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Sunday, December 13, 2020

Majority - William Carey

One with God is a majority.

William Carey

Cultural Conflict - Alessandro Valignano

Thus we who come hither from Europe find ourselves as veritable children who have to learn how to eat, sit , converse, dress, and act politely, and so on. This is the reason why it is impossible either in India or in Europe , to evaluate or to decide the problems of Japan; nor can one even understand or imagine how things occur there, because it is another world, another way of life, other customs, and other laws. many things which are regarded as courteous and honorable in Europe , are here resented as great insults and injuries. Contrariwise many things which are here regarded as common uses of daily life, and without which no social intercourse is possible with the Japanese, are eclipsed in Europe as base and unworthy, especially in a religious community. Alessandro Valignano

Japanese Character and Culture, A group of Select Readings

1962 Edited by Bernard S Silberman pg 287-288 University of Arizona Press

Where you Born That Way - George Howe Colt

Steel worker... Jim Lewis and clerical worker Jim Springer. Identical twins separated five weeks after birth, they were raised by families 80 miles apart in Ohio. Reunited 39 years later, they would have strained the credulity of the editors of Ripley's Believe it or Not. Not only did both have dark hair, stand six feet tall and weigh 180 pounds, but they spoke with the same inflections, moved with the gait and made the gestures. Both loved stock car racing and hated baseball. Both married women named Linda, divorced them and married women named Betty. Both drove Chevrolets, drank Miller lite, chane-smoked Salems and vacationed on the same half-mile stretch of Florida beach. Both had elevated blood pressure, severe migraines and had undergone vasectomies. Both hit their nails. Their heart rates, brain waves and Iqs were nearly identical. Their scores on personality tests were as close as if one person had taken the same test twice.

...

Studies of twins have produced an impressive list of attributes or behaviors that appear to owe at least as much to heredity as to environment. It includes alienation. Extroversions, traditionalism, leadership, career choice, risk aversion, attention deficit disorder, religious conviction and vulnerability to stress. one study even concluded that happiness is 80 percent heritable C it depends little on wealth, achievement or marital status. Another study found that while both optimism and pessimism are heavily influenced by genes, environment affects optimism but not pessimism

George Howe Colt, April 1998, Where you Born That Way, Life Magazine

Prayer - George MacDonald: Lilith

More than that I cannot tell you. If you know it, you know it; if you do not, you do not. Could you not teach me to know a prayer flower when I see it? I said.

I could not. But if I could, what better would you be? You would not know it of yourself and itself! Why know the name of a thing when the thing itself you do not know? Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise.

But I did see that the flower was different from any flower I had ever seen before; therefore I knew that I must be seeing a shadow of the prayer in; and a great awe came over me to think of the heart listening to the flower.

George MacDonald: Lilith

Mr Raven and Mr Vane holding a conversation over the flower from people praying in the little cemetery

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Afraid of What - EH Hamilton

Friday, November 27, 2020

On the Odds - Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

Heisenberg recollected a conversation among young participants at the 1927 Solvay Conference about Einstein and Planck's views on religion between Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg and Dirac. Dirac's contribution was a criticism of the political purpose of religion, which Bohr regarded as quite lucid when hearing it from Heisenberg later.^[47]^:320 Among other things, Dirac said:

I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.^[48]

Heisenberg's view was tolerant. Pauli, raised as a Catholic, had kept silent after some initial remarks, but when finally he was asked for his opinion, said: "Well, our friend Dirac has got a religion and its guiding principle is 'There is no God, and Paul Dirac is His prophet.'" Everybody, including Dirac, burst into laughter.^[49]^[50]^:138

Later in life, Dirac's views towards the idea of God were less acerbic. As an author of an article appearing in the May 1963 edition of Scientific American, Dirac wrote:

It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better.^[51]

In 1971, at a conference meeting, Dirac expressed his views on the existence of God.^[52] Dirac explained that the existence of God could be justified only if an improbable event were to have taken place in the past:

It could be that it is extremely difficult to start life. It might be that it is so difficult to start life that it has happened only once among all the planets... Let us consider, just as a conjecture, that the chance life starting when we have got suitable physical conditions is 10⁻¹⁰⁰. I don't have any logical reason for proposing this figure, I just want you to consider it as a possibility. Under those conditions ... it is almost certain that life would not have started. And I feel that under those conditions it will be necessary to assume the existence of a god to start off life. I would like, therefore, to set up this connection between the existence of a god and the physical laws: if physical laws are such that to start off life involves an excessively small chance, so that it will not be reasonable to suppose that life would have started just by blind chance, then there must be a god, and such a god would probably be showing his influence in the quantum jumps which are taking place later on. On the other hand, if life can start very easily and does not need any divine influence, then I will say that there is no god.^[52]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac

Mania - Fermi about Teller

Fermi once said that Teller was the only "monomaniac he knew who had several manias."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller

Friday, November 13, 2020

Simple Legalize Translated - Simple Bank

In case of errors or questions about your electronic transfers, contact us as soon as you can, if you think your statement or receipt is wrong or if you need more information about a transfer listed on the statement or receipt. We must hear from you no later than 60 days after we sent the FIRST statement on which the problem or error appeared.

(1) Tell us your name and account number (if any).

(2) Describe the error or the transfer you are unsure about, and explain as clearly as you can why you believe it is an error or why you need more information.

(3) Tell us the dollar amount of the suspected error.

If you tell us orally, we may require that you send us your complaint or question in writing within 10 business days. We will determine whether an error occurred within 10 business days after we hear from you and will correct any error promptly. If we need more time, however, we may take up to 45 days to investigate your complaint or question. If we decide to do this, we will credit your account within 10 business days for the amount you think is in error, so that you will have the use of the money during the time it takes us to complete our investigation. If we ask you to put your complaint or question in writing and we do not receive it within 10 business days, we may not credit your account.

For errors involving new accounts, point-of-sale, or foreign-initiated transactions, we may take up to 90 days to investigate your complaint or question. For new accounts, we may take up to 20 business days to credit your account for the amount you think is in error. We will tell you the results within three business days after completing our investigation. If we decide that there was no error, we will send you a written explanation. You may ask for copies of the documents that we used in our investigation.

Translated

If you suspect fraudulent activity, get in touch with us right away. We’ll figure out what happened, let you know the results of our investigation and fix it, if necessary.