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10/2/01 Ashton Dennis - American Toddlers

Now, warlords as holy men pose
"Kill all Americans", is their poetry and their prose
They falsely promise rewards only our mutual God bestows
And, thereby, their blasphemy and intolerance expose

In the boarding areas, American toddlers did doze
Just as the blasphemous assassins did close
Deluded, imagining blessings only our mutual God bestows
The assassins prepared to slit the throats of women in the rows

The warlord screams out what he thinks he knows
"Americans are cowards, they'll wet themselves in these throes!"
Soon, he will reap what he sows
Soon, he'll feel the justice our mutual God bestows
Ask the ghost of Pearl Harbor, I think it knows
It was the warpath a wounded America chose

Set before his creator, will that warlord repeat his holy-man pose?
Will he then be confronted with our toddlers in their repose?
The blasphemous warlord thought he only casualties bestows
Instead, firefighter heroes and toddler martyrs arose

10/4/01 Linda - Ramblings

Dear Voices,

American Toddlers: Since you did not quote a source I will only say 'Thank You' to whoever wrote that beautiful poem/tribute.  It surely echoes the sentiment of many of us.

Malthus: Thank you for your very thought provoking response.  First, I had to return my book to the library, where I enjoyed informing that certain librarian who thought the book sounded so terribly dry that I had just that day bought my own particular copy on line because it was so very interesting!  The astonished look on her face was hilarious!  I was glad to find a copy of that particular edition (Norton) because it contained so much "surrounding" information - writings leading up to Malthus' essay and those written after.

Now I am truly astonished!  Some how or other you came up with the idea of "free will" from what I wrote.  Since I did not remember saying those exact words, I had to read my words again. Yes, the implication is there and that is exactly what I was saying.  The explanation of that subject will take a thread in itself, if you are interested.  I will say though that my beliefs come from the Bible, so I am not aware of any other 'arguments' found in the field of Philosophy, etc.

Before I returned the book, I got through a few more chapters and skipped to the end to see what else Godwin said around 1820 (I think) and Malthus' own update.  That is what made me want my own copy - Malthus had some really interesting things to say further.  I can't remember the particulars at the moment.  I will continue this when my own book arrives.  BTW I have a very good memory; it is just very short!

After your comments about the Evolution series I am sorry to say I missed it.  But I will check with the library and/or wait for a rerun.

Cheryl: I was rummaging through my daughters shelf of videos where I found The Rocketeer; and since you recommended it on your list of Sci-fi, I brought it (and some others) home with me.  The 'others' include The Odyssey.  I didn't even know it was made into a movie - and I am sure JA was aware of it. Just for good measure I picked up Zulu Dawn because it was a true story.  I haven't seen either yet because I have discovered that our library has videos to borrow.  So I have been 'raiding' their shelves also. My greatest discovery so far was Man of La Mancha.  Thanks to the Internet I found a short bio of Cervantes and realized that the original Don Quixote was very likely familiar to Our Lady.  I simply feel that she was a 'great reader'!

I am especially grateful for having found the picture of Tom Lefroy.  Thanks for including it on the "Eleventh Letter" page.  "I can't explain it", but that picture really touched me. Ordinarily, the majority of portraits made long ago do not look like 'real people' to me.  They look like caricatures with the exception of those by Le Brun.  What really got to me with Tom's picture is that he not only looked 'real', but also for some unexplainable reason I can understand why Jane 'fell' for him.  There is just something about that picture!  I really wish we had something more of Jane.

I will shut up now as I have 'rambled' far too long.
Linda

10/4/01 Ashton - Rumblings

Dear Linda,

I wonder if you might also like Goya. He was a contemporary of Jane Austen and le Brun. Here is his self-portrait and here is one of his commissioned portraits.

I am not a religious person, as you know. I do seem to form friendships with the religious though. I have had good friends who were devout Catholics, Buddhists, or Hindus. My closest friend at work was an Egyptian who was a devout Muslim. I think of myself as a Christian because Christianity is the dominant religion in my culture. I never received any religious instruction when growing up; but, I picked up a book of bible stories when I was about eight or nine. I was appalled almost immediately by the story of Abraham who was willing to kill his own son at his God's bidding. That did it for me - I would never be interested in any of the Judaic religions after that (Christianity, Islam, etc.) I do like the moral codes associated with the Judaic religions and that may explain why I am compatible with you folks. I have never had anything like a spiritual experience, so I am not curious about anything. It's big bang and natural selection for me. (Did you know that a rival to the "big bang" theory is currently being investigated by scientists?)

Now that you know where I come from, I will say that I think that Christian doctrine contradicts itself where free will is abandoned. It seems to me that salvation is obtained by accepting God and finding a faith in Jesus. Without free will, that simple fact becomes a puzzle. How can there be a "choice" without "free will"? Also, Christians make a mistake when they try to disavow the sciences of geology and evolution on scientific terms. When they do that, they sound like reactionary fools. Here is an argument that Christians should use. When God created the earth four thousand years ago, he also created the geological and fossil records. He did that so that man would have a perfectly plausible alternative explanation. It was only in that way that God could truly give man free will - a true test of their faith. Think about it; if God had created a world such that measurements would confirm his bible, then man would not have a choice, he would be compelled to believe based upon measurable facts. Thought of that way, religion is placed on a different plane from science and that is where it belongs.

You have inspired me, so that I am back to working on my Godwin/Malthus posting. I should be finished with a first draft by the end of the week.

In a certain sense, I don't know where American Toddlers came from; but, I can give you a history. I was reading that book on Austen family poetry when I came across a contest entered upon by Jane Austen, her sister, and mom; the idea was to write a poem in which every line ended in a rhyme with "rose". Whence came American Toddlers. I had never attempted to write anything remotely like a poem before and I never will again. It's weird, but I almost think I didn't write it, it just sort of appeared. I am as surprised as anyone. I have been fusing with it for days - making changes every day. Now, this is really weird, but somehow I now know it is finished - the transmission is completed - I have been downloaded.

A weird experience, but a good one too. I glad that I have had this little insight into the creative mind. I would say that the most interesting part was that I found that I was able to express a large number of my ideas about current events in a small space. That was a surprise because I had thought that the process of trying to find the right words would get in the way of expressing ideas.

10/5/01 Linda - Well, I can grumble

Dear Ash,

Yes, Goya is on my 'like' list!  My problem is that there were no cameras then, so I consider the painter as our 'eyes'.  I want to know what their subjects really looked like.

Now that I know where you are coming from, I will let you know where I am coming from.  I am not going to write a dissertation with footnotes, bibliography, etc.  The following is just the way I see it from my studies.  You can take it or leave it, but if you want the references I will provide them.  You are about to find out that I think and believe a little differently from mainline Christians.  Upon closer inspection of the original languages in which the Bible was written, discrepancies were found in the King James Version and have been now rendered different (and more accurate) meanings.

You say,

"I picked up a book of bible stories when I was about eight or nine. I was appalled almost immediately by the story of Abraham who was willing to kill his own son at his God's bidding."

"I have never had anything like a spiritual experience, so I am not curious about anything."

"It's big bang ..."

You may be surprised to know that I believe that also.  That is the explanation as to "how" He did it, by speaking the "Word".   Let me tie this in with your statement: "When God created the earth four thousand years ago ..." - that is the kicker - He did not create the earth four thousand years ago.  When Genesis is properly translated, the word translated as "day" should have been translated "age".  An "age" has a beginning and end, and it is longer than a day.  When the Bible is properly translated it makes scientific sense IMO.  Science is now explaining a lot of things in the Bible.  One example: there is the time God made time stand still.  NASA in their mathematics for calculating time in space, orbits, or whatever (pardon me for getting overly technical, for I am scientifically challenged!) found that there was indeed a time when this happened among other things.

"... and natural selection for me"

"(Did you know that a rival to the "big bang" theory is currently being investigated by scientists?)"

"Now that you know where I come from, I will say that I think that Christian doctrine contradicts itself where free will is abandoned. It seems to me that salvation is obtained by accepting God and finding a faith in Jesus. Without free will, that simple fact becomes a puzzle. How can there be a "choice" without "free will"?"

"Also, Christians make a mistake when they try to disavow the sciences of geology and evolution on scientific terms. When they do that, they sound like reactionary fools. Here is an argument that Christians should use. When God created the earth four thousand years ago, he also created the geological and fossil records. He did that so that man would have a perfectly plausible alternative explanation. It was only in that way that God could truly give man free will - a true test of their faith. Think about it; if God had created a world such that measurements would confirm his bible, then man would not have a choice, he would be compelled to believe based upon measurable facts."

"Thought of that way, religion is placed on a different plane from science and that is where it belongs."

In a certain sense, I don't know where American Toddlers came from ...

10/6/01 Ashton - Ar-r-re you r-r-ready to r-r-rumble?!

Dear Linda,

I haven't read real physics for many decades, but I read popular accounts in Science News. The article I mentioned is titled

The Big Bang is even more wonderful than you suggest. It was not merely a Big Bang of "matter" into empty space, it was a big bang of "space" itself into nothingness. Einstein really did revolutionize our concept of the cosmos. In his innovative view, space is unbounded but not infinite. How is that possible you say? Well, think about the surface of a ball as the fabric of two-dimensional space; you can travel forever about that surface and never meet a boundary - right? And yet the surface area is a finite number! The same seems to be true of our three-dimensional space. Just after the Big Bang, all of space was not more than a single point which then began to rapidly expand, the bang! In fact, only energy and not "matter" could exist in those very hot initial conditions - "matter" would condense out of that energy somewhat later. Except that, now, we can no longer think of space and time as fundamentally different from one another. In this view, time and space must be taken together as the fundamental set of variables of physics. Einstein did not merely throw down Newtonian physics as only an approximation, he also threw down Euclid's as only an approximation of the geometry of our universe.

I think that religion and science are perfectly incompatible. It has to do with acts of faith. Scientists have their acts of faith as well; they are called axioms in geometry and "laws" in the physical sciences. The difference is that scientists continually test their laws with experiments. Where discrepancies are found, scientific reputations are made, and the "laws" are modified or even replaced - as when Newtonian science was replaced with Einstein's.

We can get back on track by turning to "natural selection". Would you prefer to do that? I sense that you might prefer that we had never strayed onto this territory - maybe I feel the same. Perhaps we should find some way to find a path back to Jane Austen.

10/7/01 Cheryl - Bumblings ...

Dear Voices,

I'm afraid I haven't been very good company the last three weeks (just ask my husband.)  Like everyone else, I'm angry and grieved and unfortunately, my addiction to foreign news just makes me more so every day.  I was reasonably prepared for the depth of knee-jerk anti Americanism, but completely taken by surprise by the absolute ignorance of American culture displayed even by our English-speaking cousins, let alone the rest of the world.  Most foreign reporters seem afraid to leave their hotels and their "research" appears to consist of watching reruns of "Rambo" on cable. Happily, I think most people possess a common sense that will eventually overcome extremism of all stripes.

My own very limited knowledge of population theory leads me to the conclusion that they all fall down when one tries to apply them on a global basis.  While Americans tend to connect the great depression with drought and famine, the truth is that this idea doesn't even apply to the US as a whole.  My parents, growing up in Michigan in the 30's were poor, but never went hungry. My husband's parents, growing up in the 30's on the Colorado/Kansas border had a couple of very bad winters. Natural and political borders tend to isolate populations throughout the world as do climates and even micro climates. Humanity seems to be naturally tribal in outlook, so any theories that require us to act as a concerted global entity are doomed to failure. As are any that don't take into account the strictly political nature of all famine since about 1950. Ashton: DeSoto's expedition through what is now the American southeast, found a densely populated agricultural civilization with towns and cities on average as large or larger than their European counterparts. Circumstantial evidence supports the theory that this initial contact in North America resulted in a terrible epidemic which may have killed more than half of the inhabitants east of the Mississippi River.  Two hundred years later, French explorers noted mass graves (mounds) and nearly empty cities.  The destruction of thousands of mounds coupled with current anti-science politics means we'll probably never know whether it really happened.

Linda; I hope you enjoy "Rocketeer" though I should probably warn you it's on the ever expanding list of movies my husband and I have liked but no one else did. (See "Return To Oz", "Mars Attacks", "Tank Girl", "The Man Who Knew Too Little", etc.) I know there was a recent TV version of The "Odyssey" and I believe there's an old Charlton Heston movie called "Odysseus". "Oh Brother, Where Are Thou" is very, very vaguely based on the Odyssey as well, though the title comes from the Preston Sturgis film "Sullivan's Travels."

My reading this summer hasn't been anywhere near as heavy duty as everyone else's.  A couple of histories of the First World War, one good and one truly awful.  These led me to re-read "Testament of Youth" by Vera Brittain. I'd recommend it not as a history of the War which it isn't, but as a social history of the UK from its 19th century innocence to 20th century horror. (A process the Americans went through nearly 50 years earlier  --1861-65)  I also read "Touched With Fire: The Land War in The South Pacific" which uses the fights on New Guinea (Australians) and Guadalcanal (Americans) to give an idea of what WWII tropical jungle fighting entailed. "The Iron Ring" is a young adult novel by Lloyd Alexander of the "Prydain" series fame, but set in India instead of Wales. Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World" was disappointing:  other writers have tackled the subjects with better, more concise writing. (Read Kenneth Feder's "Frauds, Myths and Mysteries: Science and Pseudo science in Archeology" instead.)  I still haven't made it past the second chapter of Mysteries of Udolpho" what a wimp I am!

I think I will stay out of the religious debate because I'm unable to be polite about the subject, particularly in times such as these.  I do think you should both check out the "Skeptical Enquirer" which has devoted two issues to the question of whether science and religion can be reconciled. (Many articles are available online. I think it's csicop.com)  Ashton: your idea about the divine creation of fossil records is a couple of hundred years old. Whether fossils are God's "test" of the faithful or a creation by the devil to fool humanity is pretty much up to the individual conscience. Linda: If you'll go to the NASA site, you'll find a page explaining that they have nothing to do with the claims about finding an extra day.
Cheryl

10/10/01 Ashton - "stumblin', bumblin', fumblin' "

Dear Cheryl,

I assume that any hip, alert person such as yourself is familiar with those words of The Boomer, our famous, American, ESPN Guru.

Malthus's population principles do not fail at any level; in fact, as Charles Darwin realized, they do not fail for any species. It was that revelation that inspired Darwin's theory of "natural selection". Simply stated, Malthus said this: a population rarely breeds anywhere near the maximum biological rate possible. Instead, it breeds near that rate that can be sustained by the food supply. Absolutely none of your examples contradict this; if anything, I can use them to illustrate what Malthus was trying to propose.

Of course, a "sustainable population level" is a function of the level of technology. So, the sustainable level was one thing in the pre-Columbian Central America or Andes and really quite another in the pre-Columbian, stone-age, native culture in California.

The sustainable population level on our western prairies was near zero before Columbus. What about the Lakota, you say? Well they weren't there then - they could not have been there. That famous horseman-hunter/gatherer culture was impossible without horses and horses arrived only with Europeans.

Incidentally, those prairies were absolutely perfect for the horse, and so feral horses from Spanish ranches initiated a population explosion that, in fact, came close to a breeding rate near the biological maximum. (So it was that Lewis and Clark first met the Lakota more than a hundred years after that nation had met the European horse.) This illustrates why we have a biological rate that we rarely use - it allows us to recover quickly from catastrophe or to rapidly inhabit previously undiscovered territory. - Natural selection favors a population with a dormant, high reproductive-rate.

The first response of native Americans was to try to eat the horse where possible; but soon, the culture of the horse diffused from Spanish ranches, via native-American ranch hands, onto the plains. The Lakota and other northern-plains tribes had to reinvent the technology of horse breaking and riding and they did just that. In this way, subsistence then could be obtained on the prairie and the native Americans exploited this new advantage. Soon enough, the subsistence level was reached and territorial disputes (population checks) arose. Then, the white man arrived and turned those prairies into the farms that made a far higher subsistence level possible.

You are quite correct where you say that starvation in our century is a political event. This, in no way, contradicts Malthus.

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