I fell against the pool border when trying to get out. Thanks to my aracnid sense, I was fast enough to avoid kissing the pool wall at a too high and deadly speed. I trade my blood for my teeth. That was the minor price I've got to pay in my first vacation day.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Ecce Homo, Eixe Home
I fell against the pool border when trying to get out. Thanks to my aracnid sense, I was fast enough to avoid kissing the pool wall at a too high and deadly speed. I trade my blood for my teeth. That was the minor price I've got to pay in my first vacation day.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Goog God, Good Bye
I'm reading a book a friend recommended me long time ago. For him, it seems like it was kind of a revelation, though I had read some of the previous books by the same writer during a period of my life, a decade ago, where I used to be extremely interested in science books.
The guy is Richard Dawkins and the book, The God Delusion, which I bought at Stansted Airport at 4 for 3. I haven't finished all of 420 pages of that log yet, but I'm right in the middle. I had previously read The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. These are books about how evolution works, which is the only plausible explanation so far grounded on facts that explains what he calls the climbing of mount improbable, that is, the diversity and adaptability of the existing species.
The God Delusion is a book against religion, hilarious in some chapters, which aim is deconstructing point after point a great deal of arguments for the existence of personal god(s), as he says, or any kind of super-natural being used to explain the existence and functioning of reality. It is very directed towards fighting views such as creationism and intelligent design as an answer, I guess, to their belligerence with respect to science in the educational arena in the US.
The book is well written (as anyone would expect of a Cambridge scholar), full of facts and scientifically well based. For me, it is a bit reiterative and extensive, and I think he could have explained the same in a more succinct way without losing any important argument. Sometimes he drifts too much from the central point of chapters and he tends to sprinkle the text too much with his own interpretation of other's words and personal anecdotes, which are of difficult rebuttal, but I guess this is the price to pay in science best-sellers.
I, personally, am also an atheist, of the hardest dyed-wool type, as he calls himself. I think I was born without the lobule in the brain that make people "gullible" to religions. As far as I remember, I have never believed in anything, not even Santa Claus. Why? When I was a child, I felt it was a waste of time to pray to a cross with a wooden guy hanging on the wall. Never understood the causal relation between praying and reality.
Later, for a while, I was amused by the Biblical stories the priest in my church (where I was baptized) explained using slides. They were really formidable, kind of unbelievable, like the one of Abraham said to kill his own son and told not to do so on the last moment. "What would it happen if the guy had been deaf?", I asked to myself, would he had been guilty of son-cide or would it have been god himself guilty of homicide? What a dilemma. And then, my big question: why those extraordinary things were never on the news nowadays? Why only happened in a desert 3.000 years ago? Was god now taking a rest?
Stories in the Bible were just like those in comics for me, really unreal. Never took them seriously, specially because of the darkness and weird smell surrounding churches, a mixture of wax, smoke, closeness, and smell of old people, which by itself it is enough to prevent anyone to enter. Then, one summer, I discovered Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, and my vision of the whole world changed for ever. I have always wanted to know how things worked, but that was different: there was a way that made possible to know how the world worked, and there was no need of god, just pure thinking, mathematics, and measures. Clear, clean, open, bright. That's science.
That was all I needed. I've never been a genius, on the contrary, a pretty normal type of guy, but if only I have a quality is that of being extremely skeptic. My grandmother used to say "better believing something rather that checking it". For me, even if I see it, I might not believe it is true.
The guy is Richard Dawkins and the book, The God Delusion, which I bought at Stansted Airport at 4 for 3. I haven't finished all of 420 pages of that log yet, but I'm right in the middle. I had previously read The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. These are books about how evolution works, which is the only plausible explanation so far grounded on facts that explains what he calls the climbing of mount improbable, that is, the diversity and adaptability of the existing species.
The God Delusion is a book against religion, hilarious in some chapters, which aim is deconstructing point after point a great deal of arguments for the existence of personal god(s), as he says, or any kind of super-natural being used to explain the existence and functioning of reality. It is very directed towards fighting views such as creationism and intelligent design as an answer, I guess, to their belligerence with respect to science in the educational arena in the US.
The book is well written (as anyone would expect of a Cambridge scholar), full of facts and scientifically well based. For me, it is a bit reiterative and extensive, and I think he could have explained the same in a more succinct way without losing any important argument. Sometimes he drifts too much from the central point of chapters and he tends to sprinkle the text too much with his own interpretation of other's words and personal anecdotes, which are of difficult rebuttal, but I guess this is the price to pay in science best-sellers.
I, personally, am also an atheist, of the hardest dyed-wool type, as he calls himself. I think I was born without the lobule in the brain that make people "gullible" to religions. As far as I remember, I have never believed in anything, not even Santa Claus. Why? When I was a child, I felt it was a waste of time to pray to a cross with a wooden guy hanging on the wall. Never understood the causal relation between praying and reality.
Later, for a while, I was amused by the Biblical stories the priest in my church (where I was baptized) explained using slides. They were really formidable, kind of unbelievable, like the one of Abraham said to kill his own son and told not to do so on the last moment. "What would it happen if the guy had been deaf?", I asked to myself, would he had been guilty of son-cide or would it have been god himself guilty of homicide? What a dilemma. And then, my big question: why those extraordinary things were never on the news nowadays? Why only happened in a desert 3.000 years ago? Was god now taking a rest?
Stories in the Bible were just like those in comics for me, really unreal. Never took them seriously, specially because of the darkness and weird smell surrounding churches, a mixture of wax, smoke, closeness, and smell of old people, which by itself it is enough to prevent anyone to enter. Then, one summer, I discovered Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, and my vision of the whole world changed for ever. I have always wanted to know how things worked, but that was different: there was a way that made possible to know how the world worked, and there was no need of god, just pure thinking, mathematics, and measures. Clear, clean, open, bright. That's science.
That was all I needed. I've never been a genius, on the contrary, a pretty normal type of guy, but if only I have a quality is that of being extremely skeptic. My grandmother used to say "better believing something rather that checking it". For me, even if I see it, I might not believe it is true.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Summer Time...
Summer time is here. Augustus' month. Leisure and dolce far niente. Not for me, though; at least, not yet. Late months have been exhausting. Up and down, finishing deadlines and reports. I have earned the daily bread with my very sweat, I swear. Not an easy single cent. R&D is not a business for nitwits, specially when the UE commission and a bunch of square-headed Germans are involved. And yet, so much to do, so much to try and so much to improve. Those deaf-language signs don't translate by them selves!
If childhood is said to be the golden age for most people, I think summer is the best period among these heavenly days. It was, at least, for me. It was time of beach, sea, sand, jumping, playing outdoors, bikes, football, friends, dogs, bugs, storms, girls, naps, crackers, ice creams, coca-cola, dirt, excruciating heat, sweating, thirst, mountain, dust, walking, singing, firebones, stars, crickets, vivac, and most of all, freedom. First time I noticed I was actually growing older was when I discovered I unavoidably had to work in summer. Childhood was over, and sweet summer vacations too.
Now, I'm already accustomed to, and since I was living in Japan, having just a week long summer vacation seems fair to me. Nevertheless, last year I had a long month of vacation, and this year, adding up all my unused vacation days, I have accummulated almost five weeks, which I will distribute from now to the end of the year. I can't leave the project I'm involved in ungarded, my manager could discover I'm not that important!
What am I gonna do? Nothing: sleeping, reading, going to the beach and the pool, strolling, and maybe some short escape to the Pyrenees. I'm tired of traveling, airports, flights, connections, trains, subways, crowds. I'm starting to think that tourism is a great hoax with no interest at all. What's the point of going to Paris if you can't even order a café au lait? Culture, people say. Yeah, maybe. But I'm really surprised to verify that the only few days people is interested in culture coincide with the same period they leave their own places. Strange, isn't it?
Some also use the argument of learning different ways of living. Really? In France? Sorry, I don't think so. It might be true in the Crusade ages, but nowadays, there are not much differences within the whole Europe, apart from local languages, and some regional specialities in McDonalds.
Besides, most apparent differences come from basic unawareness. That's why some naively travel to exhotic lands to discover new frontiers. Another rip-off, but in their own delusion, they still think they have reached some revealing and unknown teaching. Bogus. They can't even tell the difference between a tourist trap and a life-losing trap. See what happened to these Catalan guys in Mexico while trying to cross an unbridled river in a precarious canoe.
This kind of travelers are the most laughable to me, and think of themselves as new editions of Pedro de Alvarado or Aguirre while buying their gear at Decathlon. In this open-to-the-world city Barcelona is there are plenty of them. Always ready to "discover the Americas". What it is funny is that in America there are some other super cool guys that envisage coming to Europe to discover our strange ways of living to re-edit the feats of Hemingway or their own grandpa in WWII.
What's the point of tourism, then? None, unless we stick to some genuine one, like having some rest and fun in our free time and, if lucky, finding whatever true treasure might still remain under the tones of vulgarity, triviality, easiness, common-places, and non-sense we are living in, which I fear is kind of difficult in places such as attraction park Barcelona. Good luck.
If childhood is said to be the golden age for most people, I think summer is the best period among these heavenly days. It was, at least, for me. It was time of beach, sea, sand, jumping, playing outdoors, bikes, football, friends, dogs, bugs, storms, girls, naps, crackers, ice creams, coca-cola, dirt, excruciating heat, sweating, thirst, mountain, dust, walking, singing, firebones, stars, crickets, vivac, and most of all, freedom. First time I noticed I was actually growing older was when I discovered I unavoidably had to work in summer. Childhood was over, and sweet summer vacations too.
Now, I'm already accustomed to, and since I was living in Japan, having just a week long summer vacation seems fair to me. Nevertheless, last year I had a long month of vacation, and this year, adding up all my unused vacation days, I have accummulated almost five weeks, which I will distribute from now to the end of the year. I can't leave the project I'm involved in ungarded, my manager could discover I'm not that important!
What am I gonna do? Nothing: sleeping, reading, going to the beach and the pool, strolling, and maybe some short escape to the Pyrenees. I'm tired of traveling, airports, flights, connections, trains, subways, crowds. I'm starting to think that tourism is a great hoax with no interest at all. What's the point of going to Paris if you can't even order a café au lait? Culture, people say. Yeah, maybe. But I'm really surprised to verify that the only few days people is interested in culture coincide with the same period they leave their own places. Strange, isn't it?
Some also use the argument of learning different ways of living. Really? In France? Sorry, I don't think so. It might be true in the Crusade ages, but nowadays, there are not much differences within the whole Europe, apart from local languages, and some regional specialities in McDonalds.
Besides, most apparent differences come from basic unawareness. That's why some naively travel to exhotic lands to discover new frontiers. Another rip-off, but in their own delusion, they still think they have reached some revealing and unknown teaching. Bogus. They can't even tell the difference between a tourist trap and a life-losing trap. See what happened to these Catalan guys in Mexico while trying to cross an unbridled river in a precarious canoe.
This kind of travelers are the most laughable to me, and think of themselves as new editions of Pedro de Alvarado or Aguirre while buying their gear at Decathlon. In this open-to-the-world city Barcelona is there are plenty of them. Always ready to "discover the Americas". What it is funny is that in America there are some other super cool guys that envisage coming to Europe to discover our strange ways of living to re-edit the feats of Hemingway or their own grandpa in WWII.
What's the point of tourism, then? None, unless we stick to some genuine one, like having some rest and fun in our free time and, if lucky, finding whatever true treasure might still remain under the tones of vulgarity, triviality, easiness, common-places, and non-sense we are living in, which I fear is kind of difficult in places such as attraction park Barcelona. Good luck.
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