Vikings! …and Sea Kayaking

I’m currently reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse, in which he explores ‘natural experiments’ to try and explain what makes civilizations succeed or fail. So far he’s talked about Easter Island and other Polynesian islands, Ancient Pueblo Peoples (southwest American natives), and the Mayan. [note: the ROM (in Toronto) currently has a Mayan exhibition. I went to see it a week or two ago. I wasn't too impressed with the ROM's treatment, but the artifacts and myths that they presented were really interesting. The one thing I really liked was their idea of the milky way being a giant sky serpent who crossed the sky each night]

Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery

Shortly before my sister was to be married this summer, my Dad had a heart attack. It was his third…I think. It wasn’t major, but the doctors were saying how it was only time till ‘the big one’ came. I think he was wanting a stent, which I believe he had received after his first heart attack, which was very major. But the doctors were saying it wouldn’t do anything, and instead were suggesting he get triple-bypass surgery. Which…I mean, in terms of medical vernacular, we’ve all heard of before. It’s like, the big word for surgery, or whatnot. Anyways, I was shocked to find out my Dad declined the surgery, and instead decided to completely revamp his lifestyle. My Mom at the time was saying that the doctors were saying that, that’s nice, but too late. And I agreed, although through blind faith and pure ignorance. My Dad said that the statistics was not in the favour of the surgery, which I just couldn’t believe. I thought, really? Wouldn’t doctors know this, and thus stop performing the surgery?

Free Will – Sam Harris

Here’s a short article from Sam Harris about how free will does not exist. I agree with him for most of it…but don’t really understand what he’s saying at the end. Read it here from his blog, or below:

End of Illness – David Agus

Hey, watch this:

It’s this doctor, Dr. Agus, talking about how we need to look at heart disease and cancer (and something else I’m forgetting) differently. He thinks a lot of those kinds of killers have more to do with how we live our lives and inflammation, rather than the typical germ-laden way of looking at medicine.

Cormac McCarthy

I have lots I want to post about…but no time to really flesh it all out. So instead, here’s an interview the NYTimes did with Cormac McCarthy, the author of All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, The Road, No Country for Old Men, Suttrey, and others. Blood Meridian is among my top 3 books I’ve ever read. Right now I’m reading All the Pretty Horses and am in love. Check it out:

Life After Death … from the perspective of a 7 year old…

After I finished reading James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, I went on goodreads to rate it (I think I gave it 3/5 stars), and while there, started reading other people’s reviews… [note: if you want to see my goodreads account, go here]

I stumbled upon the following… no words can describe how awesome this is:

I had an unusually long conversation with my daughter Georgia (also now a Goodreader) once when she was seven years old (she’s now 14) and the matter of eschatology came up, so I asked her directly – well, what does happen when you die? So she laid out what she thinks happens, and I was so taken by the stuff she came out with that I wrote it down. As it’s a variety of religious experience I thought it appropriate to include here.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE

Heaven has different parts to it. In one part there are monsters, but they’re good. In another part they’re like orcs but they’re good. In the third part there are dinosaurs, and they’re bad.
Jesus is not in heaven. He is above heaven. He was a normal man but he went on the cross and died and he became magic. He was alive again and turned into an angel. Now he can listen to anyone on the earth just by thinking of their name.
When people die they all go to heaven. It could be the good part or the bad part. When you die you turn into a zombie, but then quite quickly you turn into a skeleton and that’s when you go to heaven. The skeletons in heaven can’t see the Earth at all, but to the good orcs Earth appears like the brightest star in the sky. But they have to look down to see it, because they are all upside down.
If you are cremated your ashes float up and turn into your soul. It goes up into a purple porthole. It meets a sorter who asks you what age you want to be and that’s what you stay at from then on. In this world everything is slightly see-through. You only spend 1000 years here and then you go to the graveyard and sleep. But one day in each 10 years you come alive again. But this world is not heaven so jesus is not there. The bad people who die become good. For five years out of 1000 they are punished in a house sized prison cell by having to eat all the food they really hate and listen to all the music they really hate.
There is a feather of truth and a catch up course, but I can’t remember what they are for.
People have gone into space in rockets but they haven’t seen heaven because it is very small.
When animals die, if it’s on concrete they fade away and become invisible. If it’s on soil, they sink bit by bit into the earth and they become animal zombies. Our hamster Lucy became an animal zombie, but all animal zombies are good, not bad.

Note : don’t blame me for any of this, I never allowed her to watch any zombie films intil she was 12! I don’t know where she’s got any of this stuff apart from orcs

The Varieties of Religious Experience

I’m currently reading William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience. William James, for those who don’t know him, was an early psychologist and an early pragmatist. He’s also the brother of Henry James. The book concerns the nature of religion and the neglect of science, in James’ view, in the academic study of religion. I’m only 1/3 of the way through, but I started reading up on it on the internet, and came upon a neat commentary that I thought I’d share.

[note: I also want to point out how similar William James and (the late) Christopher Hitchens are: while they had very different professions, they were both academics, highly literate, very eloquent, and are famous in part for their interest in religion (although they share opposite views). Finally, although they're both very academic and argue from an objective standpoint, they both seem to have their personal reasons for taking the views they have: James may have put off insanity with biblical passages (see below), and Chris's mother killed herself in a suicide pact with a former Anglican minister (and embraced the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the same guru who had earlier bewitched the Beatles. *)]