Sheep and Goats

Category: Entertainment

  • Blood Transfusion Video Wins a Prize and Provokes a Fight

    When the first blood transfusion experiments were done, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Copenhagen, Thomas Bartholin (1616-80), objected. His concern was not on scientific grounds but on spiritual. 

    "Those who drag in the use of human blood for internal remedies of diseases appear to misuse it and to sin gravely," he wrote. "Cannibals are condemned. Why do we not abhor those who stain their gullet with human blood? Similar is the receiving of alien blood from a cut vein, either through the mouth or by instruments of transfusion. The authors of this operation are held in terror by the divine law, by which the eating of blood is prohibited."

    The only people I know of who still have regard for this aspect of divine law are Jehovah's Witnesses. If there were others (and judging from Bartholin's comment there must have been) they abandoned it when transfusions entered the mainstream. More or less the same thing has occurred with both abortion and embryonic stem cell research.

    Jehovah's Witnesses catch a lot of flack for their stand regarding transfusions. Yet the stand is one that can be accommodated medically. In recent years, partly due to the efforts of Jehovah's Witnesses and partly due to the very real risks that have surfaced regarding transfusion, new techniques of bloodless medicine have emerged. Watchtower produced some videos about them in 2001. They followed some case histories, filmed some operations, used some computer animation, and interviewed prominent surgeons the world over who said supportive things about the new methods.

    The 34th Annual U.S. International Film and Video Festival was coming up, so Watchtower entered their video (Transfusion Alternatives – Simple, Safe and Effective) and won, beating out 1500 other films from 33 countries:

    Research Documentation category: 2nd place (Silver Screen Award)

    Professional-Educational category: 2nd place (Silver Screen Award

    Current Issues category: 1rst place (Gold Camera Award)

    It's always good when your film wins. It adds credibility.

    You can view it here: (see "from our videos)

    So I was surprised to find the video torn apart frame by frame on some Next Generation Atheist website, the kind where the most exalted qualities are logic and reason, and the most admired person is Mr. Spock of Star Trek. Evidence, a fellow named Psiloiordinary demands! Give me some evidence that blood transfusions are not perfectly safe. Give me some medical reason that silly religious scruples should not be trampled underfoot should they interfere. So I gave him some.

    ……………………………………………………………………….

    Dear Psiloiordinary:

    Here is a doctor who likens transfused blood to "water from a dirty fish tank"

    [Patricia Ford, MD, a hematologist/oncologist and Medical Director of the Center for Bloodless Medicine and Surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital, part of the PENN Medicine hospital network. Dr. Ford is one of the pioneers of bloodless surgery and has been teaching its technique to doctor’s around the world.]

    Blood stored for any length of time loses most of its oxygen carrying capability, she maintains. Perhaps she reached that conclusion through such studies as this:

    Note how Dr Bruce Speiss in this post declares about transfusions: "So it's just largely been a belief system– almost a religion, if you will– that if you give a unit of blood, patients will get better"

    As you have observed, Jehovah's Witnesses steadfastly refuse blood transfusions for religious reasons. As a result, some in the medical field have pioneered bloodless techniques. By eliminating the risk of foreign tissue, human error, and blood-borne diseases, these new techniques offer a safety margin that conventional blood transfusions do not. Might the day come, or is it even here already, when the number of lives saved through such medicine will outnumber those lost by a few members of a relatively tiny religious group that stuck to its principles amidst much opposition?

    [I nearly gave him another study which came to my attention at about the same time, but I thought two items would be sufficient]

     

    …………………………………………………………………………………………..

    His reply (on his own blog) was prompt:

    I had asked JW's for evidence to back up their claims. What I am provided with here is in fact an anecdote with no supporting evidence. I quote peer reviewed materials and in reply I get a story. The reasons that stories don't count as evidence is that they can fall prey to all of the errors of thinking I highlighted above. Wow this all fits in with the other stuff your skimmed earlier on doesn't it. Ok I'll wait while you go back and read it properly – hurry up.

    OK. Off we go again.

    Tom does a little better with his next salvo;
    "Blood stored for any length of time loses most of its oxygen carrying capability, she maintains."
    This piece relates to the fact that Nitric Oxide seems necessary to get the oxygen from the blood into the body. Here are some more quotes from this same article;     [he quotes almost the whole article, which I won't reproduce, as I've already linked to it. Feel free to check it again]

    But at least this does appear to be some bona fide research, just bear in mind that it was preliminary research done on 10 people – yes just 10 and so needs to be followed up in proper clinical trials. Why? Well so that all those errors of thinking we outlined above can be ruled out.

    Who is doing this research? Doctors. I have highlighted in bold their comments about the need for blood transfusions. Remember confirmation bias? Our friend Tom CatsandDogs has managed that particular error of thought big time hasn't he? Or was he just selectively quoting to be deliberately dishonest? Not sure actually.

    Lets see what else he has for us;

    "Note how Dr Bruce Speiss in this post declares about transfusions: "So it's just largely been a belief system– almost a religion, if you will– that if you give a unit of blood, patients will get better"

    Once again I can give you a little more honest version of this by simply telling you everything the chap actually said [and again he quotes virtually the entire article, which again I won't reproduce as I've already linked to it, and again feel free to check it once more]

    Of course Tom FishandChips doesn't agree with these bits so he doesn't quote them. It's as if they don't even exist. Tom's brain is pretty amazing isn't it? Does he even know that his brain has done this?

    Or is he simply dishonest?

    Maybe he will let us know.

    For now he signs off as follows with a tour de force of broken logic;

    "As you have observed, Jehovah's Witnesses steadfastly refuse blood transfusions for religious reasons. As a result, some in the medical field have pioneered bloodless techniques. By eliminating the risk of foreign tissue, human error, and blood-borne diseases, these new techniques offer a safety margin that conventional blood transfusions do not. Might the day come, or is it even here already, when the number of lives saved through such medicine will outnumber those lost by a few members of a relatively tiny religious group that stuck to its principles amidst much opposition?"

    Tom states that medical research of this kind only happened because of the JW stance. The article he links to shows this is not true. [Actually, it shows just the opposite. The writer states: "Originally developed to meet the needs of the Jehovah’s Witness community, bloodless surgery is transfusion-free and is acceptable to Jehovah Witness followers because they are being reinfused with their own blood." (third paragraph)]

    A quick summary of Tom's "evidence";

    An anecdote followed by selective quotes, taken out of context from preliminary medical research, which presumably would be a waste of time for Tom anyway as he will never take blood because of what he thinks the bible means. All topped off with a claim that because JW's are dying for their beliefs they are saving the lives of others.

    Takes your breath away doesn't it.

    Over to you Tom.

    ………………………………………………………………………………………

    What is remarkable about this reply is its sheer meanness. Did I do anything to provoke it other than exist with a different view? Psiloiordinary asked for evidence. I gave him some. 

    Essentially he charges that I have used the researchers' words out of context. That's nonsense. All you have to do when quoting is to quote honestly. The words you cite should be as the speaker intended them to be understood. You don't have to analyze his entire life philosophy for consistency, otherwise all historical writings would need be delivered by forklift.

    To be sure, these researchers said some things not entirely consistent. But that's how people are. We are all a maze of contradictions – even …gasp….scientists, reason lovers and logicians. Even with science, new views are not quickly accepted simply because they are supported by evidence.  Max Planck the physicist sums it up more realistically: "People think new truths are accepted when the proponents are able to convince the opponents. Instead, the opponents of the truth gradually die, and a new generation comes along who is familiar with the idea." Alas, here too Psiloiordinary will be outraged that I've not included a lexicon of all Dr. Planck ever said. But I found his words in a (science friendly) source that also saw fit to take the quote by itself.

    In view of the bile, I wasn't quite sure how to reply, but in time I thought of something.

    …………………………………………………………………………………..

    Dear Psiloiordinary:

    First of all, it is not Catsanddogs. Nor is it Fishandchips. It is Sheepandgoats.

    When you are trying to sway someone over to your point of view, you don't insult them at every turn. You don't ridicule them. You don't portray yourself as the ultimate fount of wisdom and express surprise that they can even tie their shoes. You do all these things if you want to puff out your chest and impress pals with your razor-like wit, but if you are actually trying to persuade somebody, you don't do it.

    Instead, you look for areas in which you can commend them. You are conciliatory where you can be. You afford them dignity. That way, in the event you do make some valid points, you find your points are not rejected out of hand by a recipient who resents how ill-mannered you are.

    I suspect these are the factors that account for mixed signals in the studies we've discussed. The doctors make the appropriate deferential remarks about the blood transfusion industry, yet those remarks in no way follow from the research they present.

    For example, Dr Stamler asserts: Banked blood is truly a national treasure that needs to be protected

    Yet he previously observes: we saw clear indications of nitric oxide depletion within the first three hours…we found blood depleted profoundly by day one and it remained depleted through day 42 and without nitric oxide the transfused blood cannot transfer oxygen, which is the only reason to select it over non-blood volume expanders. Therefore, banked blood is hardly a national treasure. Rather, if this study is true, banked blood, which has been given countless times, has generally been near worthless in oxygen-carrying capability (though each time it was hailed as "life-saving."). True, Dr. Stamler hopes he can correct the deficiency, but that says nothing for the transfusions already given.

    Ditto with his comment which you excitedly put in bold: "There is no doubt, if you are bleeding to death from a trauma you need a transfusion." Not if you need immediate oxygen transfer, you don't, per his previous remark. What you need is fluid to replace the volume lost. It need not be blood, and it appears blood holds no advantage over non-blood volume expanders, perhaps even something so simple as saline solution. In an otherwise healthy person, the body, with restored volume, immediately goes about making new red blood cells.

    So his latter two comments seem to me to be a sop to the blood sensibilities of his audience. They don't logically follow from the research he presents. He is simply being diplomatic.

    Similar points could be made regarding Dr Speiss. And the non-sequiters presented above illustrate pretty well his comment that transfusions are practiced almost as a religion.

    The fact is, both sites I've presented plant severe doubts to the wisdom of transfusion. You act as if they've strengthened the case.

    Yours truly,

    Tom Sheepandgoats

    ……………………………………………………………………….

    Now, did my mock outrage over my name being massacred in any way placate him? Or my reasoning on the articles I linked to? Alas….

    ……………………………………………………………………………….

    Tom Sheepandgoats has previously ignored my questions and most of the facts I presented here, here, here, here, here and here.

    Now we get this; [he reproduces my reply; I have deleted my words, as I did in his prior reply]

    Listen to me Mr Bedknobsandbroomsticks, its unreasonable to go around with that appellation without expecting the mickey to be taken. In the unlikely event that no one has actually told you this before, then I can now have the honour of revealing to you that they have all thought it. Even if it is your real name, didn't you know you could have changed it in the "blogosphere"? How about Mr Iwouldletmykiddieiftheyneededabloodtransfusion?

    [It's a good thing for him my Great Grandpa Shepundgoots from the old country isn't here to read his words. He would not turn the other cheek as readily as I have done.]

    I am not trying to persuade you of anything Mr Cheeseandbiscuits, I am trying to look into this issue. You are not. In fact you seem to simply be trying to justify these primitive views by picking out selective quotes from people who completely disagree with you so that you don't feel as bad when the next JW man, woman or child dies needlessly. I assume these are your views – you have not said so explicitly but it seems a reasonable assumption from your posts.

    For the record, Mr Bangersandmash, I write this Blog for the pleasure it gives me. I occasionally win a small victory for the side of rationality and reason and I even get appreciative feedback sometimes. Most often though I get to learn things. Learning about the sinister cult that is JW's has certainly been an eye opener for me.

    I did not learn anything from your comments apart from your willingness to distort the words and opinions of some doctors to "support" your silly but dangerous beliefs.

    So as far as the small kingdom that is this blog I am the ultimate fount of wisdom – so "suck it up" as I believe you say on that side of the pond.

    The other reason I blog is that I think that very occasionally some one who has not been completely indoctrinated into the JW's or whatever form of woo I happen to examining, perhaps someone who has nothing to do with whatever it is might come across the odd item on this blog and make their own mind up based on the evidence.

    You have provided excellent evidence of selective quote mining and anecdotal stories being used to justify a practice which amounts to letting people die.

    That is what you have done for this blog and I thank you for it.

    I have often quoted before that I don't think it is possible to use reason to persuade someone from a view which they have reached without use of in the first place.

    As I previously remarked, quite eloquently I thought [naturally], "Suck it up". You can't expect to defend a practice of letting people die needlessly and go around flaunting the name of Mr Saltandvinegar without someone taking the mickey.

    Next you demonstrate your inability to engage in a complex issue. For you it must be black or white, it can't be complicated or incompletely understood.

    The research you speak of is a preliminary finding based on just 10 patients – proper clinical trials are only now being set up – if changes to medical practice are demanded by results which can be replicated by people who don't have a financial interest in the results then medical practice will change – which gives the lie to the comments about dogma.

    It was I who gave the full quotes from the articles which clearly show that none of the doctors agree that blood transfusions should be stopped. You were the one who just picked out the bits to suit your argument – this is dishonest in itself – to now claim that you were open about both sides of this issue is a simple lie.

    The doctors you quoted out of context even comment with concern about being quoted out of context in the very item you linked to.

    Excuse me Mr Smokeandmirrors you pulled quotes out of context and you continue to refer to small scale preliminary findings as research as if we can draw conclusions from them.

    Go and examine your conscience.

    – – –

    PS you are still ignoring all the questions previously raised – but hey – just keep quiet and hope no one notices eh?

    …………………………………………………………………………………………

    sigh….The sources I link to speak for themselves, as does the Watchtower videos.

    Sometimes my greatest fear is that these atheists are right and that their cherished evolution is how we all got here and that they represent its crowning achievement. If so, kiss goodbye to any hope for peace on earth. Such a pit bull, attack-oriented people I've rarely seen. Does it come from the grandmaster Dawkins himself?

    Though in retrospect, there may be some failure to communicate. Psiloiordinary seems to feel the goal of the Watchtower videos (and my own comments) are to demolish the blood transfusion industry. They are nothing of the sort. They seek only to persuade the medical community that it is not unreasonable to try to accommodate our stand. We always hope that yet more doctors will come to treat our stand of religious conscience simply as a fact to adjust to, much as they might for an allergic reaction that rules out a favored medicine. Recent years' developments have seen considerable progress along this front. Whereas two or three decades ago, a doctor's opinion was unchallengeable law, these days, in the U.S. anyway, the principle of bodily integrity is recognized. It has come to be widely acknowledged that patients have the right to authorize or decline what is done to their own bodies.

    *********************

    Tom Irregardless and Me       No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • And You Know Something is Happening But You Don’t Know What it is.

    When one year rolls into another, every blogger with even an ounce of social responsibility prepares a summary of the prior year‘s great events. Bloggers with more than an ounce actually wait until the year is over before posting their list, in case something happens during the final days of the old year. For example, the 2004 tsunami that took a quarter million lives struck December 26. Those impatient bloggers who just couldn’t wait and had to be the first ones out with their list missed it completely.

    We at the Whitepebble Historical Society positively reek with social responsibility. That’s why the final days of 2007 were firmly in the can before I posted my list, just in case something should happen in those last few days. As it turned out, nothing did.

    Now….the big Rochester event of 2007 is that Mr. Jones died, the same Mr. Jones that Bob Dylan sang about in Ballad of a Thin Man:

    You walk into the room
    With your pencil in your hand
    You see somebody naked
    And you say, “Who is that man?”
    You try so hard
    But you don’t understand
    Just what you’ll say
    When you get home
    Because something is happening here
    But you don’t know what it is
    Do you, Mister Jones?

     

    Turns out that Mr. Jones was a real guy and he lived in Pittsford, not ten miles from my house. I had no idea. Until I read it in the Democrat and Chronicle Nov 13th, that is, and found that  Jones was a dorky kind of kid back then, a know-it-all most likely, and probably from the suburbs, ill-prepared to interview the inscrutable Dylan, yet given exactly that assignment by Time magazine back in 1965 at the Newport Film Festival. The young intern probably pitched a lot of  pseudo-hip questions at Dylan, and Bob threw it all back in his face the way he likes to do or at least used to.

    Mr. (Jeff Owen) Jones went on to do a lot of things, the D&C reported, even working at that newspaper for awhile.  All his relatives said nice things about him at the funeral, how he was a regular guy and all, and how he finally settled in as a film professor at RIT (I wonder if he was at the concert) before he died of cancer at 63.

    Regarding Dylan’s 40-year-old portrayal of him as an over-educated fool, the stuff music critics were made of back then (and now?), Mr. Jones had long been philosophical. After all, he reflected, Dylan was right enough: something was happening back then and no, he didn’t know what it was. Dylan appeared with electric guitar the next night at the folk festival, roughly the equivalent of farting in church. Wasn’t it just after that he released Like a Rolling Stone, the greatest song of all time according to Rolling Stone Magazine? Besides, Mr. Jones wasn’t even that uncool. He drove a Volkswagen. And he played the harmonica himself, just like Bob!

    Jones’ death can’t be good news to the singer/songwriter. Weren’t they around the same age? And aren’t I not too far behind them? Bob is conscious of his mortality. Aren’t we all?

    I see people in the park forgetting their troubles and woes
    They’re drinking and dancing, wearing bright colored clothes
    All the young men with their young women looking so good
    Well, I’d trade places with any of them
    In a minute, if I could……..

    The sun is beginning to shine on me
    But it’s not like the sun that used to be
    The party’s over, and there’s less and less to say
    I got new eyes
    Everything looks far away

    Highlands, from Time Out of My Mind, 1997

    After putting this mortality interpretation on Dylan’s words, I came across a source in which Bob denies that’s what he meant. Rats! It reminds me of that scene from Up the Down Staircase (the book) in which a kid gets an ‘F’ for misinterpretting a poets’ words. He tries hard to change his grade, but to no avail, even when he brings the poet himself to school and the poet says yes…the kid was right, that is exactly what he meant by his line! The kid’s only bittersweet consolation is to know he’s changed school policy; from then on the school only asks questions about dead poets.

    And so I too am going to leave my interpretation right where it is. You’d think a songwriter would be able to interpret his own songs!

    Other things happened in Rochester last year too, at least I think they did, but the reason I led with Dylan is because I have learned that if you want readership to go off the charts, you mention him. At least that’s what I discovered in October when I went to his concert at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Gordon Field House and posted about it afterwards. One of those Dylan fan sites picked up the post and I got over 1000 hits in a day. The only other time I even came close to that was when some anti-Witness forum site latched on to my blog and all participants had to take several looks and bat it around for days on end. Only, whereas feedback from my Dylan post was positive, feedback from the sorehead site ran more along the theme of  “can you believe this jerk!?”

    I told Moristotle about my findings and he promptly put it into practice, sprinkling Dylan throughout his posts, whether it fit or not. I did the same for awhile, referring to Richard Dawkins and Bob Dylan, Ronald Reagan and Bob Dylan, Pope Benedict and Bob Dylan, and so forth. And now I’ve allowed him to top my 2007 great events list. Will lightning strike twice?

  • Knocking Highlights A Defender of God

    Joel Engardio's documentary Knocking features two Jehovah's Witness families, the Knights and the Kemplers. Joseph Kempler gives the most compelling reason for serving Jehovah I've ever heard.

    As a teenager, Kempler was shuttled though six Nazi concentration camps and survived them all. He was interred as a Jew and freed as a Jew. While confined, though, he observed Jehovah's Witnesses. After the war he became one.

    "It's difficult to speak to Jews," he says. "They say I became a traitor. Six million Jews died and I joined the other side.

    "I was among those survivors who felt that God was really responsible and guilty. He was the one who permitted the Holocaust. So we didn't fail him, we didn't do anything wrong. He failed us. And this is  a very common belief.

    "God is being maligned and misunderstood and in many different ways looked down upon as being uncaring or dead or whatever, and there are all kinds of distortions as to what God is and who he is. To be able to speak up in his defense….what a powerful turnaround from somebody where I was to become a defender of God…what  a wonderful privilege this is."

    It is a privilege. Mr. Kempler recognized that and grabbed hold of it, even in the aftermath of suffering that turned millions away from God, millions who could not fathom how God could possibly permit such a monstrous thing. Yet accurate Bible knowledge conveys the reason for both suffering and persecution, how God will ultimately work matters out, and how his worshippers should respond in the meantime. Armed with such knowledge, Jehovah's Witnesses survived what was likely the greatest evil in history, with faith and dignity intact,

    What is remarkable about the account is how so many people today go the other way in the face of far less provocation. Mr. Kempler saw, in the holocaust aftermath, an opportunity to defend God. But people today, even some of our own people, sever all ties with God for reasons no more substantial than personal inconvenience, having somehow lost all ability to conceive of any life beyond the here and now. Such is the power of a materialistic age where self is the focus.

    God being where he is and we being where we are, and we in distinctly imperfect form, one might imagine him keeping us at arm's length. Instead, we're told that we can serve him shoulder to shoulder, as if he considers us equals!

    For then I shall give to peoples the change to a pure language, in order for them all to call upon the name of Jehovah, in order to serve him shoulder to shoulder.    Zeph 3:9

    and that it's possible to be his friend:

    and the scripture was fulfilled which says: “Abraham put faith in Jehovah, and it was counted to him as righteousness,” and he came to be called “Jehovah’s friend."   Jas 2:23

    Inherent in defending God is speaking about him. You cannot read the gospels (literally "good news," Mark is the easiest; it moves the quickest) or Acts (the early history of Christianity's spread – "acts" of the apostles – things they did) without sensing that the ideas expressed were not to remain private but were to be offered to others. So speak Jehovah's Witnesses do.

    The Bible consistently likens spiritual things to water. Water is healthy when it moves and stagnant when it does not. If Christians take it in through reading, meditation & congregation meetings, then their public ministry serves to keep in flowing. People have lots of views today, and, as a way of proclaiming "truce," a popular notion is that religion is too "private" to discuss, at least, to discuss with strangers. Plainly, JWs don't feel that way. To be sure, to keep "pushing" something upon someone who's made it clear they don't want it is ill-mannered. (though that doesn't necessarily preclude a later call. People change.) But the other extreme, labeling faith as too personal to even discuss, is not in keeping with the nature of Christianity.

    In spite of their public visiting, Jehovah's Witnesses are a "live and let live" religion. Their "weapons" are ideas only. When you tell them "no," they go away. Sure, they try to be persuasive, but it's still only words. They don't afterward attempt to legislate their beliefs into law, so as to force people to live their way, much less resort to violence. 

    To be a defender of God is a rare privilege indeed.

    …………………

     

    More on Knocking here and here

    2021 Update: Footage on Joseph Kempler from the U.S Shoah Foundation here

    ********************

    Tom Irregardless and Me    No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

     

  • Winged Migration and the Evolutionists

    The bird newscaster was on the scene, microphone in hand….um….wing. Somberly, he related the details of the grisly crash. And it was grisly. Behind him you could see the downed airplane, broken and aflame. “Details are still sketchy,” he reported, “but it appears that the name of the bird sucked into the engines in Harold Kruntz.”

    Such is the imagination of Gary Larsen, creator of the Far Side, who imagines the bird’s point of view.

    That’s what the 2003 film Winged Migration does as well. It relates migration from the bird’s point of view. There you are, soaring shoulder to shoulder with big birds, small birds, ugly birds, pretty birds as they wing past and over fields, cities, factories, and ocean. There go the twin towers zipping past. (yep, it was filmed before 911) Does the camera stop to linger? Not for a moment; this is the bird’s point of view. Here is a frigate plying the waters, the birds land on deck. They strut to and fro, on short break from their journey. One or two catch a quick nap on the heat grates. Off yonder we hear some garbled voices on the shortwave. Do we track the source? Nope, this is the bird’s story. Off they fly and you go with them. We never see a person; do birds not care about us as much as we ourselves do?

    Same story flying over the Grand Canyon and a few dozen other breathless terrains. No time to sightsee. It’s ‘keep on flying.’ Even a duck hunt is shown from the duck‘s point of view. There you are, flying with your duck buddies when there is a loud pop and one of them goes down!

    “How in the world did they get that shot?” you say to yourself over and over again, as you and your birds wing around the world.

    They did itwith the help of balloons, gliders, helicopters, and planes. They did it by exposing eggs of some of the birds to the sounds of people and film cameras so that the birds would be unafraid of them later. They did it with patience; French director Jacques Perrin with teams of filmmakers took three years to travel 40 countries and all seven continents, tracking birds of all types – birds on the go.

    Narration is sparse, consisting mostly of terse remarks like “it is a matter of life and death.” We follow the arctic tern, a bird that migrates from the summer North Pole to the summer South Pole, and back again. At each endpoint, there are rich food sources. The narrator tells us of the never-ending search for food. You almost wish he’d say more.

    Like how did that tern ever discover that such food bonanzas existed 11,000 miles apart? Does anyone have the answer? Do evolutionists? Did one tern just happen to “wander” that distance, and hit pay dirt to such an extent that all terns started doing it? What of the lazy terns that flew lesser distances? Did they all die out?

    When fall arrives, Blackpoll Warblers gather on the New England coast. They've flown in from Alaska. By the sea they await the right weather conditions, a strong cold front, to begin their 2400 mile flight to South America. It finally comes and they take off, flying non-stop past Bermuda, heading straight…..for Africa! Approaching Antigua, they climb higher and higher, absurdly high, up to 21,000 feet. It's cold up there and there‘s not much oxygen. What are the stupid birds doing up there, for crying out loud?

    They catch a prevailing wind that blows them to South America! Energy expended is less than if the warblers headed directly for that continent! Who’s stupid now? Can the evolutionists explain how that came about?

    Come summer’s end, Manx shearwaters begin their migration from Wales. leaving behind their chicks. Once the latter can fly, they follow the adults and reunite in Brazil. One Manx shearwater was taken from Wales to Boston, (by scientists?…..did they blindfold it?) 3200 miles away. It returned to Wales in 13 days. Scientists did it to Adelie penguins, too, stranding them 1200 miles from their rookeries. Apparently unexasperated, (as I would be) they headed straight to the open sea to chow down for the trip ahead, and then returned to the rookeries.

    Tom Pearlsenswine can get lost heading to the corner store.

    In Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin wrote “Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will probably appear to the reader a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.” To my knowledge, just how such instincts developed has still not been solved. Instead, it is taken off the table. Evolutionists rely on the scientific method, and the scientific method is too narrow to deal with such questions. Where are the repeatable experiments with which you can test this or that hypothesis? So they simply dismiss the whole matter as irrelevant. Thus,  when you come along to discuss the subject, you find you’re playing a board game, the rules of which are that you can’t move your pieces!

    Some of Gary Larsen’s birds have reached the ultimate in evolutionary prowess, providing rich fodder for scientific research. Thus, one of his cartoons has a duck approaching in the hallway. The wife says to her husband: “Here he comes. Remember, be kind, but firm. We are not driving him south again this winter!” Evolution being what it is, the duck will no doubt talk them into it.

     

     

    ******  The bookstore

     

  • At the Bob Dylan Concert

    The machine spit out two tickets.  The Dylan concert was just one week away. “Wow, these are awesome seats, “ exclaimed the attendant. “I don’t know how that happened.”

    I did, of course. It was on account of clean wholesome living. But why rub her nose in it….just one individual person? I kept my mouth shut. Better to post it all on the internet later.

    I don’t go to many concerts. My wife, Mrs. Sheepandgoats, made me go to an outrageously priced Josh Grobin concert a year or two ago, but other than that, I can’t remember the last time I went to one. A couple of times with the kids, maybe, when they reached the age where they wanted to see this group or that group and I wasn’t real happy about it so I thought I would go along myself to hear what they were listening to, much to their embarrassment. That's how I found myself listening to Weezer at the Water Street Music Hall. Wasn't I the only grown-up there? Oh, and there was that Ani DiFranco concert a few years back that I attended with my daughter and son-in-law. Is Ani the next Bob Dylan? She's every bit the poet and innovator he was at that age. Her lyrics are a bit cruder, but then….it's a cruder age, isn't it?

    Also, free concerts don’t count, such as the ones the city sponsors each year for the Lilac Festival. This year it was Maria Muldaur.

    Bob Dylan is not a kid anymore. He tours a lot; his calendar lists 98 gigs in 217 days in Europe and North America. Doesn't he also host an XM radio show? I’ve never heard him live, not even last year when he made the rounds of minor league baseball stadiums, a cool idea if ever there was one. (Frontier Field in Rochester) His body of work is pretty broad by now, so I figured the time was right. I went with my son. Gordon Field House on the RIT campus. The attendant was right; ours were good seats, center stage, 5 rows back. I could have hit Dylan with a shoe and knocked off his hat had I wanted to.

    For some reason they also let in the Democrat and Chronicle music critic, whom I haven’t trusted ever since he trashed Alanis Morrisetteonly because Alanis wouldn’t give him an interview. Had she paid her dues yet, so that she could snub The Critic? There was venom in his consequent review, so it seemed to me.

    Sure enough, he trashed Bob Dylan as well, trying to make me mad. Dylan growled through his songs, he asserted. They were “incomprehensible.” People tolerated his old songs well enough, he groused, but got impatient with the new material. Actually, I  (5 rows back) hadn't noticed that. Frankly, the old & the new sound pretty much alike. Dylan doesn't have much range in his voice anymore, and he's rewritten his old material so he doesn't need range. That he can do so & get away with it (he did, handily) is testimony to his versatility. Seemed to me that everyone was pretty enthused and got more so as the night wore on. But if you came with your old Dylan records under your arm, looking forward to sound-alikes, you might have been bummed.

    Furious, I came to Bob’s defense, and told off that Critic on his own blog. But to my chagrin, some sorehead bloggers also chimed in to agree with him. Ah, well…

    I was slow to warm up to Dylan’s music. Highway 61 Revisited, with its Kafka-like lyrics, logically loose yet emotionally tight, did nothing for me until I revisited it years later. Then, the more I learned of Dylan, the more interesting he seemed. Any number of times he changed genres, without regard for what role he was “supposed to” play or who might be put off. He started as a folk singer, and the folk singing crowd soon imagined they owned him, so he was roundly booed when he first appeared with electric instruments. And you should have heard the born-agains when he released Slow Train Coming. He’d been saved! But by next album or two it was clear it had all been a ruse, or a short lived fad at best. He just wanted to play with that kind of music! Some of those born-agains tossed him right back into hell.

    He broke the three minute song rule with impunity; he’d write songs however long he wanted to write them, sometimes five minutes, sometimes ten, sometimes more. He'd put ten syllables where there was only room for three, and get away with it. The media people would pound him with prying questions. He’d feed them nonsense, but they wouldn’t find out till later it was nonsense. When they complained he was being uncooperative, not answering their questions, he protested. He was cooperating; it's just that they were asking the wrong questions.  In this way he was able to raise a family in relative peace, and you get to know him through his work, not by what silly entertainment writers say about him. He fares well that way, for his lyrics paint him as a modest guy who values what is right. Has he ever penned anything mean-spirited?

    Even now there’s some report about his treating his grandson's kindergarten class to a live show, just for fun. The boy brings him there for show-and-tell, I guess. I think I would ask him to do the same were I the teacher. "Hey, why don't you bring your grandpa in for show and tell?" But the classmates don’t quite know what to make of him. A source told the New York Post newspaper: "The kids have been coming home and telling their parents about the weird man who keeps coming to class to sing scary songs on his guitar”

    Usually artists on stage will banter with the audience. Dylan didn't say a word to anyone. That's not to say he wasn't obliging. When they brought him back for an encore, he let loose with, not one, but two numbers, on top of an already generous concert. And then he appeared once again with the whole band to acknowledge applause, swaying back and forth himself. A few months after his concert, he again made newsin Rochester, in a roundabout sort of way.

    Streaming out of the gymnasium onto the parking lot, we all had to make way for the Bob Dylan bus; actually two buses, the first towing a trailer. Headed to the next gig in Pittsburgh, getting an early jump.

    Update here:

    Dylan

    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    What Good Am I,  by Bob Dylan

    What good am I if I'm like all the rest,
    If I just turned away, when I see how you're dressed,
    If I shut myself off so I can't hear you cry,
    What good am I?

    What good am I if I know and don't do,
    If I see and don't say, if I look right through you,
    If I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin' sky,
    What good am I?

    What good am I while you softly weep
    And I hear in my head what you say in your sleep,
    And I freeze in the moment like the rest who don't try,
    What good am I?

    What good am I then to others and me
    If I've had every chance and yet still fail to see
    Bridge: If my hands tied must I not wonder within
    Who tied them and why and where must I have been

    What good am I if I say foolish things
    And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings
    And I just turn my back while you silently die,
    What good am I?

  • A Key Old Person and Joe Jennette

    Thanks to Ken Burns, old people are hot today. No longer are they geezers who drone on and on and on about the good old days and you'd kinda wish they'd just shut up already since they don't even know what an iPod is. No longer are they the crotchety codgers who grouse about how (per the New Yorker) for the price of a lousy postage stamp today, they used to be able to buy a whole damn Cadillac.

    They once were all this and more but Ken Burns changed that with his WWII documentary The War, which recently aired on PBS. Spanning 15+ hours, he told the story of the epic war through interviews with the real live participants, not the bullet-headed generals or the egg-headed historians. Today those participants are pretty old and, for the most part, still ordinary Joes. But they held center stage for those 15 hours. The long buried memories they brought to life were absolutely riveting. Turns out the good old days weren't so good for several very bad years. Like….was it Eisenhower who told how after Normandy, you could walk hundreds of yards and step on nothing but rotting human flesh?

    When Mr. Burns’ documentary recorded victory over Germany and then Japan, I knew the story was over. But I also knew there would be some epilogues, some “wrapping up” by the old people. And, dog tired though I was (did I not have to get up early next morning to report to the Institute?) I figured I owed it to these old folks to hear them out. You couldn’t help but connect with these people.

    But old people remember lots of things, not just war. Today, the hottest of all old people may be our family’s own Violet, profiled in Violet in the Old Folks Home.Of all living persons, she has the most vivid family memories of the boxer Joe Jennette. This, it turns out, is a critical asset since a TV sports network is making a documentary tribute to Joe. And it’s about time. Long ago, Joe used to routinely fight Jack Johnson, the first black World Heavyweight Title holder, and there’s plenty of people who think he would have captured the title himself had Jack given him a shot. But Jack didn’t. Why should he have? Winning the title himself, he had nothing to gain and everything to lose by fighting black challengers. Wouldn’t he, at best, get bruised up to no purpose? But having broken into the white boxer’s domain, all he had to do was stay there. He could pound white boy after white boy to his heart’s content. He dominated his years in the ring.

    All this, of course, was too bad for Joe. It consigned him to the footnotes of fighting. But now TV sports wants to do their tribute. They’re poking around for people to interview and came across the white family Joe married into (my family) through this blog!They even thought they might interview me, Tom Sheepandgoats, but it turns out I don’t really know anything. I’m merely the chronicler. Yes, I saw Joe a few times when I was little, he probably carried me around some on his shoulders, but I really don’t remember. No, better to put the TV people in touch with our family historian, a cousin. But they will really hit pay dirt if they can talk to Violet, Joe’s niece through marriage. It might be good for Violet, too. Old people love to think their memories are valued. Has she yet had her 15 minutes of fame?

    Alas, her health has taken a turn for the worse since my post about her. The clock is ticking toward midnight. Pop’s visits are more frequent. Will her memories of Joe be sharp as ever? Will she imagine Joe is still around? (That might be good for an interviewer) Or will she tell them that it’s simply none of their business? That’s unlikely, but you never know, especially if they descend upon her all full of themselves because they're on TV. Violet was always a down-to-earth person

    Joe and Adie would drive out in his fine car, a rare sensation, on his way to visit Adie's sister and family in the boondocks. We had one of those country families where everyone gathers around the huge kitchen table for hours on end, trading stories and gossip. By all accounts, Joe cut a fine figure. The neighbor kids were impressed. Who was the rich person with the chauffer? they wanted to know. “That’s no chauffer….that’s my uncle!” Pop replied.

    Decades later my own sixth grade daughter searched for an African-American person to write about for Black History Month. She trotted out all the regulars: Martin Luther King, George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglas, and so forth. All perfectly fine candidates. Nothing wrong with any of them. But none were family. So I told her the story of her great great uncle Joe, passing the torch of his memory to another generation. Did she not earn an "A" with her report? Would I not gladly embarass her and put it online if I still had it?

    From time to time people hit on that post about Joe. The TV writer, for one. But also a couple of young women who are descendants of Joe’s black family, through his brother. This is all welcome. We’ll now be able to link both sides of the family. I wasn’t able to trace his family when I wrote the post. They used to be in Connecticut, I heard. But googling the name, there were more Jennettes and Jeanettes (a misspelling that stuck…even the Jersey City street named in his honor is misspelled Jeanette!) in Connecticut than you could shake a stick at, so I gave up.

    We never knew much about Joe’s family. Maybe Violet will remember it all, if they reach her in time. I used to think it was on account of racial tensions. But the old guy (another one!) I work with every morning says, no, all families used to be like that. You seldom kept close to both sides of a family. You’d identify with one or the other. Travel wasn’t so easy as it is now, telephone not so reliable or cheap (people had party lines back then…the neighbors would sometimes listen in), email not so existent, and so you tended to lose touch with one or the other side.

    But now, at long last, we can glue it together! We'll do Joe proud.

    More on Joe in the books GoWhereTomGoes, and Tom Irregardless and Me.

  • Tom Sheepandgoats Rated R!

    In the time-honored bloggers' way of wasting time, I discovered a colleague bloggerwho's blog is rated G. He crows about it. And he gives the website where you can rate your own blog.

    Of course, this is irresistible, so I entered my own url. Surely, if this fellow gets a G, then my blog….pure and clean and beautiful….will also score a….

    I'm rated R!  R!!!! Me! Righteous, pious, loveable Tom Sheepandgoats!!! Surely this is a ruse of the devil, and I only wish that nonsense about him having horns and pointy tail was really true and that I could trade places for a moment because then I would hunt down those internet clowns and jab them in the tush with my pitchfork!

    The rating is based on key words and how often those words appear. I had some shockers:

    death  (8x)
    hell (2x)
    murder (1x)

    Look, this is a blog that deals with religious notions. Sure, "death" and "hell" have been mentioned. I don't quite recall where "murder" was used, though. Before logging on to a certain web rating service, the notion of murder had never occurred to me.

    Now, in this politically correct age, before anyone take that last remark seriously, allow me to point out that it should not be taken seriously. It's a joke. Ha ha.

    Which, incidentally, reminds me of the time in my youth (late 50's, early 60's) when it was routine for someone to say "I'll kill you," or "I'll kill you for that," as a means of expressing disapproval, or even in jest. Reacting to some childhood shenanigans, I vividly recall my mother saying "I'll kill you." It was said almost approvingly, with affection, as if acknowledging that "boys will be boys." She never did kill me, because if she had, then I wouldn't be here wri….well, she just never did.

    Take, for example, that 1957 movie Twelve Angry Men, which I highly recommend. The twelve jurors are ready to quickly convict a kid for murder. ("Murder" again! Rats! There goes any hope of cleaning up my blog rating!) It seems an open-shut case, with eyewitnesses! But in deliberations, one juror votes "innocent," not because he thinks the kid is innocent, but only because he thinks anyone on trial for his life (yes, these were the days of the electric chair) deserves to have testimony patiently reviewed. Discussions uncover some things not given due weight during the trial. By degrees, the jurors all come over to the acquittal side. The 2nd last juror is tough to sway, and the last is next to impossible. Emotions are high, overshadowing (as the frequently do) reason. In frustration, the last guy shrieks "I'll kill you!" "You didn't mean that literally, did you?" comes the retort, and the stubborn fellow crumbles. There goes the last piece of substantial evidence, for the kid had been heard to say "I'll kill you!"

    How far we've come through the years. Now, no one would ever say such a thing as "I'll kill you"….you'd have the hate-speech police all over you. But people have fewer qualms about doing it, something infrequent in the old days.

    Rated R, my rear end! This system is almost as hokey as the movie ratingsystem.

     

    *******************

    Tom Irregardless and Me                 No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • Isaac Asimov and Ignaz Semmelweis

    I once worked with a girl named Casey who positively loved science fiction. In the context of other things, I mentioned the film I, Robot.

    Oh, that was terrible! she said.

    But as we kept talking, it turned out she had never seen it. Um…Casey, how do know it's terrible if you've never seen it? I asked. The answer was that she was a purist. She knew the movie did not follow Isaac Asimov's storyline, and that was enough for her!

    For an Asimov purist, the movie would indeed be blasphemy. Asimov, who wrote almost all the time, having 500 books (written or edited) and 90,000 letters to his credit, with works in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal system, penned the Foundation trilogy and the I, Robot series, both pillars among science fiction. His plotting was ingenious, and had he been able to empathetically sketch people as well as ideas, he might have gone down as one of literature's true greats. Alas, his characters are cardboard, like those TV characters who are freely interchangeable save for one or two superficial features: this one is mean, this one likes to eat, that one is a geek, etc. Too bad – for every other aspect of Asimov's writing is extraordinary.

    Asimov was an atheist, but I always imagine that, if current atheists had been taught the Bible by Jehovah's Witnesses instead of the churches, they may not have turned atheist. It's probably not so but I dream it anyway. For example, in his last autobiographical book, Asimov observes that hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term.  [Wikipedia entry on Isaac Asimov] Yeah! Man, I wish he had heard first from Jehovah's Witnesses! Virtually alone among Christian faiths at the turn of the last century, Jehovah's Witnesses exposed hellfire for the vicious rubbish that it is. JW "founder" C. T. Russell was known in his lifetime as the man who "turned the hose on hell and put out the fire!"

    At any rate, had he been a Witness, it would have benefited him personally. He died in 1992, of AIDS contracted from a blood transfusion nine years prior.

    Still, I am grateful to Dr. Asimov, not only for the hours of intriguing science fiction he laid upon me, but also for his non-fiction works. Asimov's Guide to Science probably was my springboard to individual branches of science. If Asimov lacked in sketching fictional characters, he was gifted in sketching real ones. Not only the pillars, but also the buffoons, he succeeded in portraying the humanity of scientists. It is from him (Asimov's guide to Biology) that I first read of Ignaz Semmelweis, early advocate of antiseptic surgical practices and forerunner of germ theory.

    In the mid 1800's, Semmelweis got it in his head that fever and death following doctor-assisted childbirth could be curtailed by washing hands and equipment frequently. Doctors back then would deliver a baby, having just emerged from an autopsy, only wiping their hands on their smocks! There were some sort of tiny "particles" contaminating the women, Semmelweis proposed. Doctors howled with laughter at such nonsense. Asimov's book vividly portrays Semmelweis' presenting his ideas at seminars, with his esteemed audience mocking him, hurling catcalls! Doctors argued that, even if Semmeweis' findings were correct, washing one's hands each time before treating a pregnant woman would be too much work. Semmelweis enforced strict antiseptic practices at the hospital under his supervision, cutting deaths to under 1%, and it made no difference in their attitude! Colleagues ridiculed him his entire life, he suffered a nervous breakdown and, says Asimov, died in an insane asylum tormented by memories of women screaming in their death-agonies following hospital-acquired infections. With Semmelweis out of the way, his own hospital went back to familiar practices and the mortality rate climbed to 35%.

    You can read the bare facts in many places, but Asimov's account is the most vivid I have come across, remarkable in a book that purports only to be an outline, a "guide."

    Whenever those atheists start prattling on about how scientists graciously change their views at the first hint they may be off-base, whereas it's only the pig-headed religionists who "stay the course" come hell or high water, I play the 'Semmelweis' card.

    Athiest or not, I miss Isaac Asimov.

    A5AA677E-8AAF-4FDE-9FAD-0D8002CFFC29

    **********************************  The bookstore

  • Pop Goes to the Movies!

    Pop hadn’t seen a movie in thirty years. We had to act. No one should be so culturally deprived. He would, no doubt, thank us later.

    Oceans 11 was playing at the time. At the theater, we kept darting Pop sidelong glances.

    Afterwards came the verdict. Pretty violent, he began.

    Seconds later: Pretty loud.

    And why all that cursing? Why is there so much cursing?

    And These guys aren’t cool! You think these guys are cool? Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin (the original Oceans 11), those guys were cool! These guys aren’t cool.

    No point trying to argue. We realized we’d chosen the wrong film.

    Lord of the Rings was playing. Let’s show Pop what movie makers with computers can do today! But I started to worry during the film. I liked it well enough the first time around, but now it seemed repetitive. Midway through the movie, I heard snoring.

    “Hey, Pop,” I shook him, “we don’t have to sit through this if you don’t want to.”

    Huh?…what…it stinks? He replied.

    He groused all the way home. And what about Gordon? That dragon came after Gordon and they just left him in the cave! How could they do that to Gordon?

    It was Gandalf, not Gordon.

    What can I say? Some people just don’t like movies.

  • Hal and the Astronaut Farmer

    The name of the rocket was Dreamer. It's builder was a dreamer.

    With "The Astronaut Farmer," my wife and I knew we were in for a quirky film straight from the opening scene, a blend of two American icons. There he is on horseback, riding alone on the deserted plain. But wait! Zoom in steadily and we see he's not a cowboy at all, but an astronaut, or at least a guy in a spacesuit.

    It's an irresistible movie. Part endearing family tale, part reckless pursuit of a dream, part good guys vs bad guys, part fantasy. Fantasy, because clearly, the plot could never happen. If you're one of those picayune people who huff over improbabilities, stay away. Everyone else gets a green light. Billy Bob Thorton plays Charles Farmer, an ex NASA rancher determined to pilot a rocket from his barn, with his family's help. It's a homeschool project, no less. Billy Bob has that eternal optimism, that unshakable good nature, and most importantly, that absolute inability to see when his goose is cooked that makes him unstoppable. In real life these guys make invincible salesmen. In movie life, they orbit the earth.

    Each time we see a movie, I read internet reviews afterwards so I can tell my wife if I liked the film or not, a habit which drives her nuts. Reviews of Astronaut Farmer were mixed. The deciding factor, I discern, is whether you can imagine and appreciate a kook like Farmer. I can. Take Hal, for instance.

    Hal enjoyed the same combination of qualities. Incurable optimism, unyielding good nature, bedrock decency. And absolutely oblivious to obstacles. People loved Hal. True to calling, he was a salesman. You'd sooner get his customers to bump off their mothers than buy from a rival. If only I had half his nature.

    In the congregation, Hal was fully capable of off-the-wall remarks, as unpredictable as they were nutty, like how you could forget the resurrection if you died on an amusement park ride since you had deliberately risked life and limb. Fortunately no one took him seriously. "That's just Hal," they would say. The secret of human relations is to appreciate folks for their fine points, and cut them slack on the rest.

    He'd be offered oversight of this or that department at the circuit or district level. Of course, he'd accept. Never turn down a privilege. They'd dig up some assistants for him. The assistants would putz along, confident in Hal's sure hand and direction. But two thirds of the way through they'd realize, to their horror, that Hal had absolutely no idea what he was doing. So they'd work their tails off, doubletime, tripletime, and as a consequence, all would turn out well. "You see?" Hal would chime in, "Jehovah provides!"

    And who's to say that's not leadership? The assignments got done. Those assistants developed skills they never thought possible. In fact, I believe Hal attracted a corps of young Ministerial Servants eager for the challenge.

    But I wasn't one of them. We both served for a time on a committee looking into a Kingdom Hall build. Hal was enthralled with those then-new fold down baby changing tables. "We have to get one of those," he'd gush. "Put it right there in the men's room! Why should it be only the sisters who change babies? Times are changing! Not just the wives, but also the husbands should share!" On and on he'd go, so enthused.

    For crying out loud, we hadn't even located land yet!

    ********************************

    Tom Irregardless and Me      No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash