Some Less Holy Trinities...

Never praise someone just because they've fulfilled their moral obligations - don't confuse obligation with liberty and certainly not with virtue.

If you want to play your music very loud and your neighbour does not want to hear it, you are not being virtuous if you turn it down for his or her sake. Not encroaching on the peace of others should surely be seen as a basic requirement.

There are scales - people who do not appreciate what they already have, conceptually build up their desires until they become needs become rights.

Considering others - or better, putting others first, goes from being an obligation to a liberty to a virtue.

Moral standards slip. As soon as a society starts to tolerate a vice, pressure groups will ensure that it will gain acceptance until it becomes an open embrace (or promotion).

The Scriptures set standards: do not let those standards slip. My Bible does not describe a a progression from conservative to liberal to anarchist, but from mercy to covenant to deliverance.

All you need is love... and an AK-47

Just a short post about a moment in a dream.

I was watching the news during some huge, epic battle scene from an armageddon style scenario and a police marksman was there struggling to hold back his battle creature - like some great guard dog and horse rolled into one... and the rain was tearing down into everyone's faces. And in that moment of stillness the soldier took one of his hands, his other still cradling his assault rifle, and gently stroked the build up of rain and sleep out of the corner of his animal companion's eye. And despite all the noise and terror going on around there was just that moment - a small detail you could almost miss, yet it was the most significant feeling or sight to be absorbed in. The love between this soldier - a great, big, powerful man, purposely desensitised to his feelings - and his great, big, powerful friend - his dog - his horse - it doesn't matter which...

I woke up and thought "wow - there's an amazing job - being an animal handler in the police or army. What a sense of purpose and love and I think I'll write about it on my blog because I'm not about to change career, but I can at least write it down".

All you need is love / G_d

Atheists & Doubt

Atheists are unhappy because they doubt everything. They doubt everything because without G_d, the whole of reality becomes implausible. With G_d, things don't have to be plausible to you - they don't have to satisfy your idea of probability. You can simply accept that everything is as it is for good reason - whether you can personally appreciate it or not. When the universe is reduced to purely physical components, everything gets disconnected and that makes the significance of everything smaller. Suddenly each element is no longer part of a bigger picture or greater plan. The significance of even a living individual is reduced to space and mass, so we become miniscule. But once we accept that there is moral content and purpose within the universe, we cease to be isolated material phenomena. Every single thing, living or not, every scrap of matter can matter. We can have significance, just as we experience it. The thing I find most ironic is that the atheist doubts even their own experiences, and I'd have thought they'd need to hold on to them, given that they are all they have to go on. The faithful are more rational.

EDIT

There is an assumption - and it really is just an assumption - that the universe is governed by physical laws instead of a conscious and adaptable will. Really, the idea that the universe is governed by laws is idolatry and not really borne out by experience. How often are the meteorologists right? Almost never. They are basing what the weather will do on ideas of probability based on past weather records and there is actually no evidence to suggest that the weather will follow predictable patterns at all, let alone ones simple enough for us to calculate.

Necessity is the Mother of I... llness?

The evolutionary process allows our bodies to adapt to change over time via the process of mutation. Putting the body under the stress whereby it needs to change is a necessary part of this process taking place - but I believe that this very process may also be the factor that causes illness.

From an evolutionary and dietary perspective, human beings are adapted herbivores. Rather like rats and mice, we are opportunistic feeders. It seems like we strike a tenuous balance at times, particularly when trying to find sources of protein, which makes sense as our bodies are best designed for plant matter rather than meat. Scientific research is starting to show the extent of the problem. Many beans and proteins are causing immune systems to overload and triggering all manner of autoimmune diseases. Problems include wheat gluten, barley and rye, cocoa beans, coffee beans, peanuts, soya beans, shellfish... some bodies are sensitive to dairy produce, others to yeast...

A protein that the body produces called zonulin controls the permeability of the gut. Introducing new foodstuffs to the body may cause the body to have to consider how much zonulin it is producing to allow for optimal nutrition to take place. Producing extra zonulin increases the permeability of the gut to allow larger mollecules to get through. When these larger mollecules, so often the protein mollecules found in substances such as wheat gluten, get into the bloodstream, the immune system may decide to treat them as hostile and may well start attacking the site of the intrusion. In this, the body can act rather like a bull in a china shop or a trigger happy general and start causing damage to the body itself.

Consequently diseases such as coeliac disease, sarcoidosis, interstitial lung problems, cancers (including brain cancers) to name a few are being triggered. Necessity - the very process of having to change - may well be the mother of invention, but it may also be the mother of illness. Mutation can evidently work for good or ill - just ask the X-Men and Magneto.

Cheese and Knives

I recently bought a Sámi game knife. It is really valuable - so
much so that I don't know how I managed without it and can appreciate
why those vikings carried their hand axes everywhere. I've been using
it many times a day during the process of moving house, walking
Charlie and doing everyday things like shopping, eating, buying
clothes etc. It can get into packaging, remove clothes tags, trim
wall / rawl plugs, slice cheese.... yes cheese....
no I haven't gone mad... I have reintroduced cheese into my funny
vegan diet. Here's why.

I had to have a bone density scan to see how my skeleton is holding
out against the onslaught of steroids my lungs have been needing this
last year or so. I was asked about my calcium intake - cheese, milk,
yoghurt... well all I have been having is calcium enriched soya
products and I don't think it has been enough - not if my nails are
anything to go by, anyway. These things might work OK for some
metabolisms but research into my genetics and family health history
has given me a lot of reason to believe that my maternal ancestors for
59,000 years survived on a diet of reindeer meat, dairy produce and
fish, perhaps augmented by a little seal blubber if they lived further
north in Norway. They would not have had access to the most
problematic food allergens around at the moment - things that are
causing problems for many many more people than ever imagined -
glutenous grains, certain nuts, beans and pulses (wheat [+ barley, rye
& oats for the coeliac], peanuts, coffee beans, chocolate, soya....)
Sure, dairy can be a problem for some people, but maybe we are a
product of our genetic make-up more than we realise, just as a cat
finds it hard to be a healthy vegetarian. Since reintroducing cheese
I've been starting to feel stronger and my breathing has felt better -
my chest has been a little tighter, but stronger, if that doesn't
sound too weird... less watery anyway - like all the gunk is
thickening up and being better able to do its job of bashing germs.
I am pretty convinced my family health issues boil down to this food
sensitivity stuff. My mother was a coeliac, as is my brother. The
number 1 cancer that coeliac disease causes is non-hodgkins lymphoma,
which is exactly what I had between 12 and 15 years old. My cousin has
had IBS and has lupus and my aunt has rheumatoid arthritis - there is
also a history of various other physical and mental issues in my
family, including asthma, that are all related to coeliac type
sensitivity, which is part of a broader auto-immune disease food-
sensitivity problem.

Research is being done in the US into a protein the body produces
called zonulin. Apparently too much of this in response to certain
food stuffs cause increased gut permeability. What then happens is
that larger mollecules enter the blood stream and surrounding tissues
and fluids (such as the interstitial spaces next to the lungs or the
blood brain barrier next to the brain). The immune system then starts
attacking these areas which can lead to cancers and other destructive,
tissue destroying activity - an excessively warlike immune response
charging round like a bull in a China shop.

Anyway, the future could hold therapy based on balancing this natural
zonulin protein and solving a myriad of immune diseases including
cancers, sarcoidosis, coeliac disease, lupus and perhaps conditions
such as pemphigus (where the body attacks its own skin - a hungarian
friend of mine got this - slavs are more susceptible to these
sensitivities too - anyone whose ancestors did not eat a standard
western european diet until recent times). It's interesting - it has
made me think about the strict Jewish dietary laws too - perhaps they
had such precise food wisdom based on what it was healthy for their
specific genetic make-up to eat and not eat - they have all sorts of
food combination restrictions such as not mixing meat and dairy, not
having any leavened foods at times (yeast is another potential
allergen so perhaps taking regular breaks from it is a good idea), no
shellfish at all... Julie recently found out that pork has
historically been a significant carrier for a certain potentially-
fatal parasitic worm.

Enjoy your cheese. I like Caerphilly and Wensleydale, but find cheddar
a bit sickly. Charlie is in food heaven!!!!

All Things Sami

Today I've been reading a lot about the Sami and feeling quite connected to that aspect of my ancestry. Reading about Sami experiences with religion, shamanism and alcohol have triggered a lot of connections for me to me and my family. Peoples is peoples, but sometimes peoples can make life quite difficult for each other. Or something. Yoik.

Watch a series of films on Youtube outlining Sami struggles over land rights and ecology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Bzjw7CLw0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfxScuBfFt8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uRjZM-GBbs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC8CDCAD2iw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rarzxyFOzD8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sKJ7l1GP-0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULUFtzTzZHs

It couldn't get much cooler

Well as time goes on and I find out more about all this DNA stuff, it seems that not only am I of Ashkenazi heritage on my father's side, the ancestry could well be of the Rabbinic caste. Unusually within orthodox Judaism, this bloodline is patrilineal rather than matrilineal. People from this bloodline can trace their roots back through Aaron..., back to Jacob, to Isaac, to Abraham... That's got to be about as cool as it gets.

Shalom.