the summer.

I did not find The Orphan Master’s Son to be depressing. I would call it a bleak description of life in North Korea but it is splashed with some great (black) humor.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

This is one of the dangerous anti-vaxxer, anti-science, anti-intellectual dingbats that gave a speech to a crowd at a “Children’s March for Humanity”.

[_Robert_Participant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

This is one of the dangerous anti-vaxxer, anti-science, anti-intellectual dingbats that gave a speech to a crowd at a “Children’s March for Humanity”.

Probably owes her very existence  to vaccinations

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Yes, but she would probably give Jesus the credit. I watched a few videos of white supremacists trying to use DNA to prove their “purity” only to discover that they had African heredity in their genes. They still try to explain it away. When I tell people that we are all descendants from Africans I get some strange reactions.

I use one of  comedian Jimmy Carr’s lines quite often these days. “If we are all God’s children then what is so special about Jesus?”

I can’t help myself.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

white supremacists trying to use DNA to prove their “purity”

I just watched great documentary a couple of weeks ago:

Here’s a relevant, short out-take from it:

[Daniel W.Participant]

@strega, thanks for the book info.  It’s funny, I’m reading more than ever these days.  When I find an author I like, I read everything I can find from them.  So it’s good to know about that series.

 

@regthefronkeyfarmer, I think you have a point about the Spanish psyche.  I used to love watching Almodovar movies.  Spanish history is full of turmoil, suffering, persecutions of every kind, interface of Catholicism with Islam, ethnic intermingling, and a lot of heartbreak and grief and turmoil.  I’d rather read Spanish history than that of my own ancestors.  Coincidentally, I’m about 1/2 through “The Light of the Fireflies” by Paul Pen, who also happens to be Spanish.  I’m not sure yet, what I think of that book.  It’s a unique story, so far, about a family who were wounded in a fire, living in complete seclusion.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

@popebeanie – thanks, that looks brilliant.

When I used to discuss things on the Jordan Peterson Facebook page, some white supremacists used to point out that black people score lower in IQ tests.  I used to say that 1) all the other kinds of personality tests came out equal; 2) personally, I find that IQ tests are all over the place and a bit strange; 3) I don’t know many black people, but that they’re all in the top 10 most intelligent people I know.

I don’t know quite how someone would use DNA to prove racial superiority.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Spanish are amazing, they’ve got a long history of anarchism and avant-garde.  At one time, while we were having our rave “Summer of Love” in 1989, they had something called the Dance of Death where people would travel around Spain raving until they dropped dead.  I’m a huge fan of Lady Dammage from Barcelona.  https://www.facebook.com/ladydammage/

[NoelParticipant]

@ Reg:  thanks for the Sunday school. I did the 23 and myDNA test. Came back 59% Iberian, 20% west African, 17% native American.  I was surprised to see that I had Ashkenazi and Irish/British ancestry.  My wife’s brother-in-law is of west African dissent is from the British virgin islands. He took the test too  and upon getting the results exclaimed “ imagine my surprise when I saw that I am 98% west African “. LMAO!

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@simon – that’s serious dammage man.

What did the clubber say when he met a filing cabinet?

Sorted!

[PopeBeanieModerator]

I don’t know quite how someone would use DNA to prove racial superiority.

It’s another one of those things individuals and tribalist culture conjures up to support how they identify themselves as superior. (Ala Social Darwinism, e.g..) We can go back as far as pre-humans and find reasons why it was advantageous for us to incorporate their DNA into ours. I think one of our species’ increasingly biggest challenges will be to not defend many kinds of “genetic superiority” (or superior AI, for that matter) that science will be able to sell to us.

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