The Narrative

"By better understanding how life stories are built...people may be able to alter their own narrative, in small ways and perhaps large ones...

"'When we first started studying life stories, people thought it was just idle curiosity — stories, isn’t that cool?' said Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern... 'Well, we find that these narratives guide behavior in every moment, and frame not only how we see the past but how we see ourselves in the future.'

"Researchers have found that the human brain has a natural affinity for narrative construction. People tend to remember facts more accurately if they encounter them in a story rather than in a list, studies find; and they rate legal arguments as more convincing when built into narrative tales rather than on legal precedent...

"During a standard life-story interview, people describe phases of their lives as if they were outlining chapters, from the sandlot years through adolescence and middle age...

"Depending on the person, the story itself might be nuanced or simplistic, powerfully dramatic or cloyingly pious. But the point is that the narrative themes are, as much as any other trait, driving factors in people’s behavior, the researchers say.

"'We find that when it comes to the big choices people make — should I marry this person? should I take this job? should I move across the country? — they draw on these stories implicitly, whether they know they are working from them or not,' Dr. McAdams said."

--Benedict Carey in The New York Times

F.I.R.E.

"Dear Friend of F.I.R.E.,

"The Flagstaff International Relief Effort (F.I.R.E.) needs your help now! We are urgently trying to raise $15,000 to make the 2007 distribution trip happen.

"We have over 20 tons of warm winter clothing, educational and medical supplies ready to send to Mongolia. One container is full of warm winter clothing, including over 10,000 hand knit items. The second container is full of educational and medical supplies.

"We need $15,000 by July 15, or we will not be able to ship the containers and will have to cancel the distribution trip.

"When the 2 containers arrive they will be met by a team of clothing and medical volunteers who are standing by, ready to buy their tickets and pay their own expenses to conduct medical training and distribute the items to orphanages, hospitals, schools and thousands of needy children and their families.

"Please help us to...

--Personally distribute 8 tons of clothing, including over 10,000 hand knits, to over 10,000 of Mongolia's poorest children and families.

--Assist over 1 dozen schools with educational supplies and English books.

--Provide 450 boxes of medical supplies to 14 rural hospitals and clinics.

--Train medical professionals at over a dozen hospitals.

--Send children to school, aid the disabled, warm the cold....

"A donation of just $20 from each person who receives this letter will take us to our goal. Any assistance you can provide will be tremendously appreciated.

"I am confident that with your help we will be able to complete another successful distribution trip to Mongolia, continuing to help the most vulnerable members of society to improve the quality of their lives. Please help us in this time of urgent need to deliver these supplies and training.

"Thank you!

Meredith Potts

Executive Director

"P.S.Please send tax deductible contributions to the address below by July15, 2007. You can also donate directly from the internet. Please use the link below.

http://www.fireprojects.org/donate.htm

"P.P.S.To view a 5 minute video clip of our 2005 distribution trip please use the link below.

http://www.channelg.tv/video.php?project_id=44

Flagstaff International Relief Effort (F.I.R.E.)

107 N. San Francisco St., Suite 4

Flagstaff, AZ 86001

USA

Office: 1-928-779-1966

Fax: 1-928-774-5562

http://www.fireprojects.org/

Xeer tal

The first chapter of The Steppe in Mongolian, translated by B.Narantsetseg of Chinggis Khaan University.

www.TheSteppe.com

Mongolian Fashion

Mongolian fashion blog by Sumya, editor-in-chief of the UB Post:

http://mongolianfashion.blogspot.com/

Sri Chinmoy

Went with Marc today to listen to some guy speak at the UB Palace. "Who's speaking?" I wanted to know. "Some spiritual teacher."

Six full-size buses were parked in front of the UB Palace, each bearing a computer-printed A4 sign "Shri Chinmoi" in the windshield.

The UB Palace was packed. It turned out it was not a lecture or a reading, but a musical concert, and it was free.

It also turned out to be farcical. Set up on the stage were many Indian stringed instruments and flutes along with several electronic beat-boxes reminiscent of my brother's old electronic Casio keyboard that he had when we were kids in the '80s. Some old dude doddered around onstage between the instruments, sitting with one and playing on it until he seemingly got bored and then moving on to another one. I can only describe the stringed instrument playing as "awful" (this is the land of the morin khuur, after all, and no Ravi Shankar was this guy); I couldn't tell if he was trying to play music on the stringed instruments or just trying to tune them. The electronic sounds were cool, but they didn't seem like anything that I couldn't have produced myself after 20 minutes with a keyboard. On a few occasions, choirs of sari-clad folks from the theater seats congregated in front of the stage and sang a tune.

After the concert, the buses in front loaded up with the people in the saris, most of whom had European facial features. I was mildly interested to find out who this old guy was. I said "Hello" to one older pale-skinned lady in a sari, but she avoided my eyes. I heard a few of the sari people speaking Russian.

Anyway, I got home and googled this "Shri Chinmoi" guy. I discovered that President Enkhbayar awarded him the Friendship Medal last Wednesday. I also discovered that he is a con-man cult leader:

http://www.rickross.com/groups/srichinmoy.html

"Inside the entrance there's a picture of the grimacing Sri lifting a barbell with one arm; the caption says it weighed 7,063 pounds. That's right--7,063 pounds. With one arm. The Sri has lifted elephants and airplanes with one arm too. A man with a beer belly looks at the picture and says 'So how come this guy isn't in the Guinness book of records?'"

"The Toronto Council on Mind Abuse alleged that Chinmoy has misrepresented his status regarding the UN."

"The guru holds meditation meetings at the UN building in Manhattan, but has no official 'delegate' status."

"Sri Chinmoy labeled a visit to Japan he undertook as 'a delegation of about 100 members of the United Nations and Sri Chinmoy,' despite the fact that there was no official backing of this trip. Other events of Sri Chinmoy's organization, including concerts and sporting events, have attempted to portray an official connection with the U.N."

"Arnold Markowitz, director of the New York Jewish Community cult hotline and clinic said, 'Sri Chinmoy has produced the most psychiatric casualties of the meditation groups that I've experienced.'"

"Other national cult watchdog groups and mental health professionals also alleged Sri Chinmoy heads a 'destructive cult' with as many as 1,500 devotees."

"His followers engage in intensive chanting and meditative trances, adopt a distinctive dress, and avoid contact with non-members. Disciples address him as 'The Supreme.' Sri Chinmoy claims to have super-normal powers - including having written 843 poems in 24 hours, created 16,031 paintings in one day, and lifted 7000 pounds with one arm."

Roerich

Guests from Overseas
(Заморские гости)
Nicholas Roerich
1874-1947 Russian

Ernst is writing a biography of Roerich.

I first saw this painting at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 1999. I purchased a print of it, the first print of a painting I had ever bought.

The Internet Sacred Text Archive

"...the largest freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric on the Internet."

Internet Sacred Text Archive

The Red Wheelbarrow

"The Red Wheelbarrow"
William Carlos Williams
1883-1963 American


so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


>>Unsimple.

Center for the Study of the First Americans

"North, Central, and South America were the last continents to be populated by humans."

The Center for the Study of the First Americans features a photo gallery of sites in the United States, Mexico, and Russia.

The Problem of Other Minds in Machines

If I cannot know whether another human experiences a mental life in some way comparable to my own, how can I know whether a machine experiences one?

"It looks as if no scientific answer can be expected to the question of how or why we differ from a mindless body that simply behaves exactly as if it had a mind. The good news is that this difference makes no objective difference; the bad news is that it continues to make a subjective difference, one that cannot be explained away."

--Stevan Harnad, "Other bodies, Other minds: A machine incarnation of an old philosophical problem," Minds and Machines, 1991

Sheered Off

"What is the greatest thing in the world?" Ah Chun demanded with abrupt irrelevance.

Mamma Achun pondered for a moment, then replied: "God."

He nodded. "There are gods and gods. Some are paper, some are wood, some are bronze. I use a small one in the office for a paper-weight. In the Bishop Museum are many gods of coral rock and lava stone."

"But there is only one God," she announced decisively, stiffening her ample frame argumentatively.

Ah Chun noted the danger signal and sheered off.

"What is greater than God, then?" he asked. "I will tell you. It is money. In my time I have had dealings with Jews and Christians, Mohammedans and Buddhists, and with little black men from the Solomons and New Guinea who carried their god about them, wrapped in oiled paper. They possessed various gods, these men, but they all worshipped money...."


--Jack London, “Chun Ah Chun”

American Gulag

Guantanamo Bay in National Journal

"But then there's the prisoner's Casio watch. According to the Defense Department files, his watch is similar to another Casio model that has a circuit board that Al Qaeda has used for making bombs. The United States is using the Qaeda-favored Casio wristwatch as evidence against at least nine other detainees. But the offending model is sold in sidewalk stands around the world and is worn by one National Journal reporter."

Mongolia Investment Forum in New York

Here is an article on investment in Mongolia from The UB Post last month. The adverse effects of the Windfall Tax law are mentioned as expected, but there are also some surprises, such as concern over the railway and the idea to export energy to China.

"Entree Gold has drawn-down their investment by around 50 percent since 2002. The Western Prospector Group withdrew over US$3 billion capital outlay from the country after the windfall profits tax was adopted hastily last year...

"There are 15 strategically significant mineral deposits, where government participation is indefinite...

"Another barrier in trading with Mongolia is surface transportation links. Most of the cargo traffic is carried by the railway. Mongolia’s railway gauge is different from Chinese railway system, which has a standard gauge of 1,435 mm while it is 1,524 mm in Mongolia. Each carriage has to be lifted in turn to have its bogies changed...

"'We are looking principally at four sectors of the Mongolian economy. The first one is upgrading the railway. It would cost US$129 million to upgrade and increase the capacity of the railway system. It’s considered to be a key constraint of the Mongolian economy’s growth,' said James Hallmark, Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Country Director for Mongolia...

"'The windy southern province in Gobi, which shares a border with China on the south, is a good place to build wind power stations and export the energy to China... We should export energy to China rather than coal,' said Alan Fontaine, CEO of Newcom Group."

--Ch.Sumiyabazar for The UB Post

May 5

Happy Cinco de Mayo

May 1

Happy International Workers Day

Mongol Football from Ulemj

MongolFootball.com

Rise of the Robot Pets

"We understand that potential parrot owners are attracted by their beauty, their ability to intelligently interact with humans, and the attraction of owning an exotic pet... But when their physical and emotional needs are taken into account, a parrot can be as high-maintenance as a small child. The fact is that parrots have the social and intellectual development of a 2 to 5 year old child.

"Imagine such a child: He screams unimaginably loudly at dawn and dusk (and all times in between), chews the furniture and drapes, is unbelievably messy, constantly demands your attention, and engages in projectile pooping! But unlike a human, the parrot will remain this way for 80 years!

"It often gets worse as they get older. Upon reaching sexual maturity, a loving, cuddly young parrot may become aggressive... Remember, parrots are not domesticated creatures. They are only 1 to 2 generations removed from their natural habitat, and cannot be trained out of their natural instincts of screaming, chewing everything, and being messy.

"Because many people who purchase birds are ill-prepared for such a long, intensive commitment, parrots are often the subjects of abuse and neglect... No wonder the parrot becomes mean, depressed, or insane as a result...

"Please consider this information before deciding to own a parrot. The birds of Garuda Aviary represent a small fraction of the thousands of abused, neglected or unwanted birds."

--Garuda Aviary / Sanctuary for Birds

Kill the Buddha

"Whether you are facing inward or facing outward, whatever you meet up with, just kill it! If you meet a buddha, kill the buddha. If you meet a patriarch, kill the patriarch. If you meet an arhat, kill the arhat. If you meet your parents, kill your parents. If you meet your kinfolk, kill your kinfolk. Then for the first time you will gain emancipation, will not be entangled with things, will pass freely anywhere you wish to go."

--Linji, in The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi: A Translation of the Lin-chi lu by I-Hsuan, translated by Burton Watson

The Difference Half a Year Makes

This article from a year ago contrasts completely with the article from six months ago ("The Sumo authorities appreciate the excitement and ticket sales that foreign wrestlers generate."):

"Ticket sales are dropping as sumo stars like Bulgaria's Kotooshu and Mongolia's Asashoryu shove contenders from Japan out of the spotlight...

"Ticket sales have been declining, it is becoming harder for sumo to find young recruits and TV ratings have fallen significantly compared with a decade or so ago, when Japanese were still more of a factor in the six annual tournaments."

-Taipei Times

The Problem of Other Minds

“The problem of other minds is the problem of how to justify the almost universal belief that others have minds very like our own. It is one of the hallowed, if unfashionable, problems in philosophy. Various solutions to the problem are on offer. It is noteworthy that so many are on offer. Even more noteworthy is that none of the solutions on offer can plausibly lay claim to enjoying majority support.”

—Alec Hyslop, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

www.TheSteppe.com

Der Philosoph

The Philosopher
Rembrandt
1606-1669 Dutch

Gantsaaraa

“Gloomy saints who abstained from all pleasures of sense, who lived in solitude in the desert, denying themselves meat and wine and the society of women, were, nevertheless, not obliged to abstain from all pleasures. The pleasures of the mind were considered to be superior to those of the body...”

—Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

www.TheSteppe.com

Front Cover of The Steppe

www.TheSteppe.com

The Steppe

Crossing Mongolia on horseback one summer, Rad encounters a man who lives alone upon the steppe. Known to the nomads as “Buddha” but calling himself “Baatar,” the man lives without a horse, a ger, or a herd of sheep, but with a large, mysterious sword that may once have belonged to Genghis Khan. He claims to survive by hunting and eating monstrous, nocturnal “creatures” of the steppe.

As Rad questions Baatar, seeking the truth, he becomes drawn into the man’s strange reality. Soon, Rad realizes that he, like Baatar, may never wish to leave the steppe, nor be able to.

The Steppe imparts a horrifying, challenging truth—that except for your knowledge that you exist now, you do know nothing, and you can know nothing.

www.TheSteppe.com

Quotations from The Steppe

“I do not know and cannot know what is out there, nor whether anything is out there at all.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“We are in Mongolia.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“Gantsaaraa.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“You have turned your back on all the world.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“The creatures are as real as the steppe.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“Why would they want to kill you?”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“I have memories of drinking the blood of the creatures, and I anticipate doing so again.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“Behind me I see distant, dark movement. Other shapes to the north, others to the south. They are coming in at different angles, coming in from all directions.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“What you might believe has no bearing upon my ukhaan.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“I do not know, and I cannot know.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

“Maybe he eats grass.”
—The Steppe by Radigan Neuhalfen

www.TheSteppe.com

Chapter One of The Steppe

The steppe is like the sea. When you are out upon it, it and the sky are all you can see. It is as wide as it is long; it forms a far horizon in every direction.

I crested the small hill with my two horses—riding the one and leading the other as a packhorse—halted, and looked down into the shallow, narrow valley and at the ger at the nadir of it. The day was ending, and shadows were filling the valley.

I rode to the ger. Inside, the approach of the horses must have been heard. The colorful—blue and orange, with wide vertical stripes of red and yellow—short wooden door swung open, and an old man bent through the jamb and stepped out. I raised my hand in greeting as I rode up, and called out, “Sain baina uu?” Are things well?

“Things are well,” he said. Sain, sain.

I drew the horses to a halt and climbed slowly out of the saddle, my knees sore from riding. I tied the leads of the horses to the zel, a rope strung two meters off the ground between two poles, set up beside the ger. Two other horses were tethered to the zel, one of which was saddled.

As I walked to the old man, I reached into the front flap of my deel, found my tobacco bottle, pulled it out, and unwrapped it from its cloth bunting. I offered it to him. He reached out his right hand to accept it, and suddenly grinned. Closer to one another now, he could see my facial features clearly. He accepted the tobacco bottle, pulled the cap open just a bit, held it to his nose, and sniffed.

He pushed the cap almost closed and handed the bottle back to me, asking, “Where are you from?”

“From Ulaanbaatar,” I answered, holding the bottle in my hand without re-wrapping it.

He grinned again. “Ti russki?” he asked, in Russian. Are you Russian?

“No, no—I am American,” I said, in Mongolian.

His grin was large and cheerful. He turned to the door, opened it, ducked down, and went through. I bent down and followed, even as he turned slightly to wave his hand at me and say, “Come in, come in.”

As I pulled the door shut and straightened up inside the ger, the old man was saying laughingly to the women inside, “Look! It is another American.”

An old woman and a young woman were at the stove. They had both looked up from their cooking, their faces blank, their mouths hanging open. I spoke quickly. “Things are well? Are your animals fattening up well?”

They both grinned, and the young woman said, “Very well, very well.”

There were no other men in the ger, so I tightened the cap on my tobacco bottle, wrapped it, and tucked it into my deel.

I walked around the women at the stove, between them and the saddle rack against the wall, and sat on the short stool at the left side of the low, orange table. The old man had seated himself at the top of the table and had found his tobacco bottle. He proffered it to me, still grinning.

I took it with my right hand, touching my right arm at the elbow with my left hand. I opened the cap slightly, sniffed, then replaced the cap loosely and handed it back to him.

“You speak Mongolian well,” the old man said, pushing the bottle into his deel.

“Thank you. It is a beautiful language.”

They all three laughed. “If you say so,” the young woman said. Then she spoke to the old woman, and they began chatting between themselves.

“What is your name?” the old man said through his smile.

“Radnaa,” I said.

“That is a Mongolian name!”

“Yes.”

“What is your original name?”

I told him. “Eh?” he said, bending his head down and leaning his ear closer to me.

“Call me Radnaa.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, grinning. “That is actually a Tibetan name.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“A friend gave it to me in Ulaanbaatar.”

“That is good, that is good,” the old man said, nodding his head in approval.

“He told me that many Mongolians have Tibetan names.”

“It is true! We are very connected to Tibet. We are both Buddhist countries.” He asked, “Are you Buddhist?”

“More or less,” I said.

He laughed. Then he leaned closer to me, conspiratorially, and said, “Me too!”

He had poured two glasses of vodka and set the bottle in the center of the table. He handed one glass to me, then picked up the other glass from the table, raised it, and said in Russian, “To health!”

I raised my glass and said, also in Russian, “To Lenin!”

He laughed. “Yes, to Lenin, to Lenin!” We drank the shots and set the glasses on the table. He immediately refilled them.

For a moment, the ger was silent.

“So who is this other American?” I asked...

Continue reading The Steppe

The Steppe #5

The only thing that exists is the sea, and a barque as tiny as a man’s body, with Mind as captain.

—Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco

www.TheSteppe.com

The Steppe #4

That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment...

—Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

www.TheSteppe.com

The Steppe #3

A man is born in a ger but will die fighting in the steppe.

—B.Rinchen, Lady Anu

www.TheSteppe.com

The Steppe #2

Honey has, on the limited occasions we have tasted it, been sweet, but whether it is sweet we do not know. We certainly do not know if it is the nature of honey to be sweet...

—Guy Davenport, The Jules Verne Steam Balloon

www.TheSteppe.com

The Steppe #1

I am, I exist.

—Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

www.TheSteppe.com

The Steppe: Ulaanbaatar Playground

Children's Playground, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

www.TheSteppe.com

Descartes in Ulaanbaatar

All winter, I walked passed three copies of this portrait of Descartes taped to a sign for a photo shop on the sidewalk on Peace Avenue. I often wondered how many people on the streets of Ulaanbaatar recognized the founder of modern Western philosophy.

Squirrels

Knowledge Advances

“Ever since Thomas Jefferson began collecting Native American artifacts and displaying them in his foyer, many theories have been proposed to explain how people first came to North and South America. The most widely accepted was the Clovis-first theory, named for the elegant, fluted spear points found in association with the remains of mammoths, bison and other animals near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1932...

“In the 1960s and early 1970s the ecologist Paul S. Martin and the geoarchaeologist C. Vance Haynes Jr., together with James E. Mossiman, began to develop a dramatic theory about how the Americas were settled. They hypothesized that about 11,500 years ago, at the end of the most recent Ice Age, a single band of mammoth hunters from Siberia crossed the Bering land bridge into Alaska, and from there began spreading across North America. According to this theory, there were no people in the New World until that time. The new arrivals and their descendents prospered and, in just a few centuries, purportedly settled two continents.

“The Clovis-first model gained enormous scientific prominence—in fact, to question it was to risk virtual professional suicide... Now, however, thanks to the new archaeological finds and analytical advances, the Clovis-first model has been refuted.

“In 1977 Thomas D. Dillehay began excavating at the Monte Verde site in southern Chile. Dillehay’s work showed Monte Verde to be at least 12,500 years old, and he was widely criticized for challenging the validity of the Clovis-first theory... Three years ago a special team of archaeologists, including avowed skeptics, inspected Monte Verde. The result was vindication: the experts confirmed that Monte Verde was a legitimate pre-Clovis site... Other sites—and there were many—that had been in limbo because they seemed to predate Clovis could now be acknowledged...

“Not only has the idea that the Americas were devoid of people until 11,500 years ago been disproved, but a second important tenet of the Clovis-first theory has also crumbled: the assertion that the Americas were colonized only once. The latest research shows that the New World probably underwent multiple colonizations: instead of originating in a small area of northeast Siberia, as predicted by the Clovis-first model, the first Americans probably came from many parts of Eurasia.

“Perhaps the nail in the coffin for the Clovis-first theory is that no Clovis-style artifacts have ever been retrieved from archaeological sites in Siberia...

“The idea that the Americas were settled more than once and by different groups of people is supported by evidence from ancient skeletons that been examined with new techniques, such as the study of the DNA in the mitochondria of cells...

“The molecular anthropologist Theodore Schurr and other investigators have identified five distinct mitochondrial lineages, or haplogroups, as they are called, in modern Native Americans. Four of the haplogroups—A, B, C and D—are also found in varying frequencies in different Asian populations, which suggest that early immigrants to the Americas may have come from more than one region of Asia. The fifth haplogroup, known as X, is much rarer than the other four haplogroups, and its origin is not clear. It occurs among certain European populations but is absent in contemporary Asian populations, which suggests that it may record another distinct migration to the Americas, possibly from western Eurasia...

“The advent of the personal computer has enabled Paleo-American investigators to apply powerful statistical techniques to multiple sets of data...

“The work has yielded some tantalizing results that corroborate much of the DNA evidence. For example, the physical anthropologist C. Loring Bruce and his research team have concluded that the modern native peoples of North America are the descendents of at least four different colonizing populations from two different parts of Asia...

“Likewise, the physical anthropologists D. Gentry Steele, Douglas Owsley, Richard L. Jantz and Walter Neves have compiled and analyzed measurements from the earliest known North and South American skeletons. Their research has demonstrated that early New World skulls are quite distinct from the skulls of modern Native Americans...

“The reasons for the difference between early and later New World skulls have yet to be fully explained. The discrepancies may be the result of gradual evolutionary changes that took place over time. On the other hand, the differences may indicate that the early skeletons are unrelated to those of modern Native Americans.

“Thus a radical new idea has emerged: the people who inhabited the Americas when Columbus arrived—the tribes referred to today as Native Americans—may not be descended from the earliest Americans. There is no reason to assume that the first immigrants to the Americas took hold and prospered. Perhaps some of the early colonizing groups died out before later groups arrived. Or it may be that later colonizing groups replaced earlier groups as a result of warfare, the introduction of new diseases, or higher birth or survival rates.”


--Robson Bonnichsen and Alan L. Schneider, “Battle of the Bones,” first published in The Sciences, 2000 July/August

Anomy

“Have you decided what you are going to do yet, Harold?” his mother said, taking off her glasses.
“No,” said Krebs.
“Don’t you think it’s about time?” His mother did not say this in a mean way. She seemed worried.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Krebs said.
“God has some work for every one to do,” his mother said. “There can be no idle hands in His Kingdom.”
“I’m not in His Kingdom,” Krebs said.

“Don’t you love your mother, dear boy?”
“No,” Krebs said.
His mother looked at him across the table. Her eyes were shiny. She started crying.
“I don’t love anybody,” Krebs said.

“I’m your mother,” she said. “I held you next to my heart when you were a tiny baby.”
Krebs felt sick and vaguely nauseated.


--Ernest Hemingway, “Soldier’s Home,” 1925

Twinkle, Twinkle

Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific,
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific,
Loftily poised in ether capacious,
Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous.

Going clubbing?

"Federal laws in Canada give a sealer three ways to hunt his prey. He can shoot a seal with a rifle or shotgun—provided it's above a minimum caliber or gauge; he can break its head with a blunt club (like a baseball bat) that must be at least 2 feet long; or he can smash in its brains with something called a hakapik—a 4- or 5-foot wooden pole with a bent, metal spike affixed to the end.

"In general, a sealer will use a hakapik or club if at all possible. That's because with these weapons, it's much easier to aim a blow directly at the seal pup's head. One swing from a hakapik will usually kill a pup right away. By law, you have to keep clubbing the seal in the forehead until you know for sure that it's dead. Sealers are supposed to 'palpate' a pup's skull after they've clubbed it, to feel the caved-in bone beneath the skin and blubber. Or they can perform the 'blink reflex' test, which consists of touching the seal's eyeball—if it blinks, you've got to club it again. (Few sealers actually perform these tests, though; some say they can feel the skull collapse as they make contact with their clubs.)"

--Slate.com

Fate

DEATH: “There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. The merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd, and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

--W. Somerset Maugham, Sheppey, as quoted in Doing Philosophy: An Introduction through Thought Experiments, Second Edition, 2003

At which point, if I had been the merchant, I would have asked Death if she could bring my horse back tomorrow.

Jesus Christ

“Many scholars have noted (to their dismay or glee, depending on which side they were taking) that Jesus’ miracles were in fact entirely typical of the tradition of performance magic that flourished around the Mediterranean at that time. Lucian, a Roman born in Syria, writing in the second century A.D., catalogued the range of phenomena that the ‘charlatans’ and ‘tricksters’ could lay on. They included walking on water, materialisation and dematerialisation, clairvoyance, expulsion of demons, and prophecy. And he went on to explain how many of these feats were achieved by normal means. Hippolytus, too, exposed several pseudo miracle workers who had powers uncannily similar to those of Jesus, including a certain Marcus who had mastered the art of turning the water in a cup red by mixing from another cup while the onlookers’ attention was distracted.

“So close were the similarities between Jesus’ works and those of common, lower-class magicians, that several Jewish and pagan commentators at the time simply took it for granted that there was little except style and zeal to distinguish Jesus from the others. In their view, while Jesus might have been an especially classy conjuror, he was certainly not in an altogether separate class.

“Celsus claimed that Jesus had picked up the art during his youth in Egypt, where the Samarian magicians were the acknowledged masters. Having listed the tricks of the Samarians, such as expelling diseases, calling up spirits of the dead, producing banquets out of thin air, and making inanimate objects come to life, Celsus (according to the Christian writer Origen) went on to say: ‘Then, since these fellows do these things, will you ask us to think them sons of God? Should it not rather be said that these are the doings of scoundrels?’

“Christian apologists were, early on, only too well aware of how their Messiah’s demonstrations must have looked to outsiders. They tried to play down the alarming parallels. There is even some reason to think that the Gospels themselves were subjected to editing and censure so as to exclude some of Jesus’ more obvious feats of conjuration and to delete references to the possible Egyptian connection...

“The somewhat lame solution, adopted by Origen and others, was to admit that the miracles would indeed have been fraudulent if done by anybody else, simply to make money, but not when done by Jesus to inspire religious awe.”

--Nicholas Humphrey, Leaps of Faith, 1996, as quoted in Doing Philosophy: An Introduction through Thought Experiments, Second Edition, 2003