Quoting Emily Dickinson

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
‘Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur–you’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

The Science Notes book review: Misquoting Jesus

Professor Ehrman has written an astonishingly breezy book on a very stolid subject, textual criticism of the New Testament. Professor Ehrman characterizes himself as an agnostic, and is still hopeful that the “original text” can be found, or at least reliabily inferred through the noise of 1500 years of mistranscriptions.

I, on the other hand, read his clearly written and well organized “Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why” and come away more convinced than ever that it’s a delusion at best and a hoax at worst.

Having said that, one of his indirectly stated aims is clearly to have those who, like he used to, believe in the inerrancy of the Bible to see how it’s a misplaced concept.

One of the most affecting sections of the book, to me, was his description of how he became a born-again Christian as a teenager, as a kind of preface to the serious business of textual criticism:

There was a kind of loneliness associated with being a young teenager; but, of course, I didn’t realize that it was part of being a teenager—I thought there was something missing.

Is Sylvain Chomet right?

Today was our last day at our client site in Carson, a suburb of Los Angeles, so I took our clients out to lunch.

Carson has never been blessed with restaurants, but SouthBay Pavilion recently sprouted a Chili’s, so thither I took them. It was not the best choice—the staff were disorganized and service was slow.

Because of the slow service, I had time to notice—I couldn’t help but notice—that a lot of the customers were, well, obese. Perhaps four fifths of the restaurant’s patrons were stuffed into or bulging out of their clothes, and carrying not twenty but forty, fifty, sixty, or even eighty pounds of excess weight.

Back in my client’s office in the Carson Civic Plaza, I looked down from his third-floor window and observed the same of the folks walking across the parking lot. One middle-aged couple, my age I’d guess, were having trouble walking.

I’m fascinated by the problem of obesity. My parents were obese, one of my siblings is obese, two more are overweight, and I’m pretty darn chunky for someone training assiduously for an Ironman.

In his rather, um, weird little film, Les Triplettes de Belleville, Sylvain Chomet shows the inhabitants of Belleville (a kind of surrealistic New York) to be blimplike (see the picture). How far is that from the truth?

The physics is scary. It supposedly takes 3500 kcal of energy to make a pound of fat. If you have a perfectly balanced diet, and add one medium-sized apple to it, you’ll gain ten pounds a year. But we live in a world where you can easily scarf down a 1500-kcal lunch without noticing; it’s no wonder we’re carrying so much avoirdupois.

When I googled obesity chili’s, I got 13,000 hits. The top of the list was a very interesting article, “Why America Has to Be Fat”. A provocative quotation:

… An efficient economy produces sluggish, inefficient bodies.

“The obesity problem is really a side effect of things that are good for the economy,” said Tomas J. Philipson, an economics professor who studies obesity at the University of Chicago, a city recently named the fattest in America. “But we would rather take improvements in technology and agriculture than go back to the way we lived in the 1950s when everyone was thin. Nobody wants to sweat at work for 10 hours a day and be poor. Yes, you’re obese, but you have a life that is much more comfortable.”

Crothers’ Woods plan

Donwatcher reports on the new management plan for Crothers’ Woods in the Don Valley.

Comparative religion

I’m running out of time and energy to summarize more about the religions of the world. Follow the link to find dozens more religions that you can read about.

By now it should be clear that there are a multitude of ways to believe and to codify humans’ natural urges to morality, to embody or personify their ideal lawmakers and awe at the heavens, the majesty of the world, and the mystery of life. Each different time and place has had its own religion, as far back as we have knowledge. It should be clear by now tha the person who is “naturally” an Anglican Christian in England would be “naturally” a Catholic Christian in Portual, a Hindu or Jain in India, a Muslim in Indonesia, and a worshipper of the Dear Leader in North Korea. See How did you hear about your deity?“

You can see some of them by clicking on the “various religions” label, but that’s limited in how many items it displays. However, most of the articles link to a previous article, so you can get back to the beginning.