Oct
9th
Fri
9th
Every Friday...
This is probably my favorite song in the whole world.Toda sexta-feira toda roupa é brancaToda pele é preta
Todo mundo canta
Todo céu magenta
Toda sexta-feira todo canto é santo
E toda conta
Toda gota
Toda onda
Toda moça
Toda renda
Toda sexta-feira
Todo o mundo é baiano juntoHere is a rough translation:
Every friday all our clothes are white
all our skin is black
everyone sings
all the sky is magenta
Every friday every place is holy
and every accoun
every drop
every wave
every girl
all income (also means lacing on a hem)
every friday
All the world is near BahiaThe song refers to the once forbidden practice of african religious symbolism in Bahia, Brazil.
The word God is the product of human weakness
Recent Letters
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
The word God is the product of human weakness
In January of 1954, just a year before his death, Albert Einstein wrote the following letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, ‘Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt’. Apparently Einstein had only read the book due to repeated recommendation by their mutual friend Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. The letter was bought at auction in May 2008, for £170,000. Unsurprisingly, one of the unsuccessful bidders was Richard Dawkins.
Translated TranscriptPrinceton, 3. 1. 1954Dear Mr Gutkind,
Inspired by Brouwer’s repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me … With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element … unites us as having an “American Attitude.”
Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong … have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them.
In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision…
Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluation of human behavior … I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.
With friendly thanks and best wishes,
Yours,
A. Einstein
A fascinating letter from Albert Einstein. Many have tried to use his phrase, “God does not play dice with the universe” (in his argument against quantum mechanics) as evidence that he believed in God, when it is more obvious from this note that it was more a turn of phrase or an expression.
Oct
6th
Tue
6th
The Magic of Dance
Dance caught me by surprise. My daughters all took “dance lessons”, and I went through the perfunctory motions of the father taking his kids, picking up his kids from the lessons and then attending the “recitals”, which, let’s be honest, were just showcases of cuteness: look how adorable my little girl is hopping like a frog as the fifth wave of animals in the Nutcracker. Yes, aptly named.But something happened there along the way. My daughers went from pre-teens to 16-18 year olds and their skill level, and the aspiration of their choreographers catapulted into something so meaningful and beautiful that I found myself weeping during the “recitals”… a far cry from my bringing a book to read and looking up when whatever animals my kids were playing waltzed onstage. I remember my daughter Melissa, maybe 15 — so gorgeously involved with her movements. I wept.I remember my daughter Amy — in some rendition of a classical ballet and she only was on the sidelines, holding her arms just so… I wept.Something, I guess, about the beauty, combined with parental feelings. What can I say, it worked for me. And on and on, I had two more daughters who dance and “got it”… through their bodies they spoke of what it was like to be alive.to
I work at a University now. My daughters are all grown and only dance during yoga —-. But in my role I am privilege to certain artistry of dance where the dance intersects “Ethics”, which is what I work with. I leave this post now with several images that devastate me. Angie Banchero-Kellerher and Amy Markgraf performing a dance of subtle interaction. This dance moves me… I can’t explain.
I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. This dance plays with the notions of gender relationships. Two men, two women, a man and a women — what does it mean? All I know is that this dance, which I’ve seen twice holds me mezmerized with the beauty these two women portray and makes me thing about something about it for a very long time afterward. Such beautiful art.
Oct
5th
Mon
5th
Google Voice and T-Mobile's "My Faves"
One of the things I planned to do with my new cell phone number is use the Google Voice app to re-direct all my calls through it. That way all callers would see calls coming from that number and I would receive calls through Google voice. There are several advantages to doing so:
- Google Voice allows me to have multiple phones it rings, depending on where I am and when. I can set this up by schedule or manual.
- I get a great voice mail app by using it. Google Voice actually tries to transcribe the call so I can see what the jist was by looking in the app or online.
- I can route people specifically to voice mail and flag callers as spam callers
- I get a number that I picked
Apartment Therapy The Kitchn | Gourmet Magazine Closing
Condé Nast will announce today the folding of Gourmet Magazine. The November issue will be the last. A little slice of beauty and inspiration will go with it.
Thank you for 68 great years. Rest in Peace.
via thekitchn.com
Full Sail's Old Boardhead Barleywine Ale No. 8
This was the third barleywine ale we’ve enjoyed for Sunday Beer Club. Deano immediately loved it, with the mouth of hops he experienced on tasting it. I was impressed by the balance of malty fruit with the hops, giving this beer that lovely round flavor I love. We’ll be drinking more of these. Since I never blogged about the earlier two Barleywine we tried from Uintah and Sierra Nevada, we should buy some more of that and try these side by side. I guess I’m not sure if these are seasonal or if the Uintah Barleywine is still available. We’ll just have to see. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wickenden/3984203354/
Donut Arrived This Morning: Very First Impressions ((tag=android, donut, screenshots))
After three days of waiting (I’m horrible) I woke this morning to a notification screen on my Android MyTouch device that a new system upgrade was available, did I want to install it, wait and install later or skip it. I choose install and the software began to download accompanied by a familiar gas guage showing the progress. It took about 3-5 minutes to download and the system restarted. After the regular green “My Touch screen I got the pulasating “Android” letters. They usually take a longish time to go away, but this time it seemed much longer than usual. Finally the system booted up. Nothing looked different, so I tapped “Market”. Sure enough, there was the new market, very clean and pretty. I switched to the new battery viewer in setup under phone stats. Of course nothing had been using the batter yet, I let it upgrade while it was still plugged in. I switched to the new camera. Very spiffy looking and it came up quickly. There is a toggle switch to change to the video camera. When I did that however it asked me if I wanted to use the regular video camera or “Qwik”, a program I have installed. That was when something odd happened.. The drawer that normally pulls out from the bottom to show you apps was now on the right side. It pulled out like you’d imagine it would, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it to go back to the bottom. It didn’t seem to be orientation dependent (which would be nice). Finally I restarted the camera app and went through the same procedures and the drawer reset itself. We’ll have to mess with this. Was this a bug? A strange side effect from Qwik? A feature I’m not grasping how to manage? We’ll see.
Oct
3rd
Sat
3rd
10 mind-blowing microsites - Sprint and Taser
For sure click on the sprint site. Too cool.
Oct
2nd
Fri
2nd
Oct
1st
Thu
1st
Maddie's Birth
Her full name, I think is yet to be revealed, but since her dad has used this name on flickr I feel like I’m safe. She’s my third grandchild, second granddaughter and the first child and first daughter of my second daughter Melissa. She’s beautiful. The birth process is a terrifying one for me. I witnessed the birth of my first two grandchildren first hand. When Ayla was born, there was a bit of a problem and the cord popped off, the mid-wife couldn’t find the clamps since someone had moved them (there was a room full of people watching the event). In this picture you can see that even her mom wasn’t quite sure she was going to be allright. 
But soon she was just fine.
Now she’s grown into the most remarkable person. Here she is at a recent t-ball game.
I was also there for the second birth, my sole grandson Tavian. I call him tavy-wavy-bavy-shavy-gravy-davy-lavy, but if you ask him, he’ll tell you his name is just Tavi-AN. He likes the whole name. When he was born, with much less drama, he seemed NOT pleased to be here. He was just as happy as you please staying inside his mama. It was LOUD at our house, lots of people, lots of noise and he did not like it at all. 
But that soon passed, and he’s as happy and as at home here now as any of the other noisemakers. Here he is with his first smile. 
and one with one more recent sitting on my lap. He’s the most beautiful boy.
And now I have Maddie. I was terrified during her birth, partly because I was in the next room and didn’t know what was going on, and partly because she had to be brought to the NICU for fluid in her lungs, and partly because she began with a trouble nursing and lost weight. But she’s oh-so-beautiful, and so little, and so wonderful. I can’t wait to get to know her. Here she is in my arms that first day
and in the nursery before I got to see her talking with her dad
Awake late at night and asleep in the daytime and finally, with a little gassy smile the other day
I’m missing her this morning.
