Dr. Forbush Thinks

On Sunday all “good” Christians go to church. I don’t know if I would be so bold to declare myself a “good” Christian, but going to church on Sunday continues to be something our family rarely misses. As I have said before, I am Catholic, so the guilt of weekly attendance has been worked deeply into my psyche. The mixture of politics with religion has always troubled me. Politics always seemed to be man’s business, while religion always seemed to be God’s business. The main problem tends to be that collecting God’s answers on every perceivable issue is mostly impossible. Jesus tells us to take care of the poor and sick, but he doesn’t tell us how we should do that. Man has created many ways to take care of the poor and sick, but it isn’t always clear that giving handouts to people is always the most effective way to persuade someone to contribute to society. And, when power comes to the battle, individuals will push their own ideas over the most effective ideas for society. And, worst of all, when someone declares that their own personal idea is the “Christian” solution or God’s solution there is no possible way to know if that is true or not, because man can not ever know what is in God’s mind. It bothers me when any religion expends an enormous amount of energy fighting for an issue that isn’t even a critical issue. Abortion and homosexuality come to mind quickly. These two issues have very little support in the Bible, and it is clear that religious people that have opinions on these issues use bizarre Biblical readings to support the conclusion they have already decided in advance. The proof of this is in the lack of such a strong response to issues that are out rightly declared in the Bible. For example, divorce, war and the care for the poor and sick are declared as critical issues many more times in the Bible than the “evils” of homosexuality and abortion. But, religious groups have used abortion and homosexuality as litmus tests to determine whether someone is a “good” Christian. Does this even make any sense? Well, as I began, I was sitting in church on Sunday listening to the priest give us our weekly lesson. Politics does not directly come up in these discussions. However, issues often do come up, because the object of a lesson is generally a discussion on how one should live a Christian life. From these discussions we generally learn what things we should avoid doing, what things we should strive to do better and how we should find strength to do the first two. When we talk in generalities there normally isn’t much of a problem drawing politics into the discussion. Everyone agrees that abusing alcohol is a bad thing. Everyone agrees that violence is to be avoided unless you need to defend yourself. Everyone agrees that the Ten Commandments should not be broken. And, the list of things that we agree on goes on. However, I cringe when particular political issues are mentioned in church. During the last election here in California Proposition 85, “Parental notification of a minor seeking an abortion” was on the ballot. I don’t believe that the church should have an opinion on this issue, or seek to influence the members of the church to vote one way or another on this issue. However, in the announcements at the end of mass on several occasions we were asked to volunteer to canvass our neighborhoods in support of this issue. On the other hand, a local “pregnancy services” group is supported by the church. This group helps pregnant woman have their baby and offer it up for adoption if they can’t keep it for whatever reason. This action does not seem any more political to me than helping the poor. This service offers an alternative for some women who would use it. Even though I understand that the motivation for creating this group is to reduce the number of abortions I don’t believe that the actions of this group will actually result in changing the law and making all abortions illegal. The group’s goal is just to make abortions rarer. This Sunday was a little different. This Sunday we had a short political insertion and it made me cringe again. I actually agreed with what the priest said during the service, but it still made me cringe because I believe that these political proclamations should not be made in church. Making political proclamations in church is divisive by the mere nature of being political. This is a paraphrase of what he said. I am so proud of the American people. In my country of Mexico there is widespread corruption and hypocrisy in the government, and it is very difficult for the people to do anything about it. But I am very impressed with how the American people were able to defeat their corruption and hypocrisy in the recent elections. Even though he did not say anything in particular about any particular political party it was quite clear that he was happy that the Democrats gave the Republicans a thumpin’. He is also saying that he viewed the Republican Party as a party of hypocrisy and corruption. Now, anyone that has read what I have written over the last few years knows that I agree 100% with this idea, but I still cringe at the thought that this idea is being expressed in church. What bothers me is the implicit conclusion that Democrats are now the new “Party of God.” Obviously I personally don’t feel this way, and very few people that I know would believe this, but there still exists a large number of people who take what the priest says as coming directly from the mouth of God. When the priest praises a political party we suddenly have people in the group believing that God sanctioned a political party. In the long run this only leads to more hypocrisy and corruption coming from the other side of the aisle. I think we need to get religion back to talking about generalities and leave the specifics to the lawyers and the politicians. For the most part people know when they deliberately sinned against God. They have a good understanding of how they should lead their lives by protecting the weak and loving their neighbor. They also know what God expects from them and what actions could be abusive. When people are left to judge themselves they are typically tougher on themselves than the society. However, for those few who don’t feel guilt or compassion the government offers another solution: laws and punishment - the political solution. Society functions best when we keep these two prods separate from each other. -----------------------------------------------------

Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit
Politics, Religion

After watching Richard Doerflinger last night on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer I wanted to commit some act of violence. Fortunately when the show was over I fell asleep and now I only feel some bitter hatred instead. Why do people find this need to distort facts to save the life of a ball of eight cells, but they don't care enough to help a live person with a family and a horrible disease? Richard Doerflinger is certainly a pro-life extremist who can not see the forest for the trees. He was invited onto the News Hour to discuss a recent advance in stem cell research that will allow a single cell to be taken from an embryo without harming the embryo and then the single cell may be used to generate new stem cell lines that could be used in research. The hope is that if an embryo is not destroyed in the process of creating the stem cell lines, then there may be little opposition to the use of federal funds for this type of research. And, of course money is what every good research program needs to continue to learn about the wonders of creation and to be able to use that knowledge to make our lives better. Mr. Doerflinger doesn’t see it this way. Instead of praising the effort of these scientists to create a work around an arbitrary law banning money for embryonic stem cell research he criticized the way the privately funded research was conducted. There are no laws preventing the use of embryos in this way. There are only limits by the federal government on the funding of this research. But, Mr. Doerflinger uses his opportunity to shame Robert Lanza claiming he had destroyed 16 embryos in his research to prove that this could be done. Here is the Washington Post story on this research: link The research question was a two part question. The first question was can a single cell be removed from an embryo without damaging it. To do this Robert Lanza’s group used eight of the 16 embryos to prove that this could be done. All eight, eight cell embryos matured just fine with the loss of one cell. It is amazing to me that people are concerned about these tiny eight cell clumps, but if this is what it takes, then so be it. So, Mr. Doerflinger was either misinformed, or chose to misrepresent the research done by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT). The second question to be answered was, can a single cell be enticed to grow into a stem cell colony in a petri dish? Single cells don’t generally like to live by themselves, so this is the more complicated part of the experiment. Since this had never been done before it was expected that the failure rate would be high, until the technique could be established. So, the remaining eight embryos were destroyed in order to get as many cells as possible. The result was 91 stem cells, so obviously some of the eight cell embryos had multiplied. But, the point was that they were able to try this 91 times with 91 individual stems cells and the result was 2 stem cell lines. Could the same experiment be done without destroying any embryos? Yes, 91 single cells could have been taken from 91 embryos. Did Advanced Cell Technology have 91 embryos? I don’t know, but they did have 16. The probability that they could have produced a stem cell line with only 16 cell would be about 30% based on 2 lines for 91 attempts. But, the knowledge is now known and stem cell line could now be created without harming an embryo. But, Mr. Doerflinger was not happy about this triumph. Instead, Mr. Doerflinger launched into a tirade about how the new technique could be used for genetic screening and even more embryos will be thrown away as a result of the Advanced Cell Technology technique. Well, doesn’t Mr. Doerflinger sound like he would be fun at a party. He’s certainly always looking at the bright side of things - NOT! This whole debate is filled with distortion in order to win a point from the public score keeper. But the reality is that there aren’t so many people that care enough about the details accept for the people who are doing the arguing. And these people just continue to listen so they can find one more point to justify how they already feel about the issue. If pro-life people were really serious about life, then they would be figuring out how to make food from non-living things. This is because the level of life that is in that eight cell clump called an embryo is slightly more significant than a one-cell organism. And, it is slightly less significant than a roundworm. That is the truth in the reality-based world. Equally true is the fact that that clump of cells has the potential to become much more. But, in the reality based world we need to realize that not every conception results in the birth of a child. Nature itself determines the viability of an embryo before it even implants into the wall of the uterus and it continues to monitor its progress throughout the pregnancy. Spontaneous abortions or miscarriages happen all the time. If they happen in the first month of a pregnancy the woman may not even have known that she was pregnant. However, people who have taken up the cause to fight stem cell research are the first to call an environmentalist a “tree hugger,” because they think these people are over the top. Have they forgotten that the tree is alive and deserves some respect? These same people wear fur, eat meat and maybe go hunting animals with rifles. Is any one of these activities respecting the life they take? Obviously there is a major speed bump in our culture. We are not on the same page at all. There seem to be two distinct pages and maybe even a few pages in between. Obviously ethicists and philosophers have tackled the question of life before, but they don’t seem to be unified on the subject either. The problem is that in this circle of life we must all destroy life in order to live in one way or another. If society could ever come to terms with what the purpose of life is, then we could more easily come to a consensus on what we should do as a society to make it work. Seeing that this is never going to happen we need to resort to the old plan, every man for himself. -----------------------------------------------------

Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit
Politics, Stem Cells, Ethics

What should society be tolerant too? Where should the line be drawn?

The religious right likes to say “tolerance to a point, there are laws that should not be broken.” We shouldn't tolerate the breaking of laws. Should we have tolerance for a murderer? He chooses to kill people as a lifestyle choice. A rapist or a pedophile chooses their lifestyle as well. Should we have tolerance for these people?

The difference is that murderers effect the social structure of general population. Homosexuals don’t do that based on their lifestyle choice. On the other hand, rapists and pedophiles like murders do put society at risk.

Unfortunately the religious right can’t see the difference between rapists, pedophiles and homosexuals. I am guessing that that is a lifestyle choice. I believe that they can be taught to understand the difference, but they choose not to. Perhaps if they had some help from the leaders in the church this could change. But, it seems that the leaders of these churches are the most ignorant of all.

What can be done when people choose to be ignorant?

Instead of reading the story of Jesus, where he set an example by eating with the sinners, the ignorant choose to bend the teachings in the Bible to support their own ignorance. As we read and think about the life of Jesus we realize that the key confrontation is between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus is the radical that stands up against the popular teaching of the time that sin causes our misfortune. And, this sin is defined by long lists of dietary restrictions, rituals that should be followed and peculiar ideas not based in fact. Jesus comes back against these ideas by saying that love is more important than these silly ideas, rituals and restrictions. So, if the law has a basis in love of humanity, then it is valid.

Of course the Pharisees put Jesus to death because of this heresy. But the legacy of Jesus lived on, teaching us that the value of love beyond the written law. We should remember that the laws that Jesus questioned were written in the Bible. He worked a miracle on the Sabbath, proving to the Pharisees that Jesus could not have come from God. Breaking the Sabbath was more important than an obscure writing in Leviticus saying that a man should not lie with a man like a woman. But, the present day Pharisees have presented themselves as the leaders of the fundamentalists and the hatred they show by their ignorance isn’t any different than the ignorance the Pharisees who put Jesus to death. And, that hatred fans out to society.

How many Christians truly believe that Jesus would approve of the intolerance for homosexuals that the religious right spread among its crowd? I can hear the echo, “Crucify Him, Crucify Him,” that originated from the mouths of our present day Pharisees.









Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Religion, Homosexuals, Ignorance, NeoPharisees, Fundamentalists, Christians

If we assume that the purpose of religion is to enhance the human experience by giving us solace in our existence, then we can try to understand in broad terms what the difference is between religious conservatives and religious liberals.

In general everyone would like his or her life to be better than it is. A conservative is a person who is generally happy with the way things are and they would only like to change the status quo if there is a high expectation that the change will make things better. A liberal on the other hand is a person who is generally not happy with the way things are. They are willing to change things in the hope that things will get better, because they can’t get much worse.

You can change the statement to a religion perspective easily by restating what I said this way:

Everyone wants religious solace in some way. A religious conservative is someone who finds this solace in his religion and is pretty happy about this. Any change to finding this comfort and consolation may be attempted only if they are certain that the change will help, not harm the arrangement. A religious liberal is not happy about how she/he finds his/her religious solace. This person is always in search of trying to make the religious experience better by many different methods. They may read the Bible in search of new understanding, or they may explore different religions or religious ideas in different ways.

Obviously this is quite abstract and general, but it is a good place to start to look at the different behavior of religious conservatives and religious liberals. There are religious conservatives in every faith, and they each believe that they have found the true religious way. The degree of conservative nature could be measured by asking how strongly one believes that they have found the one and only way to religious solace. Obviously the vocabulary differs from religion to religion, and different religions have different names for “religious solace.” Even an atheist has some level of comfort in his understanding of his place in the Universe. The agnostic would be more liberal if they search for solace, but are skeptical about the existence of God than the conservative atheist that knows for certain that God does not exist.

This helps to explain why each group behaves the way that they do. Conservative groups need assurance that they are right about what they believe, because doubt brings fear that they might be wrong. Other religious groups present a doubt to the conservative’s status quo. Thinking about problems in religious understanding lead to doubt, unless those questions are quickly answered. This behavior explains the need for annotated Bibles that have the answers for typical questions noted through out the book. Lingering questions can lead to doubt and doubt can lead to fear and fear can lead to less religious solace. Fear of losing religious solace permeates the religious conservative culture on many levels. And, it explains why it is so important for religious conservatives to prove that they have all the answers to life’s questions. These answers are often found in lists of laws and the adherence to strict rules and rituals.

Religious liberals typically believe that their faith is a good starting place to understand their place in the Universe. Being human and imperfect means that they can’t expect perfect solace, but they try any way. Religion is seen as a good suggestion for human behavior and trying to understand religious teachings gives insight into how to better live ones life. The exceptions and details of how to apply each rule, law or ritual gives insight, but they do not give all the answers. Answers can be found anywhere and in any aspect of life. Human imagination offers hypothetical situations that challenge laws and rules and these challenges offer insight that each situation is specific. This leads to the idea of situational ethics that liberals accept and conservatives deny.

The main point is that questions and indecision with respect to religion are feared by the conservative if they challenge his/her understanding of his religious foundation. The liberal already feels that her/his religious experience is less than it could be and questions about his/her understanding is already common place. Answering those questions is a hope for the religious liberal, but not the expectation.

Where you find yourself on the spectrum from religious liberal to religious conservative is most likely to be in the center for most people. There are issues and ideas that you believe and you fear challenges to those ideas. There are issues and ideas that you have doubts about and you wonder how they should be resolved. Conservative groups looking for members look for people who are searching, and they offer concrete answers in the hope that these answers will give the person religious solace. Conservatives find comfort in knowing that others agree with them, giving strength to their religious foundation. Liberal groups have a completely different attitude, believing that people looking for religious solace may stumble in and take some solace from community worship. Liberals expect that people will gain insight if they need it and people generally find what they need from the range of rituals, law and rules offered.


Liberal or Conservative, it doesn’t really matter because we are all looking for the same thing. The paths to religious solace are varied and many…








Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

In my entry yesterday I introduced the term NeoPharisees. Those who are familiar with the Bible and the English language probably understand what I meant for the term to mean. Although I created the term out of my imagination I thought that I should search the web for others who have also independently created the same term. Since the rise of the religious right and the backlash to that movement I expected to find a large number of entries, because once I thought about it the term seems to be a quite obvious and descriptive term. But I was surprised to find only twelve entries on Google. The earliest entry that I found was from 2002.



But, I was correct that the term always refers to the same Fundamentalist Christians that wave the Bible proclaiming their hatred of all things different from what they call Christian. The irony of this revolves around the reason that Jesus was put to death for the blasphemy proclaimed by the Pharisees and the hordes of Fundamentalist Christians proclaiming books, films, homosexuals and any number of other things as unchristian. This irony is captured beautifully in the term NeoPharisee.


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

When we hear the term “truth squads” we think of totalitarian governments using force to quiet the opposition to their rule. Somehow the people in charge believe that using force will convince the masses to believe in the government. What generally happens is people become more resolved to oppose the government and they take their opposition underground to build support.

Governments and Religions are alike in this respect. They both want to increase the number of people who believe the rhetoric they speak to the masses. And, most of the time both have very little proof that what they say is actually based in fact or truth. The followers of either group of leaders need to put faith in the leader, the rhetoric or the ideology and hope for the best.

Neither governments nor religions need to listen to the people. Some do and some don’t. Some claim that they don’t listen, but are forced to listen. Some claim to listen, but they do what they want anyway. This classic struggle goes back to tribalism and it won’t be solved quickly. But, the fact remains that governments and religions still prefer to have the support of the people in order to demonstrate the illusion of proof of their authority.

So, when I read in the Christian Science Monitor that the religious right was organizing truth squads in advance of the release of the movie “The Da Vinci Code” I wasn’t really surprised.

Of course these religious fanatics want everyone to believe that there is only one way to look at religion, their way. The possibility that given the same facts there might be another way to look at what we know would never dawn on them. Religious scholars have already decided which facts that they wish to ignore, and which facts they put higher importance on. They have a whole hierarchy of importance given to certain facts, and that order of importance creates the differences between the religions as we know them.

For example, the Bible tells us the importance of rest on the Sabbath. Jesus, when challenged by the Pharisees about working miracles on the Sabbath, offered His view that love triumphed over the adherence to this law. The simple attitude toward the Sabbath varies widely from religion to religion, and it is mainly due to the difference in the different religions priority of this law and the other laws in the religion. Even the fact that most Christians choose Sunday for their “Sabbath,” while Jews adhere to Saturday and Muslims choose Friday. Each religion has it’s own reasons, but they all stem from different interpretations of the information given to them.

So, if a group of scholars discover “new” evidence in the so-called Gnostic Gospels that shows the history of Christianity in a different light why should we not give the “new” evidence a voice?

Well, established religions easily argue that “new” evidence will show that they are wrong and religions will do anything to defend their position. The two possible explanations for difference between a current religious doctrine and “new” evidence could be:

1) The Religious Doctrine is wrong.
2) The “new” evidence is wrong.

Which choice do you think that established religions would be likely to choose?

It isn’t very likely that established religions would say that they are wrong, and since religion requires no proof, only faith, the established religions will certainly be against any “new” evidence even without reading or understanding it. Of course, by reading it they are certainly likely to find discrepancies that they will use to dismiss the “truth” of the “new” evidence. However, this is certainly hypocritical because they defend the discrepancies in the Bible all the time.

Truth is certainly not the priority with established religions of any kind. Instead protecting the established doctrine from questioning based on “new” evidence is the highest priority. And that is why the established religions have set up “truth squads” to protect the doctrine from attack by those who are soon to be armed with “new” evidence.

The sad thing is that if a sane and rational person were to place all of the evidence on the table without any personal religious bias this person would certainly come to some completely different interpretation of both the facts of history and the doctrine that has been preached by religions through out the ages. And, if another completely different person did the same thing it would be likely that this person would not agree with the first, let alone any of the established religions. And, so if we are to believe that these revelations of religion have come down through the generations from God then those revelations mean different things to every person on this planet. And, to make matters even more complicated if the same person were to look at the evidence at 20, 30, 50 and 75 years of age they would have come to four different conclusions based on their own personal experiences as well.

So, the point is that the “truth squads” that are gathering to protect the established religions are not interested in truth at all. These so-called “truth squads” are interested in protecting the established doctrine that is based only on tradition and a small portion of selected evidence. They are interested in maintaining the status quo and not truth at all.

If anyone is interested in additional Early Christian Writings check out this web page.

Crossposted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger, BlogSpirit


Politics, Da Vinci Code, Religion, Fundamentalists

One vivid memory of our family’s travels through Europe was our visit to Rome. We arrived in the train station pushing my eight-month-old son in a German Baby Buggy and my two-year-old daughter in a rickety stroller. As first time visitors we had no idea what we should expect to see, but we were young and adventurous and we had already been through quite a bit of Europe already.

When we got off the train our first objective was to find a hotel. We weren’t wealthy and we didn’t need much, just a place to put our stuff while we toured the town and sleep when we got back from the touring. These places are certainly easy to find. We still remembered one man at the information desk in the train station in Venice tell us how to find a hotel. He said, “You go outside and you look up. You see the signs that say hotel, and you go there.” He was right, there were plenty of places, but it also feels nice to have someone recommend a place, even though I’m sure that that doesn’t really make a difference either.

Like airports, train stations have little shops where you can buy snacks and souvenirs. And, just at the exit of the train station was a little shop, similar to a Mrs. Fields cookie shop selling biscotti. A couple of the people working there were talking to a couple of people on the other side of the counter when I heard one say something in Italian mixed with the word “Americano.” I knew that they were directing their comment toward us, and suddenly a ball of biscotti dough came flying through the air and hit one of our suitcases that I was dragging behind me. I looked back, and they all feigned innocence. Of course, I questioned whether this visit was going to turn out well after that incident, but we soldiered on.

We had been warned by other Americans who had visited Italy that there was more crime the further south that you went in the country. Based on this information we opted not to visit Pompeii during our first trip to this country. Maybe with more experience we would feel more emboldened, but with two young children in strollers we could be viewed as easy marks.

We found a very nice room in an old building relatively near the train station. It was a good price for a large room high enough that we had a nice view of the city. We could also look out the window and watch the activity in the street below. While we watched out the window we noticed that the owner of the hotel and the owner of the restaurant across the street were buddies. We began to make up stories about these two men and there connection with the Mafia. It was fun to pretend, and as we watched their interactions with the other people in the street our story grew. But, after we had rested and planned our first walk around Rome we left the building and visited some of the famous Tourist attractions.

When we returned, it was dark and we were tired and hungry. We decided that we would eat at the “Mafia Restaurant” across from our hotel. The owner went out of his way to move tables and make room for our baby buggy and stroller. He paid attention to both our children and offered suggestions for the children that weren’t on the menu. In fact, we could certainly see a general trend that the further south we went in Europe the friendlier the restaurant waiters became toward our children. Perhaps if we had gone to Pompeii someone would have decided to take them off our hands.

We spent 4 days in Rome casually walking to churches, museums, the Forum, and the Vatican. We stopped and ate randomly around the city and we made no effort to rush from place to place. After all, with two young kids rushing them around will certainly result in no one having a good time.

On one of our little walks we were on a little elevated area across the street from the Coliseum and the Forum. We were looking at all the cats that called this place home. My son was asleep in his buggy and my wife was pointing to a cat for my daughter to admire. I began to look at a map to see where we should go next when my wife started yelling at me. I looked at her trying to understand what she was saying as she grew more hysterical. And I looked down the hill where I saw the baby buggy rolling ahead of me toward the busy street at the bottom of the hill. I ran as fast as I could and I caught that buggy a good ten feet before the street and saved my son from being on the front page of the paper. The headlines would surely have read, “Stupid Americans Kill Their Kid,” or whatever that translates into Italian.

But maybe it wouldn’t have ended that way. One thing about Italian drivers is that they drive fast and they stop on a dime when you use a pedestrian crosswalk. In fact, at one of the busiest streets we wanted to use a crosswalk, but we worried that the drivers wouldn’t stop for us. The crosswalk didn’t have a light associated with it, so we stood on the curb looking at the drivers as they sped by. I thought to myself that I should step into the street and that would make the driver stop, but would he? Well, I could push the buggy out first, nah. Since it didn’t look like anyone was going to voluntarily stop we decided to just go for it, and to our amazement all four lanes of traffic stopped as we made our way across the street.

On our final day in Rome we decided to do make one last adventure. We were beginning to feel like we were old hands at Rome. Maybe we let our guard down slightly, or maybe we were just too excited about all the wonderful things we were seeing but when I felt a newspaper touch my arm I reacted just a bit too slow. I reached down and grabbed for whatever I could find and to my surprise and my wife’s as well I found myself holding two teenage girls by the front of their shirts. I was yelling at them in English and my wife was yelling at me to let them go.

What had happened in the flash of an instant was these two girls had picked my pocket. My wallet was in my front trouser pocket in an effort to avoid this problem, but these two girls had managed to get my wallet and I wanted it back. Well, as I became aware of the what had happened I was yelling at these girls to return my wallet and their mother was standing at the side of the way holding a little baby wrapped in a blanket. The girls tried to make me let go by lifting up their shirts saying “you want to see?” But, that didn’t work, I just kept saying that I wanted my wallet back. A crowd gathered around, and some of the people in the crowd began to ask the mother to give the wallet back. One member of the Italian Navy was able to persuade the mother who somehow tossed the wallet on to the street and pointed. She said that she didn’t have the wallet, she pointed to it saying, “it’s over there.” I let the girls go, and I picked up the wallet. After being through this ordeal I wasn’t thinking straight and I thought it was over, but my wife wisely said that I should check the contents. The credit cards were there, but the cash was missing. Since it was the last day we had checked our luggage at the train station and the claim check was also missing. The crowd hadn’t moved very far, so I started yelling at the mother again, saying that I wanted my money back. The crowd that had begun walking off turned around and the naval officer said something to the woman. Suddenly a wad of money appeared in the same location that the wallet had appeared. The crowd turned again and I counted the money and saw the claim check. About ten US dollars worth of money was missing, but that was OK with me. It wasn’t worth fighting for those last ten bucks. I was happy, because this could have been much worse.

As the people walked off they told us that we should be more careful of the gypsies. One woman undid her shirt to show us the secret place in her bra where she kept her money. The naval officer told us to be more careful as well. They seemed to think that it was our fault that we let the Gypsies steal our money. We finished our last tour, and got back to the train station with my wallet stuffed at the bottom of my son’s baby buggy, because my wife didn’t have a bra with a secret compartment.











Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

Coming from a competitive sports background I have to admit that the concept of Relay for Life is a bit odd. “Let me get this straight. You get a bunch of people together and you spend 24 four hours taking turns walking around a track? What’s the point?” I asked my wife when she suggested that we walk in the Relay for Life a couple of years ago. “Does any one win? Do you keep track of the number of laps walked?” I pushed a bit harder.

“No, you walk around the track, and sponsors give you stuff,” she told me. “The relay tries to raise money for cancer research,” she also told me. I had to agree with her that raising money was certainly a good objective.

So, my wife, my kids and several groups that we belong to all showed up bright and early one Saturday morning and began to walk around the track. But, it was more than just the walking. There were speeches from people who survived cancer. There was an emotionally heart wrenching candle light hour just after sunset. Each candle represented a friend or family member of a person participating who had fought cancer. There were games during the day for the kids while they waited for their turn to walk around the track. There were times when almost everyone was walking. There were times when very few people were walking. The struggle to keep the relay going at 3:00 AM seemed to represent the struggle to keep the research going even when cancer is no longer on the front pages with new treatments.

The experience was terrific, and I would recommend it to anyone, especially if you have a friend or family member who is fighting cancer or you have lost a friend or family member to this disease. But, since the main point of the relay is to raise money, donating to the effort is an even better way to support the Relay for Life. Mulligan, a member of the Bring It On blog is participating in this event the weekend of March 25th. So, please check out her blog and contribute what you can.











Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

Human Beings are emotional animals. However, civilization requires us to tame our emotions to some degree. How much do we tame them? Which ones need to be tamed the most? Different people have their own opinions. Plato was a stoic and shunned emotion to a great extent. Latin culture finds virtue in passion as I wrote on Friday. Americans culture accepts more passion than British culture but less than Latin culture.

But, even the emotions that are controlled is a cultural issue. Who and what should we hate? Who and what should we admire? Some religions tell us to hide the natural sexual tension, but they pump up the hatred of "sin" even though the definition of “sin” changes from religion to religion. Is it a “sin” to imagine the leg of another person? What if the person is the opposite sex? What if they are the same sex? How far up the leg can you imagine before it becomes a sin?

Can you imagine killing another person? Is that a sin? What if they did something evil to you or your family or your country? Are any of these passions sinful? Remember, these are just thoughts that enflame your passions, but they aren’t actions in themselves. Culture tells us where to draw those lines.

But these same passions are the anger or love we feel for champions and those who destroy the things we love. Sometimes this passion drives us to jump to conclusions that could be wrong and act out of passion and not logic. Taming the passions help to keep us from irrational reaction. Then again sometimes-irrational reaction makes life worth living. For example, spontaneous romance certainly ranks higher in experience than a planned romantic encounter.

Obviously, moderation of emotion is how man became civilized. But, like anything else, one can take this to an extreme. Cultural elimination of public display of emotions is what happened under Queen Victoria in the 19th Century.








Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Religion

Now I have to admit that after loosing 50 pounds I do feel a lot healthier than I did two years ago. I have a lot more energy than I did two years ago, which seems really strange if you think about how much effort goes into loosing weight and keeping it off. I get up every morning at 5:00 AM and I’m usually at the club by 5:45 AM to put in my 1:15 workout. The people promoting the idea of being healthy tell you all these things to motivate you into doing the workout and watching what you eat. Once you have motivated yourself into working out on a regular basis, which is considered a problem by most people, thin or not you will begin to loose weight. But, what you never hear about are the problems with being thin.

Well, the next and most obvious problem that you will face if you choose to go down the road to getting in shape is the cost. Well, you may be thinking about the cost of buying that new exercise machine that you saw advertised in your e-mail or on TV. But, even without spending money on the unnecessary exercise equipment that will more than likely end up in your garage taking up space there is another cost. You may be thinking about the cost of the membership to the health club, but even that isn’t required if you really want to loose weight, because you can just jog in place in your living room watching TV and loose weight. No, the most expensive part of loosing weight is buying the new clothes after you find out that the old ones no longer fit. I have eight pair of size 36 waist pants that need to be replaced with eight pairs of size 29 pants. And, they don’t sell size 29 pants at the discount stores. I have a choice of going to the children’s section or going to the more expensive stores that actually have tailors taking in the waist to the right fit.

But, replacing my pants isn’t the end of it. My T-shirts don’t fit either. The large and even extra large T-shirts that I had been wearing two years ago now look more like pull over dresses on me. I had two or three old T-shirts from twenty some years ago that were medium, and they are now my most comfortable T-shirts. One is a tie-dye rainbow T-shirt; one is a Kinks concert shirt that I couldn’t part with; and one is an old Ohio State University T-shirt from my high school days when I was still considering going to that school.

But T-shirts are a dime a dozen (actually about $10 at whatever event you spend $50 to attend) so I’ll soon have plenty more at the right size. In fact, now that I have started running in races I’ll have one from every race that I choose to spend $20 to enter. The more expensive part is replacing my dress shirts that I actually wear to work every day. My neck size is no longer 18” but more like 15½” which means that all of my dress shirts look like button down dresses and they need to be replaced.

Clothing isn’t the only issue. One thing that most people don’t realize is that fat is a good insulating material. This means that if you have an extra layer of fat, or as the Inuit call it - blubber - you are more insulated from the cold. Since I live in California most people from back east believe that the perfect California weather lends itself to little worries. Two years ago I could have told you that I rarely ever wore a jacket of any type. The temperature where I live doesn’t go below freezing and when I’m outside in the morning when it is in the 40s I am usually just going from the house to the car or the car to the gym. Well, two years ago I was getting up that early going to the gym. The point is that from the time I moved to California until just recently I had almost never worn a jacket in California. I wore one when I went to the mountains in the winter to visit the snow. And I wore one in the summer when we went to the fogged in beach, but that was about it. I remember one night when I went to an outdoor cello concert without a jacket and some of the people in my party were complaining about the 50 degree temperature, but it was tolerable to me.

However, now that I am thin I can’t stand the cold. I went to the beach on a warm day and shivered for and hour with the heat cranked up in the car trying to get warm. I used to keep the house at 65, but I keep building fires in the fireplace and cranking the thermostat to 72. Did you know that firewood costs about $200 a cord in California? I have dug out all my old sweaters and some of those don’t seem to keep me warm enough.

Two weeks ago I thought that these were the extent of the problems with being thin. However, I discovered that I was wrong. I was in the locker room at the club after my workout. I am usually less than 100% coherent after a workout because I’m an old guy and I take some time to recover. So, when people say things to me I often look at them, smile and nod and go on. So, when this big fat naked guy walked up to me and said, “Nice waist, what size are you.” I just answered, “about a 29,” and I went on. Then two minutes later I thought to myself, “that’s just creepy.” Fortunately the conversation didn’t go on after that, but I was creeped out for a while. I just hope that I don’t run into that guy again. I wouldn’t know what to say.

So, those are some of the dangers and problems with being thin. So, when you are watching the next infomercial for the “Gut Cruncher” or the “Air-Glide Cycle-Master,” just remember that there are problems with being thin. The grass may seem to be greener on the other side, but I’ve been on both sides and I know the problems with being thin.

Disclaimer: For all of the serious health fanatics 85% of this post was written in a sarcastic tone. So, before you tell me that I’m wrong on point X, Y or Z please go back and reread the post and look for the humor. If you still can’t find the humor then please move on to the next blog. But all the same, thank you for reading my blog.






Health, Fitness, Excercise