A stormy Friday winter night.
Soft yellow light illuminates the green walls.
The room is warm. Two cups of hot chocolate
and a plate of cookies on the table.

It’s my grandparents’ place. Shelves full of books.
A big drawing on the wall in black and yellow.
A man collecting seaweeds in the storm
His horse and cart are waiting.

My grandmother is sitting in her couch
watching some family drama on TV.
My grandfather is in the kitchen.
Delicious smells of cooking hang in the air.

I’m lying on the sofa bed,
Reading old magazines,
bound together to keep history alive.
Dozens of volumes. I know them all by heart.

A stormy Friday winter night.
Soft yellow light illuminates the green walls.
The room is warm. Two cups of hot chocolate
and a plate of cookies on the table.

Today I got an email that would save my life. I don’t even need to believe, because it’s guaranteed that even if I don’t believe, only reading it would make all my wishes come true.

However, whenever I get such an email I wish it would be the last one. So far it has not worked.

And then there is also the problem of ecards, but that is a different story altogether.

What the big deal, why make so much fuss?
At worst you'll have a bad date, but at least you'll get some practice

Recently, I got into an argument (again) about the invalidity of the religious view of the world. I pointed out that throughout the entire history, the religious view was world kept changing (for instance: earth was at centre of the universe, everything was made of four elements, bodies fell at speeds relative to their weight, and flies had four legs).

At any stage, the truth of the religious truth was absolute enough to demand the execution of those who disagreed with it. Then the views changed, and other truths became absolute and worth killing for.

Knowing how the Church’s truth kept changing, and that the infallibility of the past is not that of today, it defies understanding how people can still insist that today’s truth is the one and only?

Why are winters colder than summers?

Religion is the ability not to see contradiction when killing those who love less than you do.

High mountains are closer to the sun than deep valleys, yet they are much colder. Why?

In a discussion about science and education, together with a list of countries like Japan and Singapore, I mentioned the name Israel. And all of a sudden, by mentioning the unmentionable name I seemed to have triggered a response like no other. Never in my blog life did I encounter such strong response, not when I talked about drugs, prostitution, human slavery or harvesting organs from prisoners. Why is that?

Let’s look at some facts. Israel’s birth was in war. Like most other wars it’s controversial, and there are numerous viewpoints and interpretations of the events. Undoubtedly both sides had their fair share of atrocities. Yet, no other birth of a nation has created such hatred.

Nowadays the existence of Israel is a fact. None of those who took part in the birth of the country is in a position of power any more. Most of them are dead. So even those who feel that the birth of Israel was in sin must admit that most living Israelis had nothing to do with the birth of their country. Yet they are our target of hatred.

There is no doubt that the Arab-Israeli conflict is ugly. No doubt that this has been a horrible war that both sides committed atrocities. But there is also little doubt that either side is solely at blame. The situation is rather hopeless, and no one, absolutely no one has a solution. Yet, we hate Israel.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is far from being the bloodiest conflict in the world. It’s far from having the worse record of atrocities. Let’s look at some numbers (all taken from the Historical atlas of 20th century Matthew White):

The total death toll of the Israeli Arab conflict in over 100 years claimed about 60,000 people, out of which 6,000 Arabs were killed in the 40 years of occupation. It’s a horrible number indeed. However, in the same period 83 million people were killed as a result of tyranny and genocide. That is Israel has been responsible for 0.07% of all such killings, even though it’s population is 0.1% of the world population. Not so bad for a country in a state of war. During the same period:

In China 40 m were killed under Mao
In Russia 20 m under Stalin
Sudan conflict has consumed 225,000
Somalia 400,000
Romania 150,000
Cambodia 225,000
Algeria 100,000 (fundamentalist Moslem insurrection only, not including the Algerian war)
Kurdistan 300,000
Liberia 150,000
Angola 550,000
Philippines 50,000

Not that any of these numbers justify the Arab-Israeli war, but one must wonder why the hatred in the street is focused on Israel rather than on Algeria or Angola.

How come Israeli scholars are banned from many English academic conferences unless they condemn their government policies? Why don’t we have similar p from Burmese or Sudanese scholars, for instance? And why, when any Muslim decides to detonate a bomb anywhere in the world, let it be London or Bali calls against Israel can be heard in the street?

Is it because blaming the bomber can lead to more religious hatred, and more bombs, while it’s safe to blame Israel? After all, no bomb, suicide bomber, airplane hijacking by an Israeli has ever taken place?

Let’s not forget that in London it the Polish were at fault when they were first occupied by Hitler. Is it possible that we still hold the same views?

The world ‘scientific’ and ‘science’ have been misused too often, mainly to strengthen arguments or claims. However, quite often the ‘science’ presented is all but scientific. Sometimes it’s not easy to know if a claim is scientific or not.

A good guideline can be to think whether you can imagine new facts being discovered that have the potential to support or reject a claim. That is, science is potentially provable and refutable. Every proof is temporary while refutation is for ever. For example, a new discovery in the nuclear processes field may confirm or force us to throw away everything we know about the age of the universe. So although our understanding of the age of the universe may not be true, it is scientific: it is the best explanation we have come up with to fit the facts we know.

On the other hand, the fact that we have not been able to refute something does not make it scientific. So while there is no conceivable way to prove heaven and hell, our inability to prove it does not make it scientific (nor true).

This is the crux of most scientific-religious arguments. While religion tries to show any ‘not yet known’ in a scientific theory as a proof that the scientific theory is invalid, it presents irrefutable claims (often tautologies) as proofs.

And to think how many people have been killed, and are still being killed over our inability to accept that we just need to live with this gap, as it can never be bridged.

Antidepressants are largely waste of time and money say experts

How depressing. Just not knowing this fact made so many people happy. I think they should sue the media for mental damages, bringing bacdepression.

A Zen student, who felt he had mastered his learning, decided to leave his master and go to the world to find his own students. When he went to ask his master’s blessing, his master pointed at a pile of rocks and asked, if the pile was there, or was it only in his student’s mind.

The student answered that the sacred Buddha had taught us that everything in the world is the manifestation of our mind, the pile of rocks, as well, was only the creation of the mind.

“It’s a very heavy load to walk around with in your travel”, answered the Zen master. Why don’t you go when you can leave it here behind you?