Weblog von Hans-Wolfgang

05.10.2007 um 00:39 Uhr

Who knows what he was doing?

von: tao

The indian government was trying to impose prohibition on the whole of the country -- and eighty percent of  the cabinet ministers were drunkards! And the Prime Minister himself, Morarji Desai, was worse than all of them -- he was drinking his own urine! I would rather drink wine. If one has to choose between wine and urine, wine seems to be far more aesthetic -- and it is far more vegetarian, too! Urine seems to be an animal food. And just think of the whole passage it comes along, the long journey it takes... now the second step after that is not very far away!
When Indira became Prime Minister, she was not moving into the Prime Minister's house, she took two months to move in. She was changing all the tiles in the bathrooms because... who knows what he was doing inside the bathroom? And the whole house was being almost renovated. Everything had to be cleaned, all the utensils had to be removed. Who knows what he was doing? And in his bathrooms all that was found were different kinds of enemas. Two months it took to change the whole house -- it must have been stinking!
I am not against drinking. Once in a while it is really beautiful to drink. There is no need to be so superhuman -- be human!
That's what I love more in Jesus than I love in Mahavira or Buddha. Buddha and Mahavira are too abstract, almost inhuman; Jesus is very human. He drinks and he eats and he loves feasting. And late in the night they eat and drink and they gossip.

02.10.2007 um 02:39 Uhr

Very few have the sophistication

von: tao

 

Nearly everybody believes in UFOs, including especially the debunkers. Everybody believes that some people report UFOs, to start with, and only then does the argument begin. Some want to file all the reports in the hoax file, some in hallucination, some in Alien Spaceship, some in electromagnetic oddity, some in paranormal, some in time-machines from the future, some in sundogs, some in Famous Lost Weather Balloons, etc., etc. Very few have the sophistication to think that some flying whangdoodles belong in one category and others in two or three other categories. Only the Totally Damned, i.e., agnostics and post-modernists, file some of them in - Unidentified. I find it humorous that so few of us will accept that some Unidentified gizmos must get filed in Unidentified for now and maybe for a long time, maybe forever...

I always try to formulate my sentences in terms of probability and often include the percentage of belief I give to an idea - about 0.0000001 % to the Virgin Birth of that kid from Nazareth, about 99.9% to the Seoond Law of Thermodynamics, somewhere between 2% and 98% for most other things. People who claim 100% certitude seem, in my view, a frantic crew of True Believers, trying to bulishit themselves even harder than they try to bulishit you and me. This applies especially to the kind of True Believers who call themselves Skeptics. I'm sure you can guess some of the gents I mean.


When we believe something for a long time, we become more and more committed to that idea. If evidence surfaces that disabuses the long-held notion, we resist this and try to continue believing.

Dr. Rainer König (58), Biologe am Naturkunde-Museum in Berlin, fand im letzten Sommer den wohl auf Neu Guinea kleinsten Frosch. Er mißt gerade mal 20 mm (vom Kopf bis zum Po), hat braun-gelb gefleckte Haut und kurze, quäkende Paarungsrufe. Dieser Neue gehört zur Gattung der Albericus-Frösche.  Albericus ist lateinisch und abgeleitet von Alberich, dem Zwerg aus der Germanischen Mythologie. Alberich konnte, den Erzählungen zufolge, unter einer Tarnkappe seine Gestalt verändern. Dadurch konnte er sich auch sehr gut verstecken. Den Fröschen ermöglicht ihre Winzigkeit eben, sich gut im Dickicht des Urwaldes zu verstecken.