| Thursday,
April 12, 2001 Opening night of Don Pasquale last
night. Cast party afterwards.
In the discussion of schizophrenia as an inheritable disease, it was
pretty thoroughly established that schizophrenia was unknown in some
primitive peoples until contact with western civilization; after which it
appeared and became more prevalent. The question arises, have there been
insanties that came and vanished? Of course there are not many diseases
that have vanished, smallpox being the most notable of those that are, for
the moment and until released upon us in some experiment or another,
temporarily locked away. But one correspondent suggested religious hallucinatory
experiences as a vanishing form of insanity. Without quite knowing the
details he suggested that there had been such in Portugal around 1911, but
such things don't seem to be happening now.
This prompted a reply from me and on reflection I will insert it here.
Understand, I have no quarrel with the proposition that some, and perhaps
most, religious visions are what psychiatrists would call hallucinations.
The real question is, have all of them been? If not, then there are some
implications that can't be ignored. Note also that it is unlikely that
there will ever be absolute proof one way or another, and this may itself
not be irrelevant.
The story of the events in Fatima (in 1917, not 1911) are given at http://www.fatima.org/story1.html
by what appears (from the language and use of capital letters) to be a
conservative Catholic organization. My notes below are from memories more
than 50 years old:
Well one man’s hallucination is another’s revelation. As to Fatima
(in Portugal during a particularly anti-religious government phase
determined to secularize Portuguese society) there was some kind of
manifestation but no two observers seem to agree on what other than that
something odd happened. A number did say their clothes, soaked earlier in
a rainstorm, were dry after it. There were three revelations to a peasant
girl there: that Russia would threaten the peace of the world, second that
through prayer and the Church Russia would be made harmless, and a third
one that she revealed only to the Pope; that one has been passed from Pope
to Pope but never revealed to the public for reasons I do not know. The
girl was still alive a couple of years ago, and she has told no one else.
She never looked for publicity. How she had any inkling that Russia would
be a major factor in 20th Century history isn't clear. Like most such
events this is one that strengthens existing faith but doesn't do much for
those without it.
But by their nature miracles aren’t widespread and aren’t
predictable, and are outside science and nature. Which isn’t to say that
many events thought to be miraculous don’t have a simple scientific
explanation; a lot and perhaps nearly all do. The question is whether
there has ever been at least one actual miracle, defined as an actual
intervention upsetting physical laws by divine will. Clearly the
Resurrection would be such an event: it would be no good trying to make it
happen again no mater what science one employed. This is of course why
there is so much effort devoted to showing it never happened, or if it did
it was a trick played by a Jewish faction. Paul put his finger on that
one: if Christ be not risen then is all our faith in vain. Paul had an
experience that psychiatrists could explain (ad apparently that bothered
Paul even in his time). Whether all those he talked to were liars or
delusional is the key question. He concluded they were not. Clearly.
No doubt many “Extraordinary delusions and the madness of crowds”
were simple manifestations of physical or chemical phenomena not known to
the people of the time. It is now commonly concluded that the Salem
visions were due to rye ergot, which has been the cause of other
hallucinatory experiences; it's quite similar to LSD and occurs naturally.
Other such events may be simple myth, such as the blind man who saw in
Canterbury after the intervention of St. Thomas – although Henry’s
investigators sure tried to prove that the man, blinded by judicial order
for theft, wasn’t really blind and that it was all a fake. They
eventually reported to Henry that they had no explanation, and this was
one of the events that led up to Henry having himself flogged in
Canterbury as an act of Penance. Henry Plantagenet wasn’t one to relish
such matters, and he sure tried to prove that the miracles of Thomas A
Becket were fakes….
But religious manifestations attested by reliable witnesses have been
pretty rare over the centuries, and I don’t think there has been much of
a trend. Lourdes and Fatima are the recent ones we recall, and Guadalupe
before that; hardly any great number since colonial times…
And Roland says he got this as his fortune cookie this morning:
I thought you might find this amusing.
-----
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't
run,
And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
Have you thought about taking a hike?"
"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
"Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
And don't realize that they've been had.
-----
To which I have no comment...
WARNING: DO NOT USE REGCLEAN
on W 2000
The Asian press is already saying that the US lost
face, backed down, etc., and one Japanese paper is calling for revaluation
of US strategic intentions. Interesting. I quote one fellow science
fiction author:
Part of the problem, though, is the reaction in _Asia_. Asian countries
are
seeing it, almost universally, as a diplomatic defeat, a huge one. That
the
_US_ "blinked." Some of the editorials in Tokyo are already
using it as a
rationale for "reevaluating their relationship with China and the
US."
Yes, we got the hostages back. Yes, we didn't "really"
apologize, certainly
not "daoquan" ("taking blame for unacceptable
actions".) But unless we do
something publicly to prove we are still the world's only superpower,
and
_publicly_ and _soon_, we are looking at a number of countries that we
_don't_ want "reevaluating their strategic relationships"
doing so.
That will be bad.
Now that the only thing at stake is the airplane, which we would never
trust to be clean of bugs and sabotage materials anyway, we have a few
more choices. The problem is that most of them make us look like spiteful
bullies.
Were I Bush I would simply repeat the letter we sent China, attached to
notice that their barbarous actions have merited our opposition to their
Olympic bid, a State Department Warning that China is no longer considered
a safe place to travel and that includes Olympic athletes, and a notice
that unless the airplane is returned we will remove China from the Most
Favored Nations status. Or would I?
Certainly an Empire would act that way. An Empire would be very much
concerned about demonstrating that it is the only super power. That is
what Empires do.
A Republic might simply be glad
our troops are home, and think again about the purposes served in risking
more. But the citizens of a Republic might think very hard about buying
goods made in China, and let their retail outlets know they of that
concern. Yet again: is the long term interest of the US served best by
triggering an economic collapse in China -- fairly easy to do at not all
that high cost to us -- and thus removing the Favor of Heaven from the
current regime and forcing them to yet more repressive measures -- or by
some other action? Under which course are the people of China better off?
Chinese Communism isn't the chiliastic Russian variety. They don't really
want to set up puppet regimes around the world, and they aren't really a
universal movement. The regime is communist because it happened to be
that, but it is more Chinese than communist. Does that matter?
I have no idea. During the 70 Years War Possony always held that we
needed China to help neutralize the USSR, which in his judgment was the
real enemy. Now that the Seventy Years War is over, what need have we of
either China? Not that Taiwan is a "China" in any recognizable
sense other than the desire of the ontocracy on the mainland.
We can seek to right the wrongs of the world, including those in Asia.
That requires surveillance aircraft, and a military overseas presence, and
a force capable of projecting force and power far beyond North America. It
means remaining in NATO and being more and more subject to the
"European Union" bureaucracy and its courts which seek to have a
presence everywhere.
Or we can say that we are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the
guardians only of our own, and conduct a China policy based on our own
interests, and ignore the Asian press and it's preoccupation with
'face". Whether our own interest is best served by exporting more and
more manufacturing jobs is at least worth discussion while we are thinking
along these lines.
It will be a long time before China can take a drink from a US stream
without our let and leave.
Subject: new specs for the PC http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,6061,2701649-10,00.html
Interesting specs. Including this one.
The system does not allow end-user access to expansion bus cards. This
means
users will no longer routinely open their PCs to add peripherals.
Tom
This was part of the WinHEC conference. Thanks for the reminder.
I find some of them silly. It may be desirable to have a BIOS option to
hide all the BIOS self-tests, but I sure don't want that to be mandatory.
There are other things I find less than compelling...
Then there are the outfits that you allow to send you press releases,
and that get fancier and fancier. You don't want attachments and won't
open them so the next thing I know they are sending HUGE things with
complex links and all kinds of moving junk; they take forever to download,
you don't dare open them, and if you try to reply to say get me off this
flipping list they gag your machine. Executive Software, the outfit that
makes Diskeeper, is the latest offender. Why do people DO this? Do they
really think anyone wants their fancy advertisements?
And then there are the conferences that want you to register, and have
interminable web pages to wade through before you can. It's enough to make
you want to -- but no that would be in bad taste.
And Roland sends this with the note that apparently if you have two
computers networked with a crossover Ethernet cable you are subject
to a treaty:
http://www.law.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=law/View&;c=
Article&;cid=ZZZD3WRL5LC&;live=true&;cst=1&;pc=0&;pa=
0&;s=News&;ExpIgnore=true&;showsummary=0
I had to break this imbecilic URL, of course.
From the opera, or rather after it, Roberta discovers
the new angels at the Pavilion:
And hiking today, overlooking the new palaces of Studio City. The
Spanish style to the right was built by Goldie Hawn, but she and Kurt Russell
had just moved in when the earthquake damaged it badly. They moved back to
Malibu and have not returned. As you can see, Sasha is his old self.
And Roland sends this, more on the security problem:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010412/tc/802_11_and_swiss_cheese_1.html
And regarding the mail:
Clark
Myers informs me that Ladin is mentioned 6 times in the New
Britannica. I leave the rest as an exercise to the reader...
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