Hebrew progress:  Half way through first semester.

This is an online class with video lectures, lots of homework, and interaction with the professor via email and phone calls to check on my progress.  It started well, but things got a bit ugly when three very busy weeks in a row collided with the studies.  The class front loads a lot of material so that 13 lessons are in the first 7 weeks and an additional 9 lessons are in the remaining 8 weeks.  Hopefully I can breathe a bit easier moving forward.

So far I have had to learn about 200 vocabulary words together with various verb conjugations, along with transformations of adjectives, nouns and particles of various sorts.  The learning is all a bit tenuous because the changes that occur to vowels are numerous and confused with special cases as various words are transformed.

The professor has recorded Genesis chapters 12-16 verse by verse for our practice.  We need to read one verse per day and use the recordings to correct our pronunciation.  Every other week I give him a phone call and he makes me read a passage to check my progress.  So far he has been quite pleased with my pronunciation, which has generally been my strong point on learning foreign languages.  The problem for me is that my vocabulary knowledge tends to saturate early so that I can't improve.

The Hebrew reading was all meaningless sounds at the beginning, with the exception of proper names like Abram (אַבְרָם).  (I am curious if the Hebrew fonts I placed next to Abram show up on other computers, since I have special Hebrew fonts loaded onto my computer.)  My Hebrew Bible prints proper names with a different shade making them easy to pick out.  There are a number of words now that I am recognizing that is starting to give me a false confidence that this project might come to a successful result.

Western Seminary does this as a three semester sequence.  The first two semesters are building the language foundation.  The third semester gets into the text and is one that I would prefer to do at a formal class rather than online.  This class is taught nearby in San Jose, but only in the summer.  Thus, I will need to wait until summer 2013 to do this, or else take the third semester online.

Herodotus:  Contrasting with the book of Esther

My reading of classical books started with Herodotus perhaps a dozen years ago when I was preparing to teach the Bible's Book of Esther.  An atheist scholar blurted that the book of Esther was systematically in conflict with Herodotus, thus, I bough The Histories, read it cover to cover, and started collecting notes.  As usual, the facts were exactly the opposite of what the atheist scholar claimed, thus, it was a real treat to do the comparison and to learn more of the character and deeds of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes.  Some stories have to be taken with a grain of salt like the story of the ants of India being larger than a fox, but smaller than a dog.

Since I am thinking to teach Esther and Daniel again, I have been listening to the audio version of Herodotus and am now up to book 3 of the 9 books.  It is good to refresh the memory since I am always afraid of getting things scrambled.  So far so good.  A tidbit in passing is the following regarding the usurper king, Smerdis who was killed by Darius:

" ... There was one Otanes the son of Pharnaspes, in birth and in wealth not inferior to any of the Persians. This Otanes was the first who had had suspicion of the Magian, that he was not Smerdis the son of Cyrus but the person that he really was, drawing his inference from these facts, namely that he never went abroad out of the fortress, and that he did not summon into his presence any of the honourable men among the Persians: and having formed a suspicion of him, he proceeded to do as follows:—Cambyses had taken to wife his daughter, whose name was Phaidyme;  ... " - The Histories, III.68

At this point there are clearly a number of parallels to the Book of Esther.  When Cambyses (son of Cyrus) died and Smerdis took the throne, all Cambyses wives and concubines were taken by Smerdis.  Cyrus had another son Smerdis who could rightfully be king, but there was also a Magi named Smerdis who looked similar to the son of Cyrus and Herodotus tells us that Cambyses had his brother secretly killed.  The Magi, Smerdis, however, had had his ears cut off, but Persians all wore their hair long so it wasn't easy to see this.  Otanes is trying to find out which Smerdis is within the palace by means of his daughter and messages are exchanged to accomplish this.  As the exchange proceeds, Phaidyme agrees to do what she is asked to do, but fears for her life:

" ... To this Phaidyme sent an answer saying that, if she should do so, she would run a great risk; for supposing that he should chance not to have his ears, and she were detected feeling for them, she was well assured that he would put her to death; but nevertheless she would do this. ..." - The Histories, III.69

And so Esther said, "If I perish, I perish" - Esther 4:16.    I have a sense that Esther's risk was greater, but the good character of Esther seems present in Phaidyme as well.  The main reason to highlight this is one of Biblical hermeneutics.  If the main lesson we derive from Esther is to honor her good character, than why not treat Herodotus as scripture also?  Of course there are other more important lessons in Esther.

The Happiest Place On Earth:  Indonesia

India is second, tied with Mexico.  Having visited Indonesia and become addicted to the related Malaysian style curry, I can readily affirm that this is quite sensible.  The US and Australia are at the top for rich countries, although I think our numbers are being dragged down by the feminists ... the least happy people on Earth.  Well behind us are Saudi Arabia and Britain which have become quite homogeneous due to immigration.  Germany's low ranking is no surprise, but what to make of France?  Is it true that the 30- hour work week has not made the French less gloomy?  Or maybe they spend so much time fussing over which wine to drink that they can't relax and enjoy it.  I don't know much about Italy.  My experiences with Russians seems consistent with the ranking in the survey.  Last place is South Korea.  Given that I have never seen a happy waiter at a Korean restaurant, this would make sense too.  Perhaps it is the result of eating kimchi every day.

Girl Scout Cookies are fund raising for Planned Parenthood?

If the linked article is true, this is a formula that only Hell could devise.

"ICDM - Acknowledgement of Full Paper Submition" - The Secretariat

This email arrived recently due to a professor submitting a paper with my name included as a coauthor.  It is good to know that I am not the only one who has spelling difficulties.  I always wonder at those who believe in the Doctrine of Infallibility of Academics.

The Economist regarding Cosmology:  Desperate times require desperate measures.

"More than any other scientific problem the cosmic-expansion conundrum presents scientists with an existential quandary.  'It could be a 22nd-century problem we stumbled upon in the 20th century,' says Dr. Turner.  Some researchers may begin to feel time would be better spent on other scientific pursuits."

The problem isn't quite clearly described. The original big bang notion postulated a constant expansion rate of the universe.  If we extrapolate backwards (using only the permissible terms) than we conclude that the universe is younger than the postulated ages for the stars.  The way to avoid this problem is to assume that things were expanding slower in the past with an accelerating expansion rate.  That requires energy, thus, the term Dark Energy.  All this has been repackaged to try avoiding the impression that cosmology is just a collection of kluges piled one upon another.

The article also notes that to achieve any consistency between the theory and observations that only 4% of the mass can be of the "known" sort, which includes stars, planets (and black holes) and the like.

"The puzzle was that various lines of evidence showed that the universe’s endowment of ordinary matter (the stuff that people, planets and stars are made of) would give it just 4% of that density."

The remaining 96% is called Dark Matter or Dark Energy, since Einstein defined a relation between mass and energy.  In the engineering universe where I live, we usually refer to these terms as "Error", but Dark Chocolate Fudge would satisfy me too.  Sometimes the Error is simply a missing term, but more often than not something was drastically wrong in the first place.

Conscience vs. Religion - Some ponderings on Obama care and government mandated abortion coverage by the Catholic Church.

No that wasn't a typo.  The latest fuss between Obama and the Catholic Church has to do with the government forcing them to cover contraceptives and the governments latest definition of contraceptives includes abortion causing drugs.  This reminds me of the speech Obama gave to congress that was interrupted with the famous "You Lie" from Representative Wilson.  The video snippet is here.  Of course Obamanomics requires employment to be given to illegals, and Obamacare requires health coverage, which now means abortion, thus, Representative Wilson looks to be the one who was correct, although some clever person might draw the distinction between the government paying for something and the government requiring someone to pay for something without a tax collector as an intermediary.

My Librivox catalog just announced a new audio version of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.  I will give their snippet:

"Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War. (Summary by Wikipedia)" - Librivox

Before going further, I will note that abortion coverage is mandated by government in various places, like China, yet there are many Christians there who are loyal people within the People's Republic.  If I go back further, we find God's people serving the homicidal Babylonians as loyal citizens, so I am not one to advocate civil disobedience of any kind.

By now the fuss should be known to the world between Obama and the Catholic Church, but I should highlight the previous famous dispute with the leftists over adaption services.  I haven't been following this, but it seems they are being driven out of one state after another.  It seems to me that the conscience of pederasts counts, but the conscience of Christians does not.

But then there is this commentary in The Economist. It is a bit condescending towards religion, as usual, but the summing up of the attitudes is what I am interested in:

"The bishops, naturally, went berserk, but so did conservatives. Making Americans buy health insurance was bad enough, an encroachment on personal liberty, they thundered. Making Americans pay for something they believe to be morally wrong is utterly beyond reproach. Government overreach had reached its most extreme form."

As with all leftist articles, there seems to be not the slightest concept that someone other than themselves might actually have a conscience.  Or perhaps they view that humans have various intense passions, but they alone possess conscience.  But to go further and link conscience to religion?  I should note that many of the leftists religious organizations do seem to link religion to conscience, although I would claim that their religion is an atheist front for leftist politics.  The alleged compromise involves the Catholic Church handing over health care coverage to insurers who provide abortion coverage, but don't charge the Catholic Church.  Again, this presumes that there is no conscience in the Catholic Church ... or at least no one who is bright enough to see through a tiny bit of smoke and mirrors.

My dilemma is that if I were living in a communist dictatorship, protest would be out of the question and this kind of heavy handed trampling on religious liberties would be expected.  Yet America is supposed to be a land of religious liberty.  It seems to me that the leftist gambit - to claim religious liberty while imposing a dictatorship of conscience - is to divorce conscience from religion.  In this view, religion is only about ritual and faith, but everything regarding human behavior - i.e. conscience - is distinct and the exclusive property of leftists.  I wonder what Thoreau would say.

A related fuss happened here in California recently.  A Susan Komen foundation - which is dedicated to treating breast cancer - recently tried to pull its funding from Planned Parenthood.  A sense of the news is here.  Planned Parenthood is, of course, a slaughter house and America's primary abortion provider.  Mona Charen gives a bit on their credibility regarding breast cancer treatment.  This is going to make everyone in this country even more cynical when a charity that exploits conscience by advertising itself as a promoter of life sends its funds to a group dedicated to death.  If there is anything good that comes of it, perhaps it is to make everyone aware of the smoke and mirrors being used by leftists to cheat people's consciences.

Looney on the Ropes.

It doesn't matter much if old folk die, so why not?  All this takes place about 20 feet off the ground.

Pliny the Elder:  Rebutting the Flat Earthers.

I don't have a decent online link for the text of Pliny's Natural History.  The text is an encyclopedia of classical opinions covering every topic imaginable.  In some areas it is fascinating as it talks about the relative size and distance of the moon and the sun, along with the nature of eclipses.  But then he includes remarks that lightning descends from Jupiter and the vapors of the earth effect the starts.  It is quite a mixed bag.  Astrology and omens get a lengthy section of praise in all this.

He expends much of a book proving that the Earth is a sphere and giving all sorts of arguments.  The timing of the visibility of eclipses from different parts of the globe is part of this.  Differing lengths of the days in summer and winter at different latitude also are noted and the fact that a sun dial which is correct for one locale will not be useful if it is moved too far.  Similar arguments are based on shadows since in the northern parts they never face south, while near the equator they are sometimes north and sometimes south.  Then there is Aswan in Egypt which is always to the north, except for one day of the year.  Pliny asserts that sailors have longer days sailing west than east.  The oddest, however, is a claim that some lights which were set during the day were visible elsewhere at night.  As to whether or not anyone actually believed a flat earth notion, Pliny doesn't say directly.  No one specifically is mentioned, nor does he quote anyone.

How to study a foreign language.

While working.  First, make sure your kids are grown up and out of the house.  The next thing to do is to have a class with an ambitious program.  Mine is a three semester sequence to learn Biblical Hebrew that will cost a bundle of money.  This guarantees that my wife will keep me motivated to stay with the program and get my money worth out of it.

The next is to study every moment possible.  Waking up the first thing to do is work on some pronunciation before heading off to work.  Lunch means more study.  As soon as I am home, it is study and homework again except for dinner time and a walk with my wife.  A bit more study and it is time for bed.  The weekends are the time to catch up on the schedule.

Skipping church to learn Biblical Hebrew or cutting out church activities would be defeating the purpose, thus, the need to squeeze all these activities in with the study time.  There is also the possibility of listening to language recordings while commuting, which I might do this morning.  What I have already been doing is to pull out a verb conjugation chart and look at this while waiting at red lights.  No law against this - yet!

Slow Blogging

My apologies to all those I usually check in with.

The semester of learning Hebrew is getting very busy.  Together with work and other obligations, this means that something has to be cut, and that is the blogging time.

Gregory Nazianzen (329-390AD), Bruce Willis and The Fifth Element.

These orations are roughly as convoluted as the movie.  I would not have thought there was any connection, but it seems I am wrong, so here goes:

"But if we are to assert that He is immaterial (as for example that Fifth Element which some have imagined), and that He is carried round in the circular movement ... let us assume that He is immaterial, and that He is the Fifth Element; and, if they please, let Him be also bodiless in accordance with the independent drift and arrangement of their argument;..." - Gregory Nazianzen, Oration XXVIII.

In the movie, the Fifth Element that saves mankind is Love, while the Fifth Element that Gregory is referring to is God.  The Bible then connects the two:

" ... for God is love." - 1 John 4:8

Before we get too carried away, however, it must be noted that Gregory is condemning the notion of God being composed of the Fifth Element along with the related baggage as being a heresy.  What makes Gregory's orations convoluted is that he somehow feels he needs to itemize and condemn every possible error known throughout the history of mankind in addition to that the of the Eunomians who were the ones who got him going in the first place.  An apt sentence begins this series of long-winded lectures:

"For there are certain persons who have not only their ears and their tongues, but even, as I now perceive, their hands too, itching for our words; who delight in profane babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called, and strifes about words, which tend to no profit; for so Paul, the Preacher and Establisher of the "Word cut short," the disciple and teacher of the Fishermen, calls all that is excessive or superfluous in discourse." - Oration XXVII

There are still several hours of this set for me to listen to.  But now, it is time for me to end my own profane babblings and cease engaging in excessive and superfluous discourse.  Good Night!

Cicero (106-43BC):  On Old Age.

This was written when Cicero was 62, although he is using another person, Cato, as his spokesman who is supposedly 84.   There is something that I enjoy as I get older which is quite eloquently spoken of here:

"But I have known many of them who never said a word of complaint against old age; for they were only too glad to be freed from the bondage of passion, and were not at all looked down upon by their friends. The fact is that the blame for all complaints of that kind is to be charged to character, not to a particular time of life. For old men who are reasonable and neither cross-grained nor churlish find old age tolerable enough: whereas unreason and churlishness cause uneasiness at every time of life." - On Old Age

I find that less agitates me as I grow older for which I am quite thankful.   Some people look with despair on old age as a time when there is nothing to do.  My hope is to be able to be more mentally and physically active as the demands on my time become less.  To this Cicero writes through the mouth of Cato:

"We see Solon, for instance, boasting in his poems that he grows old “daily learning something new.” Or again in my own case, it was only when an old man that I became acquainted with Greek literature, which in fact I absorbed with such avidity—in my yearning to quench, as it were, a long-continued thirst—that I became acquainted with the very facts which you see me now using as precedents. When I heard what Socrates had done about the lyre I should have liked for my part to have done that too, for the ancients used to learn the lyre, but, at any rate, I worked hard at literature."

This was written about the same time Cicero gave his Philippics against Mark Anthony that eventually got him killed.  I wonder if he wasn't deliberately trying to go out with a bang.  Cicero also wrote On The Nature Of The Gods which I have read.  It has different characters arguing for different philosophical viewpoints.  My initial view was that he was a Stoic, while others claimed that he founded the Latin skeptics.  To this I will add some of the finishing thoughts of Cicero on the immortality of the soul, and that the belief in the soul's immortality is a factor in how men behave:

"Do you suppose—to take an old man’s privilege of a little self-praise—that I should have been likely to undertake such heavy labours by day and night, at home and abroad, if I had been destined to have the same limit to my glory as to my life? Had it not been much better to pass an age of ease and repose without any labour or exertion? But my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever fixed its eyes upon future ages, as though from a conviction that it would begin to live only when it had left the body. But had it not been the case that souls were immortal, it would not have been the souls of all the best men that made the greatest efforts after an immortality of fame."

 Sending wishes up to heaven.

There was a little village in the Taiwan countryside that specialized in this business.  People would write their wishes or whatever all over the paper balloon and then send it up to the sky.  One person was hoping that his job would go well.  Another that someone name Jenny would learn to drive safely.  Some had firecrackers attached which would start going off when the balloon was high up.  It was quite a sight when a number were drifting up through the sky at the same time.  I am wondering how many environmental and flight regulations this would violate in the US.

Basil of Caesarea (329-378AD):  Reflecting on Nature.

My first reflection is that the hills are mostly brown, which they shouldn't be this time of year.  The Snowpack survey puts us at 19% of normal for January 3rd and there is no rain in the ten day forecast.

Basil's Hexaemeron is a collection of long sermons on the creation.  The context thus causes him to engage all his rhetorical skills in the discussions of nature, which means touching on a great number of subjects involving science and geography.  For this reason it is a treasure trove of ideas that were accepted in his lifetime, while also giving us insights into the state of caution that he maintained with respect to science.  There are a few oddities such as a claim that the full moon significantly effects things like humidity and rates of decay, while neglecting tides.  A condemnation of astrology is included and complaints about superstition.

I have been collecting notes related to the flat earth theory.  Basil gives us a collection of the views that circulated in his time:

"Those who have written about the nature of the universe have discussed at length the shape of the earth. If it be spherical or cylindrical, if it resemble a disc and is equally rounded in all parts, or if it has the forth of a winnowing basket and is hollow in the middle; all these conjectures have been suggested by cosmographers, each one upsetting that of his predecessor. It will not lead me to give less importance to the creation of the universe, that the servant of God, Moses, is silent as to shapes; he has not said that the earth is a hundred and eighty thousand furlongs in circumference; he has not measured into what extent of air its shadow projects itself whilst the sun revolves around it, nor stated how this shadow, casting itself upon the moon, produces eclipses. He has passed over in silence, as useless, all that is unimportant for us. ..."  - The Hexaemeron, Homily IX.

For reference, a furlong is about 200 meters, so 180,000 furlongs is roughly 36,000 kilometers, compared to the modern measurement of about 40,000 kilometers.  An interesting discussion is where Basil argues for the great size of the Sun and Moon given that they have the same apparent size in India as in Briton.  To this he compares a great ship which looks tiny when viewed from a mountain.  At this point the Darwin Worshipers and Big Bangers will immediately chime in that there is nothing in this that should conflict with the infallibility of their doctrines.  As if Darwin Worshipers and Big Bangers weren't known to Basil!  These are the first gnostics that he deals with:

"... Others imagined that atoms, and indivisible bodies, molecules and ducts, form, by their union, the nature of the visible world. Atoms reuniting or separating, produce births and deaths and the most durable bodies only owe their consistency to the strength of their mutual adhesion: a true spider’s web woven by these writers who give to heaven, to earth, and to sea so weak an origin and so little consistency! It is because they knew not how to say “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Deceived by their inherent atheism it appeared to them that nothing governed or ruled the universe, and that all was given up to chance." - The Hexaemeron, Homily I.

Something curious in the Genesis account of Creation is that the plants are created on the third day, but the Sun and Moon are created on the fourth.  Basil's explanation is as follows:

"The reason why the adornment of the earth was before the sun is the following; that those who worship the sun, as the source of life, may renounce their error. If they be well persuaded that the earth was adorned before the genesis of the sun, they will retract their unbounded admiration for it, because they see grass and plants vegetate before it rose." - The Hexaemeron, Homily V

My end conclusion is that I would like to listen to more of Basil's lectures.  Hopefully more recordings will go up onto Librivox.org.

Back To School.

When I was working in France many years ago, we were having a dinner party.  One of the French engineers asked me how to translate "Bon Appétit" into English.  My immediate response was "Dig In", which caused a Dutch engineer who had spent a lot of time in the US to burst out laughing.  There was also a 40-something French lady there who was an English teacher.  She took some offense at my translation, but did not offer any alternatives.

The problem here is simple:  Both "Bon Appétit" and "Dig In" convey the instruction to commence eating, while the former is intended to be polite, and the later is an instruction to a group of swine who certainly need no such instruction.  The literal translation of both phrases would mean something even further removed from the subject.  This highlights the problem of translation from one language to another:  It is invariably ambiguous and there really isn't a single correct translation.

My school registration is for distance learning with Western Seminary.  This commences with Biblical Hebrew starting on Monday.  There is already a bit of ambiguity developing as I started pre-studying the Hebrew alphabet.  Do we use the Masoretic pronunciation?  Or the modern Hebrew pronunciation? Using the modern Hebrew would add some utility to this exercise, but the Masoretic would be more true to the ancients and seems to involve more subtle distinctions.   Will I succeed?  It means my after work hours will be quite busy and I may need to reduce time both blogging and reading other bloggers, but we will see.  Then there is my regular book reading which will need to be reduced.  Life is changing.

An Episcopal Funeral.

A former colleague passed away and some of us went to his funeral today.  Lots of memories were brought to mind.  He is in the Lord's hands now and my prayer is that God would provide comfort to his wife, children and grandchildren.

What I wanted to comment on was the Episcopal service, this being the first one I have been to.  Compared to what I am used to, it strikes me as being fairly traditional with the clergy wearing robes, making strange signs with their hands and using magical water to sprinkle things.  Then there was the liturgy based on prayers and readings done word for word from a liturgy pamphlet.  The funeral service ended with a mass, which is also something that I had never seen before.

The tradition was a bit intermittent, however, as the music was of a modern composition and the clergy were all women.  I brought a copy of the liturgy home and probably should go through it a bit more carefully.  Something to highlight immediately is the version of the Lord's prayer:

"Father-Mother, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name." - Liturgy

Hmmm.  The King James Version of this is:

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name." - Matthew 6:9

I am wondering if "hallowed by" instead of "hallowed be" is a typo.  It completely changes the meaning of the text.  The last verse of the Lord's prayer is missing from the liturgy pamphlet.  This is the part that says:

"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen." - Matthew 6:13

A common theme that fundamentalists will pick on when looking at a modernist worship is the sense of what the gospel of Christ means to us personally.  Fundamentalists say that it begins with acknowledging sin - my sin - not someone else's.  There is an acknowledgement of sin in the liturgy, but it is of a vague and collective nature:

"All say
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world.  Have mercy on us.  -repeat 3X- " - Liturgy

And what the primary concern is:

"Mostly, Lord, help us to open to You the places in us that are injured, hurt, and traumatized." - Liturgy

I have prayed such things too, but what should traumatize me most is my own sin and not the thrashing I received at someone else's hands.  Shouldn't the thrashing I gave someone else be more bothersome to my conscience than what someone did to me?  As part of the Lord's supper, there is this definition of what is going on:

"This is the Lamb of God, who opens His and Her hands and pours upon us all that we need, so our lives may be whole and holy." - Liturgy

Of course the Lamb of God is Jesus, who is definitely not a Her.  Stepping back and looking at the entire service, it was certainly an educational experience.

African Monarch

This was part of a visit to a flower garden spot in the Taiwan countryside.  With the nice weather and flowers, this was a good place to find some butterflies.

Here is one that caught my attention because it looked so familiar.  At first I thought it was the same Monarch butterfly as we have here in California.  Maybe a migrant?

A list of Taiwan butterflies caused me to change my opinion to a slightly different critter - the African Monarch or Plain Tiger.

This is a picture I took in Fremont, California of a regular Monarch Butterfly for comparison.  They are always eye grabbing.

Planet of the Apes:  Monkeying with Aesop's Fables.

Yes, I stooped to watching a movie on the airplane heading home from Taiwan.  My brain was too fuzzy to listen to more theologians.  With The Rise of the Planet of the Apes being set in my home area of San Francisco, I get to ponder whether the plot is more or less gloomy than the expected reality.  Not quite sure, but it is good to see that the apes exploit the fog bank in their rebellion.  That they would cross the Golden Gate and settle in Marin County is hardly surprising.  There certainly was too much competition at Fisherman's Wharf for them to set up a street act.

What struck me most, however, was a scene where the hero-ape of the story, Caesar, was trying to break a bundle of sticks.  This was at point where he was trying to convince the newly educated apes to join together in a rebellion.  Clearly Caesar had been reading Aesop:

Father and Sons



A certain man had several Sons who were always quarrelling with one another, and, try as he might, he could not get them to live together in harmony. So he determined to convince them of their folly by the following means. Bidding them fetch a bundle of sticks, he invited each in turn to break it across his knee. All tried and all failed: and then he undid the bundle, and handed them the sticks one by one, when they had no difficulty at all in breaking them. "There, my boys," said he, "united you will be more than a match for your enemies: but if you quarrel and separate, your weakness will put you at the mercy of those who attack you."


Union is strength. - Aesop's Fables.

I am told that this is a Chinese fable also, but involves a bundle of chopsticks.  Regarding whether or not the movie as a whole is a fable, I will leave that question to someone with more insight.

Home again ...

There are many more pictures which I will be uploading from this trip.  Yesterday the six of us headed off for Taoyuan airport from Kaoshiung.  We spent 1 hour, 38 minutes on the bullet train, hopped a bus to the airport, and then had to say our good byes as half the group went to LAX and the other half to SFO.

Each train can seat 989 passengers and moves along at almost 300 km/hour (~190mph).  The French TGV comparison info is here.  Each bullet train has 12 cars, whereas the TGV is either 8 or 10.

List of trains heading north.  We can't take an express train because they skip Taoyuan station which is nearest the airport.

Waving to Delirious' daughter.  This is the earlier trip south as we pass Taichung.

The bullet train arriving.  Again, this is the trip south a few days earlier and we are at Taoyuan station.

The Old Country Church

Buddhism + Modern Construction + Wealth = ?

This is a monastery in central Taiwan that looks to have been funded by some wealthy businessman.  The scale can't really be seen from the photos, but it is huge and most likely had a price tag in the hundreds of millions of US dollars.  There is one room after another of giant images.  Compared to the older temples, this lacks much of the garishness and is simpler, although far larger in terms of scale.  The entire outside is faced with polished marble to make it more impressive.  Much of the structure is for large numbers of hotel like rooms that are for the monks who live there.  Traditional Christian monasteries provided for the livelihood of the monks by working the adjacent land.  This clearly wasn't being done at this monastery, which leaves one wondering what the source of their income is.

Tourists come in and look at the images one-by-one before moving on.  Many take pictures like I did.  A few will offer up a prayer and throw in some money.  Comparing to European tourism of cathedrals, there is some of the same sense as tourists would look at images of the apostles or other Bible scenes.  What is different is the lack of a hall for congregational worship, and the occasional pipe organ concert.

The reason for this post relates to the atheists.  I have heard atheists claim on multiple occasions that Buddhism is much more compatible to atheism than Christianity.  The pretext is that Buddhism is more philosophical and less superstitious than Christianity!  This temple is the simplest of the ones I have seen.  More common was one I saw in the city center where a large number of people were lined up to get their fortune told.

Augstine (354-430AD): The Enchiridion

Enchiridion means something like handbook, thus, it is a concise version of some of Augustine's other teachings.  What stands out the most is the discussion of good and evil, which goes for a few paragraphs.  One of the conclusions is this:

"Thus, there can be no evil where there is no good."

He is arguing that nothing can be created evil, but rather that evil can only come about as a corruption of good.  This is a more philosophical work on good and evil.  The century that included Augustine produced a lot of Christian writings, so I will be reading from various writers to get a flavor.  The list includes Basil of Caesarea (330-379AD), Gragory of Nazianzen (329-390AD), and Leo the Great (391-461AD).

Aesop's Fables (~600BC?).

Other than hearing the story of The Tortoise And The Hare, this collection is something I had never read.  I listened to the entire set while traveling and was surprised at how many expressions in English - and one in Chinese - come from Aesop's Fables.  What was more surprising was that a few seemed to be out of the Bible.  The ones that most directly are in the Bible are:

Physician heal thyself.

This is from The Quack Frog:


Once upon a time a Frog came forth from his home in the marshes and proclaimed to all the world that he was a learned physician, skilled in drugs and able to cure all diseases. Among the crowd was a Fox, who called out, "You a doctor! Why, how can you set up to heal others when you cannot even cure your own lame legs and blotched and wrinkled skin?"


Physician, heal thyself.

The Bible passage is Luke 4:23


Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’” “I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.

The second is Those who will not work deserve to starve, which is from The Blacksmith and His Dog.  This is invoked by Paul in 2 Thessalonian 3:10:

For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'If a man will not work, he shall not eat.'

There are other similar usages, but they seem to me more of principles of wisdom that are common to humanity while the language or imagery isn't quite enough to draw attention.  One peculiar exception to this is the farmer who lights a fire to the tail of a fox seeking revenge.  The conclusion is "Revenge is a two-edged sword".  In the book of Judges, Samson also lights fires to the tails of foxes as part of his revenge.