Freitag, 14. März 2014
No, I ain't dead...
Donnerstag, 25. Juli 2013
Subarachnoid hemorrhage...
The harmless-seeming traffic accident I described in my last post led, overnight, to an intra-cranial hemorrhage. My hands went numb, and finally speech was impaired, too. I was rushed to hospital, CT-scanned, and underwent surgery.
I really don't know why all the medical procedures of the last year resulted in a shaved or bald skull. But now the stubbles have grown, and I look less monkish.
Rashid meant that djinn Iblīs, who is a far better story than the Christian devil. According to the Qur'an, Allah created three kinds of beings (and possibly more of which we don't know yet): Angels (made out of light), djinns (made of pure fire), and humans (made of clay). Of these three species, angels had no free will, but djinns and humans had. So, when Allah presented Adam as the new Lord of the earth, he requested the angels and djinns to bow before him, thus accepting him as their master (Islam is about the most hierarchical/feudalistic religion on the planet, everything is about submission.) Anyway, while everybody else bowed to Adam, Iblīs did not, was expelled from paradise, and was promised he'd end up in hell. He got a new name - Shaitan - and was allowed to tempt humans, before finally going to hell with his victims.
Anyway, I jumped off that metaphorical shovel with which Shaitan was about to fork me to hell. Or rather, that expensive private clinic did the job, with CT and advanced brain surgery. No lasting after-effects, except, maybe, an increase of diligence when walking along crowded streets. And a certain satisfaction that, a few years ago, I decided to live every day as if it were my last.
Freitag, 31. Mai 2013
Big Bang in Ding Daeng...
A few days ago I came about a Christian apologetic website, not exactly the fire & brimstone kind, but a LOVE site. The presupposition being, of course, the flawedness of all human nature. now the interesting thing about that feller is that he is absolutely preoccupied with the idea that the big bang proves that Jesus was right. Goes like this:
(1) There are cosmological hypotheses which posit that the universe had a beginning (Vilenkin et al). These are right.
(2) If the universe had a beginning, then something must have caused it.
(3) That must have been my god, who is eternal and outside of space-time.
(4) Therefore Jesus.
It's the crude form of the Kalam argument developed by Muslim anti-rationalist Al-Ghazzali in the 12th century, the very influential inquisitor who ended the short blossom of Neo-Platonism, science and free thought in Islamic science.
Interesting enough his argument is based on Aristotle's "prime mover" argument, which shows that some concepts that zig-
zag through the devout scene over the centuries are just too attractive.
William Lane Craig adapted this kind of reasoning with a few original additions and misinterpretations.
Wes Morriston provided a very careful refutation of the philosophic parts.
I'll add just a few unsorted addenda.
(1) The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem does indeed posit a begin of the big bang. It does, however, not say that at the begin of the big bang there was "Nothing". That is a strange misinterpretation by interested parties - after all, the authors are physicists trying to understand a process of space expansion, and know enough about Xeno's paradox to avoid such intuitive simplification. All three have published about quantum fluctuations and such as possible pre-singularity states. The paper calls for a new physics, not for Theologians.
Even if BGV posits a zero point, it is by far not the standard cosmological model. It is one of a few dozen competing theories - a first introduction to the multitude is here. For further references, see here It is one of those situations where many physical explanations are thinkable, but none requires a theistic or deistic creator.
(2) Now, as H.L. Mencken once remarked," for every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and... wrong". The idea of space itself expanding is pretty counter-intuitive, yet it's an established fact. And the first microseconds, with the whole universe the size of a grapefruit and less are especially strange - and do not lead themselves to simplistic explanations derived from observation of objects in Euclidean space. Quantum mechanics raises its Gorgon head. There is progress being made by better and better understanding of quantum phenomena. Not, however, by ignoring them and returning to the Aristolelian notion of motion, potentiality, and the mover.
The "law" of causality - as everyday thinking implies it - is something not inherent in quantum physics. Have a look at vacuum energy or the uncertainty principle, and weep. Following the process of inflation back in time, traditional 19th century physics, even Einsteinian relativity is soon not sufficient to explain the astronomic observations. That's why the idea of a "simple" Aristotelian causation, derived from the observation of objects in euclidean space, is such a mess. We positively know it's much more complicated than that.
(3) Even if such shortcuts were, for some unknown reason, legitimate, what would follow of it? A prime cause, and nothing more. Could be a property of matter, a recurrent process with frequent inflation/deflation cycles, a unique act by something not understood, a deistic principle, or a theistic god. Now,the "Kalam/prime mover" argument has been used to argue for the Olympic gods, YHV, the Christian trinity, Allah. Its structure is open, fill in Brahma, Baal, Mithras, or Ahura Mazda - they all fit. The arguments for whatever deity is claimed to be in charge are of a theological nature - they only work inside a faith community, some only inside a special congregation. Compare Al-Ghazzali and Aquinas, all they can say that they know who that prime mover is, because they presuppose him. That's not something to write QED behind...
(4) Finally, the problem of accepting the findings of science in relation to the big bang's intricacies, which are in open dissent to all that primitive Genesis stuff, is a slippery slope. If all the mechanical erection of a sky-tent to keep the waters above out is not to be read literally, why should paradise, the fall, and god's curses be true in a literal way? Not to speak of virgin birth, resurrection, and trans-substantiation.
Anyway, I was on my way from the 7/11 market around the corner, a net full of green mangoes by my side, thinking about Giordano Bruno's "Atomism" that cost his life because it was in open dissent to substance theory favored by the Church of his time, when I heard that scooter brake, tyres screeching, and the universe went out in a big bang. I awoke amid a kilo of shattered sticky green mango pieces, mixed with sugar and a few onions.
And blood oozing from a head wound. Someone handed me a towel, and without further contemplation as to what that towel might have been used for, I stopped the bleeding. Limbs were OK. The scooter driver even sent a kid to the 7/11 to get me fresh mango. We had a soup together, while volunteer mechanics fixed the bent scooter casing. The soup woman put some mystery fluid on the wound, and got me a sticking plaster, which was sufficient after the bleeding stopped. I handed back the towel, and proceeded to our apartment.
Where I lost conscience again. Pranee phoned a doctor, who decided I had a light contusion, so it's the deck chair on the balcony, deep in the shade, for the next two days.
Ah, and green mango salad, Yam Mam Muang, served by the most beautiful woman in the world.
Freitag, 24. Mai 2013
Four Years in Seven Posts... (7)
Bangkok, Ding Daeng, May 24th, 2013.
Just after 7 am here... Didn't sleep too well. The AC machine has an overhaul scheduled next week, it's a bit noisy, so I switched it off , which resulted in 77 degrees in the bedroom (felt like 95), and I awoke from a dream that felt suspiciously like Annakin's almost drowning-in-lava-scenes in Lucas' "revenge of the crith"... So I'm on the roof again, where the soft breeze almost makes me shiver. The migrant Lao or Burmese runaway boys who sleep here now and then are off to work, like anybody else: the soi below is crowded with pedestrians, bicyclists and bikers, and the occasional pink taxi. From high above, some of them are hidden under their cargo, from rainbow-colored upscale plastic shopping bags to sacks of Jasmine rice. Some of the bicycles have a side car stacked with lightweight goods. On the other side of the alley, an ageless beauty (I wear the wrong kind of spectacles to say/see anything more concrete) is doing her laundry on the roof, the antique way involving two buckets and a lot of wringing.
It's been a while that I last saw village women do laundry by the river, banging the wash-goods endlessly against rocks. Maybe I should go out in the countryside more often. This German and Singapore experience has somewhat interrupted my integration. Well, maybe next month... The soup vendor down the alley is already doing good business, and I'm contemplating to pay him a visit. Nah, too early. It's just too nice and quiet up here. Relatively speaking, of course - there's the cacophony of voices from below, the screeching of grand predator birds above, a Boeing descending towards Don Muang Airport, and the blaring of radio, dvd, ghetto-blasters and TV sets, all woven into a thick but gentle sound carpet that would make micro-polyphonists like Györgi Ligeti blush... And then the smells: burning incense and waste, CO2 from bike-exhausts, dark diesel fumes from the traffic-blocked trucks running idle, a certain note of tomcats' piss, birds droppings, decaying vermin, ants poison, overlaid by the flowers that line the roof, and an early notion of kitchen scents, garlic, lemon grass, hot cooking oil, sweet mango, blood and fish. If I hadn't kept my olfactory instrument low by life-long smoking, I'd run amok with scents. You can kill me with a generous dose of Patchouli, violet or musk. The only scent which I positively love is pure Amber. I remember three days in Cairo, Egypt, 1974, when we checked hundreds of different amber perfumes, with our bare arms covered with all those fragrances. Me and Bobby, the voluptuous Austrian redhead. Where I learnt that any perfume will smell different on a blond, a redhead, a brunette skin. Or an Asian, as I might add these days.
Four Years in Seven Posts... (6)
Back in Germany again, for treatment this time. I may have mentioned before that I have Morbus Hodgkin, a cancer of the lymphatic system: a rather curable one. It's been in remission twice, but a few tests I did last month in Singapore indicated that it's active again. I choose a German Clinic near Hamburg for the treatment, which allows to stay in contact with my brother in law and the diverse nieces. The doctors are said to be cutting edge professionals, so I'm quite confident. Treatment will start next Monday.
Should have chosen another time of the year, though. The early winter at the North Sea coast of Germany is a damp and cold affair. 
Mist obscures everything, and you stay indoors most of the time. But I'm not here for my personal pleasure, aren't I. I'll miss my lashes and eyebrows, nevertheless. Chemo therapy is lethal to roots of hair, and it takes months to re-grow them. But then, strange enough, the first thin and soft saplings tend to be of the original hair color, and it takes months until I'm back to my geriatric white... But enough of that.
Found this article (published a few days before the election) in the German Online Magazine of "DER SPIEGEL". It may hurt, but that's the way the US are perceived from the outside...
DER SPIEGEL(Nov 5th, 2012) I'd subscribe to most of the theses...
No one (not even the Germans who are very fond of Obama) envies the president these days, his tasks pile up to a sheer nightmare.
They seem unsolvable.
Sometimes I can understand the common moron's romantic withdrawal into the fifties... If only the narrative weren't so obviously wrong. After all, it was the time when the female part of the labor force was sent back home to make sandwiches for the returning war heroes, who of course were given job priority after cleaning the world from German and Japanese dictators, and a booming post-war victor economy. The tea party, aside from making use of the ancient "Golden age" myth, ironically refers to the government propaganda aimed at facilitating that switch from war- to peace-production, especially on the labor market, plus the integration of tens of thousands of impaired GIs. After all, PTSD as a mass phenomenon has occurred in all wars of the 20th and 21st century.
This propaganda, together with the imposed conformism of the McCarthy era, when you could lose your job for having social contact with a nonconformist, can be easily spotted when you watch Hollywood movies of that time. The dialogues just don't sound like real people, and everyone is either of WASP or, sometimes, Italian descent... It's really amusing to see that the "Defenders of small government" refer to this era of high federal taxation and strong government control over the media as a "Golden age". Looks like they have the attention span of a fence post, combined with an unusual amount of confirmation bias...
Apropos fence post...
And now I'll creep under the voluminous sheets of my little guesthouse on the island of Juist, where I spend the last week before therapy.
Four Years in Seven Posts... (5)
Tale of the seven drunken vineyards, or something like it. It had started rather innocently, with a champagne breakfast (all included), and ended Jack Londonesque, King Alcohol. In between we climbed the Munster North tower – after all, from 1647 to 1874 the highest building of mankind. The South Tower was never finished, giving the Munster a rather post-modern look. Someone told us that the Munster gave “des Boches”, the Germans, the finger. A joke, of course. France and Germany are rather close these days, nothing of the “hereditary enmity” of our Fathers and Grandfathers. Strike that, it’s Great-Grandfathers and Grandfathers, considering my age. It’s an impressive little cathedral – we’ll see bigger ones, but it was good for starters. Gothic cathedrals are something you don’t have at all in Asia, and Pranee was truly impressed by the apparent lightness of the building due to its big, elongated windows.
We went there at quarter to one, to watch the astronomic clock in the transept strike 13, which it dutifully did, while all the tourists in the church counted whispery. An incredible Clock from the 16th century, renewed in the 19th, it shows Earth’s and Moon’s orbit, plus the inner and outer planets (until Saturn). Even the precession of the earth’s axis is shown (something that takes 25,800 years for one revolution), and the guide assured us that the indicator was in fact connected by the “slowest moving cogwheels on earth” to the clock’s mechanism. The vista from the tower was absolutely incredible, up and down the Rhine valley, with the Black Forest to the west, and the Vosges Mountains to the east, and the town far below us. I was glad that we had decided against overdressing, the stairs would not end as we climbed up. Well, that was a lot easier to do when I first visited Strasbourg in 1965, when I was 16.
And then Pranee dragged me to the South transept Portal and asked me what those two women statues meant. It was Ecclesia (the church) and Synagogue, referring to Paul 2 Kor 3:14
But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.
Consequently, Ecclesia is depicted as a monarch, ruling over a defeated Israel, blinded by a veil, a broken lance in her hand, the one used on Jesus on the cross. The stereotypes of Christian hate of Jews are all there, down to the “jewish” physiognomy. Whenever you want evidence for the inherent Anti-Semitism of the Catholic church, all you have to do is point to Strasbourg Munster South Transept Portal…it’s still there.
A little exhausted we sat down at a Bistro, and had a petit dejeuner, followed by a respectable coq au vin, and a very acceptable dry pinot blanc with it. Pranee insisted I give a short abstract of European and German Anti-Semitism through the ages. She was terrified, not at the fact of a hated people – the Koreans are disliked all over Asia – but at the regular circles of pogroms all over Christian countries, the blood, the violence, and the viscous lies. Accusing them of slaughtering Christian babies in their rituals, fake documents, Elders of Zion, Murderers of Jesus, etc. “But wasn’t that Jesus guy a Jew himself?” she asked in German. And an elderly Alsatian at the next table replied that, no, to his stern belief Jesus was an Aryan. Proof: he is always depicted as blond. When I intervened that in Italy and Spain, he’s always brunette, he switched to French and commented unsavory about me and my “pagan mail-order-bride”. Well, put it on the wine, my French was non-existent today - instead, I lifted my glass, smiled and said with a heavy German accent “A votre santé”.
We escaped to a guided tour of a few renowned vineyards, “avec degustation”, with the inadvertent result of a solid intoxication, which neither of us noted until the bus stopped before our hotel. One moment we were feeling fine, a bit jittery, but really fine, and the next moment, breathing the fresh evening air, we were reduced to a drunkard pair without any sense of direction. Like someone cut the sinews on the back of our knees. A porter – apparently used to the phenomenon – guided us professionally to the lift, wishing a good night…
Four Years in Seven Posts... (4)
Sitting in the Hotel Bar here in Jaipur after a Train Travel that was more of a time-travel: Nothing ever changes in India. It's the same trains with their AC Maharajah class where they bring you fresh tea whenever the wallah catches your eye, at 18 Celsius - don't ask me the Fahrenheit (64 something: COOL) - while the rest of the train is dimly lit, with 50% of the ventilation fans defect. I'm so glad we booked 1st class. Not because of the people, but because there are so incredible many of them, in closest contact, yet very respectful, no touch, half an inch distance. I feel so clumsy amongst them, like the proverbial elephant. And, of course, they all bring their bedroll with them, and some cages with feathered animals, not all of them chicken. Saw a few fighter cocks on the platform, maybe there's a major cockfight event somewhere. On the platform, they stole my cameras (both Lumixes, the old DMZ GF2 and the new elegant TZ 7.) And I had contemplated carrying the small one in my shirt pocket, but, alas, there are worse things happening at sea. A bit of a bad start.
But after a few minutes on the train, as we approached the countryside, all the helter/skelter of Delhi fell away (we stayed in the old town, not in the Capital City, and paid the price of authenticity). It was like running into a soft kind of invisible pudding that slowed every movement, like a camera on slow motion and fast motion at the same time. Can't explain it better. Very Time-Machine like, almost unreal to sit near an AC and watch the 36 Celsius barren landscape drift along outside - it's cloudy today, and we met two small thunderstorms which were very refreshing.. All the archetypal figures on display, the group of migrant workers afoot, the old sadhu, hyper colored Women in Shalwar kameez, wide trousers and a long shirt, a dress previously worn by muslim women, but so much more practical than saree, so today many, if not most women wear it ( That is: in Delhi, which is a city. We'll see how it's in the country). After a while the first water buffaloes arrived (to Pranee's astonishment they look somewhat different from the kind Thais keep.)
Pranee is - untypically - rather quiet and somewhat careful. After a while - the train had stopped for some reason, and the thunderstorm was just abating - she told me that she was - totally irrational - afraid of (or unconsciously expecting) sudden ethnic violence, especially towards Muslims. Well, not that such things don't happen at all, but they are rather unlikely. There are still 15% Muslims in India - outnumbering Pakistan, ironically, and there are Muslim Ministers and such, but there is still tension. But it was Pranees Idea to have a stopover at Delhi, not mine...
My wife was brought up in a strict Muslim household, and although she lives a rather urban and irreligious life, those childhood tales about the bloody separation of India and Pakistan still linger on.
I told her that people look at her not because she's Muslim (no hijab, European clothes), but because she's so beautiful and exotic with her white skin and Chinese eyes. But like all women (that I've known good enough to give an informed guess) she would not believe it. After a while a small girl started befriending her in a sweet mixture of Hindu/Urdu and simple English, and after another while the girl's family asked her to come over to them and have a typical snack. Now India - like Italy, we'll see, we'll see - is one of those countries where the best food is served at home, and Restaurants are second rated. There are beautiful restaurants in Delhi, but my opinion was that - like in Singapore, Bangkok or Jakarta - the best food is served on the streets. Indian cuisine is very local, drive 50 miles and they do just about everything different... (and people look different, and Sarees have other ornaments) Anyway, it was absolutely true. the home-cooked food - looking like nothing special, just plain dumplings - was so rich in taste, just a bit on the peppery side, once - said Pranee - once you start eating it you have to stop immediately, lest you'd eat the whole family portion. I had a try (big clumsy ferengi was invited after a while), and was so visible surprised by the taste that I didn't have to say anything to praise Atta, the cook woman...
