From: Renee Lewis 
To: "Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]" 
Subject: Hello!
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 14:02:06 +0000

Hi,

How are you?

I'm back in Doha again with Al Jazeera after a break back in the US spending time with my family...

I just came across this article saying that groundwater extraction can cause earthquakes:

http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/3665-earthquake-triggered-by-humans.html

It made me wonder what else *(besides fracking... already know about that one...) we do that causes natural disasters.

What do you think? 

Renee Lewis

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Re: Hello!

How are you?

Well, and you?

I'm back in Doha again with Al Jazeera
after a break back in the US spending time with my family...

I just came across this article saying that groundwater extraction can
cause earthquakes:

http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/3665-earthquake-triggered-by-humans.html

It made me wonder what else *(besides
fracking... already know about that one...) we do that causes natural
disasters.
What do you think?

Yes, certainly extracting groundwater at rates higher than it can
be replenished can (will) cause earthquakes. Plausible, no?

Global warming -> ice shelf danger of Heinrich events
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event)
When I learned of those, I really got frightened.

The recent floods in the UK were predicted more than a decade ago
as the plausible effect of drying up floodplains. And then
building on them (which is why they were dried up in the first place)
of course makes victims as soon as there is a lot of water that the
plain will no longer absorb. But nobody listened of
course.

In fact these disasters should not be called natural disasters,
but human-triggered disasters.

I believe the dust-bowl disasters in the US were also human
triggered.

The current ecological state of Greece finds its origin in severe
deforestation about two millennia ago (unless I am remembering
something wrongly).

Switzerland stopped all deep geothermal drilling (the Basel
experiment) because of possible earthquakes.

As Kurt Vonnegut would have said: "and on and
on".

Robert.

PS: Note that in previous messages there are some of my questions
you have left unanswered. :)

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 17:09:21 +0300
Subject: RE: Diverse subjects

Hi,

How's it going?

Have you seen this website: thesolutionsjournal.com ?

We just started using op-eds from the site for our Opinion page and I've already read a few very interesting articles. Check these out when you have the time:

The New Geograpgy of Trade: Globalization's Decline May Stimulate Local Recovery:
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1042

China's Role in a World of Scarce Resources:
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1036

Have you heard of the ecotown model? Just read about that in one of the articles from the Solutions journal. I think living in some place like that would be amazing. Some even have their own local currency to encourage buying local to reduce emissions from transporting the goods.

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@robertcailliau.eu]
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2012 4:06 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Diverse subjects

>Finally, someone who is as paranoid as me about the world collapsing!

:)
But it is NOT funny...  And most of it is because of overpopulation
and religion.
OK, whatever follows is of course personal and not for publication.

>  I have had many discussions with friends in various places around
>the world about finding a "safe" place to go... considering
>potential for political strife, natural disasters, land that you can
>grow food on,

Right, that too was what I had in mind: buy a farm and be certain to
be able to grow your own food.  Unfortunately Australia (including
Tasmania) is a very old continent and the soil is not fertile like it
is in Europe.

>... I like your idea of staying in the center of things, at least
>you know what's going on because its already happening - don't have
>to try to predict events.

But there are other trends: the population here is collapsing.  Which
is what is needed, but there are (1) no political visions of how to
let that happen orderly, and (2) there is too much immigration of
people who have no education and bring with them even more irrational
beliefs than we already have.

>When you mentioned religious issues being worse now than during the
>Inquisistion, are you talking about the Christian and Muslim
>fundamentalists?

Yes.  There are good things in all religions, but also a lot of bad
ones.  The Christians have a very diminished role of God (they go
more for the human Christ figure), no real monotheism (at least the
Catholics do not) and the idea of "turning the other cheek" instead
of the "eye for eye" points to solving conflicts without violence.
Islam has some good ideas for the financial world (no interests on
loans, the running of insurance companies, etc.), but, like Judaism,
it does not tolerate separation of Church and State and is very
unfair to women.  I have been more than once furious with practicing
Jews in Antwerp (where I lived most of my life) because they refused
to shake hands with my mother.  Even very recently at a conference
there was an incident where I was chatting in the lift to a person
who had made a brilliant remark during a talk the previous day.  But
when we left the lift and parted ways, he gave a silly excuse for not
shaking hands ("I still have to eat breakfast"), but in fact it was
because he was a practicing Jew and my wife was in the lift with me,
so he would have had to touch her too!  It made my blood boil.  But
what can you do?  Say "You are an irrational idiot!" and risk an
antisemitism suit?  I thought of it for a long time, and I believe
that if anything like that will happen again, I will make a remark.

We have an Egyptian Muslim in the family (the husband of one of our
daughters).  He is not very bright (that is a euphemism), but he
insists on his daughter not eating any pork.  That puts a strain on
our cuisine.  Why do we not have the right to insist that he adapt to
us?  He eats other things that (as far as my knowledge of the Koran
goes) are strictly forbidden, but that is of course allowed.  Shall I
point out to him his total incoherence?  He has not enough education
nor brainpower to understand that.

And so on.  I now refrain from getting into any argument about
evolution (let alone abortion) with fundamental Christians.

>They seem to be causing the most trouble from my perspective. The
>religious right in the states is actually frightening.

Indeed. And they are invading us here too.  But the Muslims are just
as bad:  they keep their girls from some parts of education, and
there are now public swimming pools in the UK where the windows have
been painted over and some days are reserved for Muslim women only.
This is ridiculous.  I do very carefully refrain from any remarks or
gestures towards women around here wearing scarves (there are a LOT
of them), because I am well aware of the fact that some of them do it
only to conform rather than out of conviction.  But I often also
think that those who do believe are advertising their belief system:
(1) mutilate unconsenting boys, (2) kill animals inhumanely, (3)
condone inequality of men and women, (4) impose thought patterns on
the whole of society.
Practicing Jews are of course exactly the same, but since Judaism is
a racist religion (you cannot join, you have to be born into it) they
have no missionaries (fortunately for us) whereas Islam does.
I am not denying the terrible stuff that was done in the name of
Christianity, espacially in the Americas and in Africa.  It was
terrible.  And I am also not a Christian (thoug I was raised so).
However, we are supposed to have learned and evolved our civilisation
beyond religious aberrations.  The Evangelicals and the Fundamental
Islamists want to turn that clock back.

>... Do you have Evangelicals and mega churches in Europe?

Unfortunately we have Evangelicals.  But they are not as many and not
yet as hard-lined as in the US.  But we have a lot of Muslims, and
the conservatives among them are just as bad or perhaps worse.

>On education, I don't know how it is in Europe but the US has been
>in a nosedive for a while. Horrible salaries for teachers make it
>worse.

Exactly the same here.

>  College leaves students in debt - many of my friends around
>$30,000.. and they went to state schools!

I know.  The best thing for a country (this has been shown
historically many times, from the Romans onwards) is to give everyone
the same opportunity in education, free of charge, up to university
level.  But not free of charge for any abilities:  I had to pass an
entrance exam before being allowed into the Schools of Engineering.
We were 600, and only 300 passed. That was in 1964. In the late
eighties it was considered "elitist" to refuse students by making
them take an exam, so it was abolished,  Result:  now all 600 start,
and 300 of them get weeded out anyway after two years, then another
150 after another year.  But they have now wasted a lot of resources
and years of their own lives.

>  Imagine, going to a private school or Ivy league would probably
>leave a student who didn't come from family money 100,000 or more in
>debt after graduation. Which makes finding a well-paying job the
>only priority - doesn't really allow a person to find something they
>really love or even partly enjoy.

Totally agree.  We need to go back to free education, but also selection.
To comment further:  the Schools of Engineering are part of the
university, and take 5 years to complete. But the Technical Schools
were not.  However, now the people who go there, and definitely are
not of the same capabilities, want their diplomas also to be
recognised as university degrees, which they are not.  This will put
additional strain on people, but also on industry, because industry
wil now have to do the selection much more carefully.  Hence
temporary jobs, demotions, and all sorts of stupid things.
We have a few friends who are wise enough to know their own limits
and accept them.  We also know a few people (like our Egyptian
son-in-law) who have no humility at all and no clue that maybe some
things are beyond them.

In 2009 I started flying lessons.  I did it to find out if at my age
I could still learn something difficult.  During the very first class
the teacher laid out the amount of theory we would need to master and
the amount of practice.  He began by saying that learning to fly is a
great lesson in humility.  In May 2010 I got my pilot's licence, and
I could not agree more with him:  I was at the verge of giving up
several times.  I know now very well what I will attempt and what
not.  For example I will not attempt to get the instrument rating,
because I know my brain is not fast enough to do that.
Perhaps one of the things to teach students is to find out where
their limits are.  You can work on improving yourself, but you should
be aware of your limitations and not be arrogant.

>  What do you think of the school systems we have in place in the West now?

Need to be overhauled, but the most important aspect to get right is
to make people feel comfortable with their limitations.  I have
worked at CERN for a very long time, as you know, but I have no
understanding of quantum mechanics and probably never will because I
am not intelligent enough for that. I am also a pretty lousy
programmer though I do understand software.  I'm comfortable with
that though.

>  I'm assuming European and US schools are fairly similar in their
>structure, but I could be wrong.

It depends.  Many countries have slightly different systems here.
But from what I hear from US friends it is roughly the same except
for funding.

>  In the US, from 1st grade to graduating from highschool there is
>pretty much one structure in place: 5 or 6 classes per day, and very
>little options to personalize your education. Its English, math,
>science, history, health, maybe a foreign language... I don't think
>our system is very progressive and it stifles curiosity and
>imagination in my opinion.

Same here: no options, and if I think back to my own school days, I
did not really wanted that. I did want options in secondary school
(12-18) and did latin & maths, but regret that it meant no Greek.

>It seems like you've thought a lot about global warming,... ...
>etc...? Extreme weather, storms...

Yes.  Plus the rearranging of the ocean currents, with the El Nino
and the Gulf Stream the most important perhaps, though I don't know a
lot about the system of currents.
It is not very important that it does change, because it has changed
often before and species died out etc., but it is the rate of change
that is orders of magnitude higher than evolution can tolerate.
There was a recent article in Scientific American about this rates,
comparing with the last two great eras of extinctions.

>  But what about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? Do you think
>they are related? It might be "normal" but its been freezing here in
>the gulf for about the past week. They said something about winds
>from Siberia... Anyways, its odd.

There have always been large fluke fluctuations, so a single season
or event is in itself no good sign of anything.  Earthquakes and
volcanism (which obviously are related) can be caused by shifts in
plates:  if a lot of ice melts on Greenland for example, then that
whole island will lift up from under the weight and that will cause a
slow shift which will have its effect on other plates and thus on
earthquakes and volcanoes.  But they are the least to worry about.

>Syria is getting more and more convoluted. ... talk of secret mass gravesites.

I do not understand how those guys cannot understand that the
international community will not let that go on forever.  Yet, of
course, Nazis did similar things for many years before anyone
intervened.

>Now, some soldiers from Assad's army have started defecting... If it
>lands in the middle of the road, they grab long poles to pull it
>over, as snipers shoot at them.

Incredible.

>  Its really insane!

My belief in the sanity of humans is limited.

>  And to top it off, powerful countries are behind Assad's regime and
>don't want him to leave: even Israel prefers him to an unknown.

Israel is the most dangerous state on the planet.  While I am not of
the opinion of some that it should be annihilated, I certainly would
like to see a different solution to what was once called "the Jewish
problem".

>... But of course, the Syrian government media would tell... Al Qaeda groups

Yeah, sure, call in the enemy of the enemy.

>I never watched Star Trek... But if you recommend it I will download
>it! Not much to do in Doha besides going shopping at the mega malls
>or hanging out at some 5-star hotel bar - neither of which is my
>scene...

I don't think you can download it.  There are a small number of
movies that were made fairly recently, but they are not worth seeing.
Star Trek started out as a TV series in the 60s.  There were four
issues, each spanning a number of years of episodes.  There was "the
original series (TOS), which ran for 4 years and I think about 80
episodes of 45minutes each.  Followed by The Next Generation (TNG),
Voyager, and Deep Space 9 (DS9).
It looks like science fiction, and I took it like that when I was 16.
But in fact it is a very clever series of comments on society and on
humanity.  The setting is that of a starship travelling our galaxy
and meeting other beings.  In each series the device of a Candide is
used:  one member of the crew who is an alien and therefore has a lot
of questions about the behaviour or attitudes of the human crew
members.  In the original series that Candide is Mr. Spock, a person
from the planet Vulcan, where strict logic is applied to everything.
Of course he is always amazed by our irrational behaviour.
There is an amazing number of references to Star Trek all the time,
and some of the gizmos used have in the meantime actually been
invented.
The most recent we saw was this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2088257/Star-Trek-really-IS-good-guide-future--Scientists-able-produce-transparent-aluminium.html?ITO=1490

But there are many others.  The word "taser" is derived from "phaser"
and  "warp speed" comes from it too.
A funny one was during the Royal Wedding:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1382791/Royal-Wedding-Forget-Kate-Middletons-dress-Princess-Beatrices-hat-Facebook-hit.html
But you can't understand any of these references unless you have seen
at least the original series.  It must be on sale in any DVD shop in
Doha.

The social comments are sometimes fairly explicit.  There is one
episode in which they meet a planet of people who have no gender.
There are no longer males and females, only persons.  However, every
so often a person is born who does feel "femaleness" or "maleness" as
regression to an earlier era, and is then by law "treated" so the
gender tendencies are supressed.  The episode has one such person,
who hides from the law her "femaleness" and falls in love with one of
the Earth crew members.  After some complications there is a court
case in which all the reasons for and against  the laws are exposed.
It is of course a reference to the way gay people were seen or are
seen, and the way of encapsulating the issues into a setting which
starts from no gender at all is very well done.

There is another whole set about the rights of robots and so on.
The original series is not well acted and the decors are
ancient-looking with problematic special effects, but anyway those
are just props.
My wife had not seen them either and then got hooked immediately
(somehow women feel a great attraction to the character of Spock).
So we saw the entire set of sets (I had seen only the original series
and that when I was 16).  It took about a year to go through...
But I was amazed:  there are certainly episodes that you could not
show today, because they advocate reason over irrational beliefs, and
are sometimes quite atheist in approach.  They would today be branded
as "insulting" to religious groups.  Yet they also advocate the rule
of law, loyalty, curiosity, tolerance, and changing your mind in the
face of evidence (my favourite phrase).
Funnily, the King of Jordan (Rania's husband, yes!) is a great fan.
When he was in Hollywood many years ago, he insisted seeing the
production facilities, and was even given a very short role in the
episode they were making at that time!

I think seeing the Original Series is a must just as much as any
classic work of literature or cinema.  It's definitely not science
fiction.  You could start by getting the first season on DVDs and
seeing if you like it.  But do not watch the full-length movies that
were made later, they are unintelligible unless you have seen TOS.
:)

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Diverse subjects

How's it going?

It's -10C outside and +20 inside, that's 30 degrees difference;
plus a strong wind has been blowing for the last few days. The
heatpump is working more than half the day. Normally it sucks
heat from the ground for only 8 hours during the night at low
electricity tariff and stores it in a big tank of 5000 litres of
water, then circulates it through the floor heating during the
day.
The sky is however beautifully sunny.

Have you seen this website:
thesolutionsjournal.com ?

No, but it looks interesting.

... Check these out when you have
the time:
...

Will do.
Sigh: there are so many of these sites. I wished one of
them broke through, like Wikipedia.

Have you heard of the ecotown
model?

I had heard something vaguely on the news some time ago. It
seemed to me like trying to create what we have around here as little
towns in Switzerland and rural France.
I certainly do not like the idea of local currencies, but that is
a more complex matter.
In 1984 after my divorce I had to move out further into
Switzerland, and the commute began to be horrible: 25 minutes. I
found that far too long, so I moved into France and much closer to
CERN, so I could go there by bicycle. However, it also meant
changing administrations (from Switzerland to France), and while I was
staff at an international organisation, that option simply did not
exist for people "trapped" in Switzerland. Now my wife
& I may want to move closer to town (=Geneva) rather than living
on the outskirts, and the problem is now reversed: it is
difficult to get back in. Small communities do create
xenophobism. So I am a little wary of efforts to build them on
purpose, and certainly do not like frontiers.
Of course the eco-side I support fully.

... reduce emissions from transporting
the goods.

True, but not every transport is negative either. One has
to count the Joules needed to do anything, not the kms or the cost in
money. That is the real problem: we have not got enough data on
that, and there is a lot of ideology involved too. Very
difficult.
And of course, I do like to travel, I don't want to feel guilty
about that.
Fewer people on the planet is much better than some ecological
measures.

Very very difficult problem.

In the meantime the situation in Syria does not get better, in
Egypt people kill each other over football, and in Libya there is
revenge. Beautiful. Humans made in God's image?
:(

Anything on Star Trek
;)

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Diverse subjects

I wonder why we (humanity) don't intervene in Syria in the way we did in Libya?
Because Israel is too close? Because Syria has no oil or not enough? Because we are tired?  Or hypocritical?

It's a real mess.  I hope some solution will come about soon.
And once again too many people for the resources, not enough education, too much corruption.

And what about Jordan?

You did not react to much of my long message, was that intentional or just no time?

Best, and "Bon week-end",

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:11:04 +0300
Subject: RE: Diverse subjects

Hey,

How's everything? Yes I have been busy for 3 weeks now, I had a friend visiting from Mexico, an amazing woman I met in Jerusalem when I was living in Palestine a few years ago. She is Jewish-American but was protesting against the Occupation with the Women in Black. So, she came out to visit for a couple weeks on her way to Sri Lanka and I played tour guide while she was here, showed her all the sights. Then the same day she left, my parents came to visit! So they were here for one week and I showed them all the sights and now they have begun their 30 hour trek back to the West coast. So it was nice having them out, but exhausting at the same time!

[It's -10C outside and +20 inside, that's 30 degrees difference; plus a strong wind has been blowing for the last few days.  The heatpump is working more than half the day.  Normally it sucks heat from the
ground for only 8 hours during the night at low electricity tariff and stores it in a big tank of 5000 litres of water, then circulates it through the floor heating during the day. The sky is however beautifully sunny.]

The weather here is getting better and better - yesterday and today in the 30's and sunny. The winter here is great, it gets cold enough for light coats at night, and sweater some days, but switches from warm to cold every few days. Now I think its warming up for good and the cold will come less and less. Still have another month or so until it becomes unbearable here again like last summer, 45 degrees and humid!

[Sigh: there are so many of these sites.  I wished one of them broke
through, like Wikipedia.]

Yeah, I don't know what it takes for a site to become popular. It seems like most people are so stuck in getting their news from mainstream media that they think that's the only "news" - aka death and destruction and war. If I asked you, "What's going on in the world today?" Would you automatically think about all the wars, who got killed where, and that kind of thing? Why do so many people automatically think about "news" that way. How did we get here?! It makes it seem like there's nothing good left in the world. I think all this negativity and violence being pounded into our brains from the media may actually cause more harm than good. Why don't we focus on the positive and change the way we think... ?

>Have you heard of the ecotown model?
[I had heard something vaguely on the news some time ago. It seemed to me like trying to create what we have around here as little towns in Switzerland and rural France. I certainly do not like the idea of local currencies, but that is a  more complex matter. In 1984 after my divorce I had to move out further into Switzerland,
and the commute began to be horrible: 25 minutes.  I found that far  too long, so I moved into France and much closer to CERN, so I could go there by bicycle.  However, it also meant changing administrations
(from Switzerland to France), and while I was staff at an international organisation, that option simply did not exist for people "trapped" in Switzerland.  Now my wife & I ay want to move closer to town (=Geneva) rather than living on the outskirts, and the problem is now reversed:  it is difficult to get back in.  Small
communities do create xenophobism.  So I am a little wary of efforts to build them on purpose, and certainly do not like frontiers. Of course the eco-side I support fully.>... reduce emissions from transporting the goods.
True, but not every transport is negative either.  One has to count the Joules needed to do anything, not the kms or the cost in money. That is the real problem: we have not got enough data on that, and there is a lot of ideology involved too.  Very difficult. And of course, I do like to travel, I don't want to feel guilty about that.
Fewer people on the planet is much better than some ecological measures. Very very difficult problem.]

The article I suggested to you about switching from oil/natural gas/nuclear power to wind, water and sunlight was really interesting to me because of how efficient WWS energy sources are. They have little risks and offer a lot of power, and the logistics of transfering the power are not impossible or even that difficult to figure out. But the fact is that powerful, wealthy people make their millions off of gas and oil and don't want to lose those profits. So they would rather say screw the world, the environment, and people's health - I want to keep making millions at their expense! Its ridiculous - they should be put on trial for the hundreds of thousands killed in wars for oil, the families that get sick from 'fracking' in the states, and the millions who die prematurely from air pollution every year.

[In the meantime the situation in Syria does not get better, in Egypt people kill each other over football, and in Libya there is revenge. Beautiful.  Humans made in God's image?]

The soccer thing in Egypt was a shock to me. They work together and fight against Mubarak, oust him, then have to cooperate against the Military dictatorship for the rest of the year, still have't beaten them, and then kill EACH OTHER over a game?? Insanity. The main theory in the media as to why it happened that way is because the Ultras (the fans of Al Ahly team I believe) were on the 'frontlines' at Tahrir at the beginning of the revolution - they apparently took their fighting, rioting skills from soccer games and applied them against the police and military. They were a big part of the revolution - and that's why some analysts say that the riot police let the riot happen, locked the doors and stood by and watched. They wanted them to get killed in revenge for their role in the demos and revolution. But who knows for sure?

[Anything on Star Trek]

I have been trying to download the first season at my hotel but the internet is INSANELY slow and I think its at 5% after days of downloading. And the other problem is my internet connection times out so I can't just leave it and expect it to download while Im at work or asleep. And they didn't have it in the DVD shop! Anyways, I am going back to the States in a couple of weeks while they renew my contract so I will be able to get it there! Looking forward to discussing it with you!

[I wonder why we (humanity) don't intervene in Syria in the way we did in Libya? Because Israel is too close? Because Syria has no oil or not enough? Because we are tired?  Or hypocritical? It's a real mess.  I hope some solution will come about soon.]

The Syrian conflict is way more complicated than it originally appears. And everyone keeps comparing it to Libya as a way of saying "no intervention" - it will "just cause more problems". I say it can't get any worse. If someone suggests that arming the Free Syrian Army or intervening is just going to cause more violence I'm going to scream because they are assuming Assad is reasonable on some level and can be dealt with in a reasonable way. He isn't and he can't. Its literally a fight to the death. He will continue launching an all-out war on his people until they give up or he kills them all or he gets assassinated.

Assad's army has been attacking Homs for almost a week now. Continuous shelling, mortar attacks, anti-aircraft weapons used against civilians and their homes. Tanks shooting at people's houses. Women and children hiding in basements for days. They can't even leave their homes to get food because of the snipers on the roofs, the Shabiha (govt thugs) are going door to door indiscriminately killing men, women, children, the elderly... They have NO humanity. Its gone. They are animals. The only thing to do now is fight back.

After Russia and China decided to veto the UN resolution supporting the Arab League plan, the US seemed to give up. They pulled out their ambassador from Damascus and said basically, 'we have no more options at this point'. Some people think that they will try to arm the Free Syrian Army secretly... Somebody has to! They're fighting tanks and missiles with AK-47s. Meanwhile Russia's making tens of billions of dollars off of selling weapons to Assad, China is comlplicit because they don't want to set a precedent of unseating dictators lest it happen to them, Iran's sending military into the country on the ground to support Assad's troops.... Its insane.

Israel wants everything to stay the way it is. Although Syria talks a lot and pretends to support the Palestinian cause, Assad hasn't done anything to back that up or anything aggressive against Israel. He hasn't even tried to get the Golan Heights back. So as far as Israel's concerned, he is a 'known' and a non-threat to them. They are not willing to exchange him (despite his brutality against his own people) for an 'unknown' who could be a threat to them. So my thinking is, if Israel doesn't want something to happen - especially since its an election year in the states - no US politicians are going to disagree. Even Obama, he will not stand up to Israel, he's proven that MANY times over the past four years - especially with respect to expanding illegal settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. He just cowed to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu slapped him in the face.

[And once again too many people for the resources, not enough education, too much corruption.]

And the biggest issue in the election debates in the US now is birth control! Santorum jumped on that bandwagon - its very good timing for him. He was pretty much out and now he's back on top because of Obama's rational decision to provide the OPTION of birth control to women - then came the question of 'should Catholic institutions be forced to provide birth control when its "against their basic tenets and beliefs"'???

So Obama had to revise the law to say that if its against the religious beliefs of an institution, they don't have to provide it. So those women lose out. And the population grows.... ha. And Rick Santorum gets famous because hes "standing up for the Catholics" and ultra-conservative beliefs. So now all of the Republican candidates and Obama have to compete to prove who's the most insanely conservative and who can try to control women's health the most. Why should those men have any say in whether a woman gets birth control or has the right to abortion??

[And what about Jordan?]

What's going on in Jordan? haha

Hope you're doing well and the weather's not too freezing where you are. It looks like Europe is getting harder hit by the freeze every day! Big rivers freezing and water transport interrupted. How's your heater holding up?

Stay warm!

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@robertcailliau.eu]
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 10:22 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Diverse subjects

I wonder why we (humanity) don't intervene in Syria in the way we did in Libya?
Because Israel is too close? Because Syria has no oil or not enough?
Because we are tired?  Or hypocritical?

It's a real mess.  I hope some solution will come about soon.
And once again too many people for the resources, not enough
education, too much corruption.

And what about Jordan?

You did not react to much of my long message, was that intentional or
just no time?

Best, and "Bon week-end",

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Diverse subjects

...Yes I have been busy for 3 weeks now,
I had a friend visiting from Mexic... I played tour guide while she
was here, showed her all the sights.

Ah. However, I have no clue where you are located.

... 45 degrees and humid!

Ah, yes, Qatar.

... If I asked you, "What's going on
in the world today?" Would you automatically think about all the
wars, who got killed where, and that kind of thing?

Me, no. I would be more concerned with the big trends in
thinking, and they do not look good.

... violence being pounded into our
brains from the media may actually cause more harm than good. Why
don't we focus on the positive and change the way we think...
?

Right, that's what I would like too: more reporting on positive
happenings.

The article I suggested to you about
switching from oil/natural gas/nuclear power to wind, water and
sunlight was really interesting to me because of how efficient WWS
energy sources are.

How do they count the efficiency?
As an engineer, I have to look at the entire lifespan of a
generator.
It takes an amount A joules to build it, it lives for N years
during which it absorbs B joules per year in maintenance, then it
takes another C joules to dismantle it and recuperate all the
materials. The entire cost is then A+BxN+C joules.
During its N years it produces O joules of output per year, so it
returns to you OxN.
What you (we) can "harvest" obviously cannot exceed OxN
- (A+BxN+C).
For solar panels, that difference was rather negative until a few
years ago. It also was for wind power.
The efficiency is

OxN - (A+BxN+C)
---------------
 OxN

and that obviously cannot be more than 100%.
I think for solar panels it is something like 5% now, perhaps 10%
but I admit I should research it properly.
But unfortunately the guys selling them to you will count in
money instead of joules, mainly because they have no clue of the
energy costs.

They have little risks

They need a lot of copper, so maybe some Chilean miners will
disagree.

and offer a lot of power, and the
logistics of transfering the power are not impossible or even that
difficult to figure out.

There I agree: at least power transfer lines are well
understood. Though they too need installation and maintenance,
it is very little.

But the fact is that powerful,
wealthy people make their millions off of gas and oil and don't want
to lose those profits. So they would rather say screw the world, the
environment, and people's health - I want to keep making millions at
their expense!

I don't know if I already told you this or not, forgive me if I
repeat myself. But I think that if anyone really found a source
as efficient and easy to deal with as oil, we would all go there.
We've been researching alternatives for many decades. I was
recently at a symposium for doctoral students at my university.
This was the Schools of Engineering, where I also studied. About
half the projects were on energy, and I can assure you that the
Ph.Ds-to-be were all young, enthusiastic, idealistic and very clever.
But no miracle replacement for fossil fuels to be seen.

Its ridiculous - they should be put
on trial for the hundreds of thousands killed in wars for oil, the
families that get sick from 'fracking' in the states, and the millions
who die prematurely from air pollution every year.

In a sense, yes. But would the jury at those trials be
prepared to turn the lights off in their children's rooms at night,
turn off the air conditioners, and so on. Can you live where you
are without the air conditioners going all the time?
Do you drive a car to work or do you take the bicycle?
When I stayed at the Jumeirah Beach hotel in Dubai and I wanted
to use the stairs instead of the lift, the concierge could not even
tell me where the stairs were! (they turned out to be on the outside
of the building, with rather difficult access).

The soccer thing in Egypt was a shock to
me. They work together and fight against Mubarak, oust him, then have
to cooperate against the Military dictatorship for the rest of the
year, still have't beaten them, and then kill EACH OTHER over a game??

There is nothing in the world so dangerous as a mob of young
uneducated males.

Insanity. The main theory ... But who
knows for sure?

Indeed. Neither side though applied any brain cells.

Star Trek ... they didn't have it in the
DVD shop!

Not surprised. Probably censored as being atheist
propaganda, plus it has women in it in important jobs, equal or
superior to those of men.
:)

Anyways, I am going back to the
States in a couple of weeks while they renew my contract so I will be
able to get it there! Looking forward to discussing it with
you!

Indeed, I am curious too.

The Syrian conflict ... I say it can't
get any worse. If someone suggests that arming the Free Syrian Army or
intervening is just going to cause more violence I'm going to scream
because they are assuming Assad is reasonable on some level and can be
dealt with in a reasonable way. He isn't and he can't.

That's my opinion too. Yet he still has followers. So
there are again a lot of people who have no sense of history and do
not apply their brain cells.

... They have NO humanity. Its gone. They
are animals. The only thing to do now is fight back.

Agreed.

After Russia and China decided to veto
the UN resolution supporting the Arab League plan, the US seemed to
give up.

The US continuously vetos anything that might make Israel
behave. So I am not surprised, the Syrian innocents (i.e. not
the entire population, but a large fraction) is just ignored for this
showdown between Russia and the US.

... They're fighting tanks and missiles
with AK-47s.

That would be the irony of the century: the US making and
supplying AK47s to the Syrian dissidents. Actually, if it were
at some time shown that the US does indeed have AK47 factories, I
would not be surprised at all. :)
But all jokes apart: yes, someone has to arm them. But then
disarm them later. That was a problem with the Taliban if I am
not mistaken.

... Iran's sending military into the
country on the ground to support Assad's troops.... Its
insane.

Iran and Israel are the two extremely dangerous nations in that
area. And for the world.

... Even Obama, he will not stand up to
Israel, he's proven that MANY times over the past four years ... He
just cowed to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu slapped him in the
face.

Correct. He did lift a finger, but not more than that.
I think he is non-confrontational by nature, and would not know how to
behave when a conflict is unfolding, so he stays away from such
situations. He is a long-term thinker (as his books show) and
hates quick and nasty confrontational negotiations.

And the biggest issue in the election
debates in the US now is birth control!

I read that. Ludicrous!

... "against their basic tenets and
beliefs"'???

That subject is treated many times in Star Trek, excellently well
some cases. It also has to do with the "Prime
Directive", but I don't want to spoil the shows. And don't now
look that up in Google!

So Obama had to revise the law to say
that if its against the religious beliefs of an institution, they
don't have to provide it.

That's the crack in the door to let uncontrolled religious
dictatorship in.

So those women lose
out.

They can always switch beliefs. At least they would apply
their brain cells.

... Why should those men have any say in
whether a woman gets birth control or has the right to
abortion??

:)
Do I hear a convinced feminist here? One who would have
marched in the streets in Holland in the 60s with "Baas in eigen
Buik" written over their bellies? (literally translated
"Boss in our own belly".)

[And what about Jordan?]
What's going on in Jordan? haha

I hope not too much. I'm a fan of Rania.

Hope you're doing well and the weather's
not too freezing where you are. It looks like Europe is getting harder
hit by the freeze every day! Big rivers freezing and water transport
interrupted. How's your heater holding up?

OK. It's running 50% now. But it is still windy and -8
outside.

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:12:36 +0300
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

Hey,

That's INSANE. I really hate the idea of not allowing free speech, free thought. One of the main ideas in Islam is that there is no compulsion in religion - it's written in the Quran. But somehow, there is a loop-hole for Muslims who either speak out against the religion in any way or who decide to leave the religion. I was talking to someone the other day who said that anyone who leaves the religion should be put to death - this guy said it with a straight face. He didn't even think on a human level, no empathy. It was just a "rule" that had to be followed because it "came from God". Then I looked it up and there are some scholars who agree with that and some who don't. It doesn't make sense to me, and since there are at least 4 main schools of Islamic (legal) thought in the religion, there will always be some who are leniant and some who are the complete opposite.

It always seems to be the crazies that get their ideas and names out there in the media.

It seems to me that if a religion and its followers were really secure in their beliefs they wouldn't freak out every time someone challenged them. But somehow, this kind of thing keeps happening... I really wish there was more of a voice from the every-day Muslims in the world. A lot of Muslims I know, especially in the US, would find this appalling. The US has an interesting Muslim community because its so mixed - Muslims from every different country. Because of that, they have different cultural impacts on the way they practice and believe and those ideas clash when they are all put in one mosque together. When those beliefs clash and they have debates over what's "really" Islamic and what's cultural, they begin to understand how much of what they were taught growing up is not really supported by the religion - and in many cases is actually anti-Islamic. I think they are probably the best, most loving and inclusive, Muslim community I've ever come across. And I believe the most representative of the true spirit of the religion.

It's too bad that the Muslim community is so fractured and isolated globally because they have developed their own style of practicing and enforcing on others that actually has no basis in the religion - and goes against big themes - like the "no compulsion in religion" thing.

It also seems to be a general theme among religious types - being violent or threatening towards those who don't agree or challenge their beliefs. If they really knew and understood what they believed why would they be threatened? But I think a lot of them are secretely insecure about their beliefs, if they really even believe it or not, and because of that they are extra-aggressive against anyone who doesn't believe the same thing. They see it as a challenge to their whole "paradigm" they created and can't be bothered with inspecting and logically examining that paradigm to see if there's anything missing, wrong, etc...

I think that religion is a personal, spiritual thing and that if someone wants to believe something, its better if they just keep it to themselves. What good can it do to show off or try to force other people to believe the same as them? Religion in the public sphere has usually lead to violence and death - and never just focuses on what brings us all together like the religion professes to be about. I don't think religion itself is so flawed, but humans are... very flawed.

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2012 5:24 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Diverse problems

You got some comments from me on:

>And the biggest issue in the election debates in the US now is birth control!

but what's your take on this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16977903

Of course, in Europe we did have the inquisition, which lastet many
centuries and took five hundred years to get rid of.  And we still
have Evangelicals.
But this sort of happening in 2012 frightens me.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Diverse problems
Cc: 
Bcc: 
X-Attachments: 
Message-Id: 

You got some comments from me on:

And the biggest issue in the election
debates in the US now is birth control!

but what's your take on this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16977903

Of course, in Europe we did have the inquisition, which lasted
many centuries and took five hundred years to get rid of. And we
still have Evangelicals.
But this sort of happening in 2012 frightens me.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

That's INSANE. I really hate the idea of
not allowing free speech, free thought. One of the main ideas in Islam
is that there is no compulsion in religion - it's written in the
Quran.

But it is also written explicitly that apostasy is not allowed
and must be punished with death. I have reflected on this
attitude. It is also recurring in commerce: you can get
into Skype, Facebook etc. but you cannot get out. It seems that
there are parallels here. States treat traitors with the death
penalty too, but at least there is a crime committed in that case.
Still, it is difficult to say "I don't want to be in your nation,
I want to be in a different one". Soviet Russia and today
Korea don't allow citizens to leave.

By the way, the death penalty on apostasy is also in the Torah
and in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy)

If you look at anthropology I'm pretty certain you will find that
most tribes did/do not allow leaving the tribe, and if you do they
have the right to kill you. It seems to be built-in to our
genes.

But somehow, there is a loop-hole for
Muslims who either speak out against the religion in any way or who
decide to leave the religion. I was talking to someone the other day
who said that anyone who leaves the religion should be put to death -
this guy said it with a straight face. He didn't even think on a human
level, no empathy. It was just a "rule" that had to be
followed because it "came from God". Then I looked it up and
there are some scholars who agree with that and some who don't. It
doesn't make sense to me, and since there are at least 4 main schools
of Islamic (legal) thought in the religion, there will always be some
who are leniant and some who are the complete opposite.

Perhaps. Once Christians had "won" and taken over
the Roman Empire (and replaced it with the Catholic Church, modelling
nearly all of its institutions on the Roman ones) they too began to be
intolerant to apostasy.

It always seems to be the crazies that
get their ideas and names out there in the media.

Exactly. I think the best thing to do with the extremists is
simply to ignore them. Or at least as much as possible to ignore
them.
How can a religion be termed tolerant when it does not allow
apostasy?

It seems to me that if a religion and its
followers were really secure in their beliefs they wouldn't freak out
every time someone challenged them.

And here we come back to my preferred phrase: "change
your mind in the face of evidence". Scientists are not
liked because they do exactly that: they are very secure about
what they do, but they always are in doubt. Most people cannot
cope with that, they need certainty.

But somehow, this kind of thing
keeps happening... I really wish there was more of a voice from the
every-day Muslims in the world.

It would help. I wish it were so. And also that over
time there would not be again a separation into sects, some of which
would become like Evangelicals.

...The US has an interesting Muslim
community ... And I believe the most representative of the true spirit
of the religion.

I tend to agree that any religious group that does not study the
books by the letter is better than those who do. What is
necessary then, is that all those "holy books" are taken for
what they are: just attempts at setting up a workable code for living
in a society, with some practical and psychological guidelines, and
that all that is in those books is open for interpretation and
change. Without making any pro-Catholic statement, I think that
the Vatican has somehow realised that and allows much of it.
Except of course that they too have kept some hard limits: no women in
priesthood, celibacy, no abortion, no birth control, ...
At least they did apologise for Galileo, and they do admit the
Earth is round and more than 6000 years old.

It's too bad that the Muslim community is
so fractured and isolated globally because they have developed their
own style of practicing and enforcing on others that actually has no
basis in the religion - and goes against big themes - like the
"no compulsion in religion" thing.

Did you actually read the text of the Koran?

It also seems to be a general theme among
religious types - being violent or threatening towards those who don't
agree or challenge their beliefs. If they really knew and understood
what they believed why would they be threatened?

If they really studied and understood, they would not be
religious. Being religious is opposite almost to being
inquisitive.

... can't be bothered with inspecting and
logically examining that paradigm to see if there's anything missing,
wrong, etc...

It is very difficult for the average person. Thinking is
too difficult. And I am the first to agree that one does need a
set of rules to go by, because it's just too time-consuming to examine
each action beforehand. I get up in the morning and make my bowl of
muesli and a cup of coffee. I've been doing it for 30
years now. I can't afford to think about it each day. Yet
sometimes I do sit down and think about my habits to see if they are
still adapted to the circumstances. I have also said to our
children (well, young ladies) that I am a man of habits: I have many
and change them all the time.

I know a number of people who do their jobs well, but in fact
have no clue at all about what it is they do or where it fits in a
bigger picture. They have been taught sequences of motions and
perhaps a small vocabulary, and they just repeat that every day.
As soon as a problem crops up they are totally helpless. I think you
must have observed such people too. They also need some form of
religion or at least a set of simple rules in order to live within
society.

I think that religion is a personal,
spiritual thing and that if someone wants to believe something, its
better if they just keep it to themselves. What good can it do to show
off or try to force other people to believe the same as
them?

True, but it still affects me.
Maybe I did or did not give this example, forgive me if I repeat
myself.
Some time ago when I flew out of Geneva to Dubai I had to state
my preferences for on-board dinner. I had a choice of
vegetarian, vegan, ..., kosher and "other". So I
stated "non-halal, non-kosher, no live animals". I am
definitely against undue harm to animals, so I will not eat meat from
force-fed animals (foie-gras), live animals (oysters, monkey brains),
and animals slaughtered while conscious. (we can discuss ritual
slaughter and Chinese cuisine another time). However, the girl
at the check-in desk told me all meat was halal, so as to provide me
with the best service and experience. So I had to eat fish.
I love fish, so it was not a big deal, but I was being discriminated
against. If a practicing Jew flew a European or US airline that
refused to serve kosher, there woudl be an outcry.

Religion in the public sphere has usually
lead to violence and death

Correct.

- and never just focuses on what
brings us all together like the religion professes to be about. I
don't think religion itself is so flawed, but humans are... very
flawed.

We are on a path, dynamic and changeable. That's the only
thing that gives me some hope that we will survive: that we do have
the possibility to change.

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:48:30 +0300
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

Hi,

[[But it is also written explicitly that apostasy is not allowed and must be punished with death.  I have reflected on this attitude.  It is also recurring in commerce:  you can get into Skype, Facebook etc. but you cannot get  out.  It seems that there are parallels here.

States treat traitors with the death penalty too, but at least there is a crime committed in that case.  Still, it is difficult to say "I don't want to be in your nation, I want to be in a different one". Soviet Russia and today Korea don't allow citizens to leave.

By the way, the death penalty on apostasy is also in the Torah and in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy)

If you look at anthropology I'm pretty certain you will find that most tribes did/do not allow leaving the tribe, and if you do they have the right to kill you.  It seems to be built-in to our genes.]]

Interesting how many parallels there are. And the anthropological angle too. I find anthropology fascinating - I'm always observing the way people behave and express their culture, its so interesting to me... figuring out the general, stereotypical similarities in a people, and then seeing how those stereotypes are broken. Also, the gradual fade of one culture into a neighboring one - cultures don't just stop at some imaginary border and appear completely different on the other side. I like to see the blend between peoples.

[[Once Christians had "won" and taken over the Roman Empire (and replaced it with the Catholic Church, modelling nearly all of  its institutions on the Roman ones) they too began to be intolerant to apostasy.]]

There's another interesting 'blend' - the Roman pagan beliefs and how they worked their way into Christianity and out came Catholicism. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school and everything. I remember questioning the rituals and beliefs a lot. One thing that stood out was the whole "idols" thing, our church was a big circular room and all around the perimeter were white stone, Roman-looking statues of the saints. And on Mary's feast day they brought out a big statue of her and put it on the alter and all the kids would bring flowers to the statue as an offering. Very, very odd.

[[I think the best thing to do with the extremists is simply to ignore them.  Or at least as much as possible to ignore them. How can a religion be termed tolerant when it does not allow apostasy?]]

I agree, unfortunately the media loves bad, crazy, violent news and that won't end. "Good news is bad and bad news is good" is pretty much the slogan of mainstream media. So those extremists' crazy actions and messages always get picked up by the media because they say and do 'shocking' things that make people want to read the article.

I don't understand the whole death for apostates rule... especially when it's in a religion that professes to encourage free will and the "no compulsion" thing. It goes against those basic tenets. I have a feeling that you were right about tribal society not allowing members to leave or killing them if they tried, and that it is the tribal influence on some religions - especially the Abrahamic ones - that has infiltrated religion and created that rule.

[[And here we come back to my preferred phrase:  "change your mind in the face of evidence".  Scientists are not liked because they do exactly that:  they are very secure about what they do, but they always are in doubt.  Most people cannot cope with that, they need certainty.]]

I've been thinking about that idea a lot lately - people needing certainty. Its the only reason I can come up with for why people do what they do, think how they think, and don't question any of it. Are they drones? Pod people? What's going on? The only reasons they wouldn't question is because of laziness, lack of awareness/intelligence or fear. I'm guessing its the 'fear' part that is the strongest. So, people become conditioned to live and think in the way society or whatever circumstances they're in influences them to be... and after a while they don't even question it. Its comfortable and easy that way.

[[I tend to agree that any religious group that does not study the books by the letter is better than those who do.  What is necessary then, is that all those "holy books" are taken for what they are: just attempts at setting up a workable code for living in a society, with some practical and psychological guidelines, and that all that
is in those books is open for interpretation and change.  Without making any pro-Catholic statement, I think that the Vatican has somehow realised that and allows much of it.  Except of course that they too have kept some hard limits: no women in priesthood, celibacy, no abortion, no birth control, ...At least they did apologise for Galileo, and they do admit the Earth is round and more than 6000 years old.]]

I agree, religion is a guidebook for living successfully with other people and developing an inner peace/spiritualtiy/connection to life/the world/the creator. Regardless of whether or not their is a higher power, most religions have good, practical advice for living in general. I wish people would realize the 'intention' of religion as that - then they might express their religiosity in a more positive, friendly way. Not an excuse for hate, killing, war, violence... The whole world seems backwards and upside down.

On the Catholic church, they are a little late with those apologies, but at least they admit that as the world, people, society changes some rules have to change as well. That's something that's absolutely forbidden in Islam - there should be NO innovation whatsoever. I think that idea was a reaction to Christianity - which from a Muslim perspective was corrupted when the Christians started worshipping Jesus as a God ("made it up" because he never said "I am GOD, worship me" He actually said the opposite, and behaved opposite - never subjugating people to himself that I know of). The other obvious innovation in Christianity was the pagan influence on the religion as it became 'official'.

So I think the intention of the rule in Islam of "no innovation" was to keep the main ideas of the religion the same, unchanging - but you can still change HOW you do things with the times while keeping the original intention. So I think that was an over-reaction and has already caused lots of problems within the Muslim community... living in 500/600AD until the end of the world doesn't seem realistic.

[[Did you actually read the text of the Koran?]]

I haven't read the entire Quran, have you?  That's another thing I think Muslims are a little too gung-ho about is claiming that the text is the "original words of God and haven't been changed or interpreted by man in any way". That's naive, and very problematic. Each word becomes law because of that - with no interpretation or acknowledgement that there might be 'metaphors' or whatever. It's really annoying to me, and frankly ignorant.

Other than that, the text of the Quran that I have read is quite interesting. The surah of the Cave is one of my favorites. A lot of depth in that one. The other thing I appreciate about text is that no matter how strong or strict the punishments, its always followed by mercy. There's almost no sin that cannot be forgiven if a person repents, changes his/her behavior. (Besides apostating? haha)

That's something I like about it. It ties in with experiences I've had and lessons I've learned in life as well. Growing up, making mistakes, doing stupid things, and how to deal with myself afterwards. Is there any point to constantly berating yourself for past mistakes? I don't think so, as soon as you have realised your mistake and changed behavior accordingly, its time to move on - forgiven. So I like that idea in the Quran as well.

[[If they really studied and understood, they would not be religious. Being religious is opposite almost to being inquisitive.]]

It's really puzzling to me that there seems to be no 'in between' when it comes to religion. The world (religion, society, religious people, atheists, etc..) says you either are religious or you're not. If you are religious, you have to believe in that religion with 100% faith, you have to accept EVERYTHING it says or else you are 'disagreeing with God' and therefore are outside of the religion. Then theres the phrase about "a-la carte religious" - picking and chosing what you want and are inspired by from a religion - and that's looked DOWN upon. Using your brain and awareness to be critical of something that even if it is from God, has inevitably been corrupted by humans. I think the whole blindly religious, non-questioning "because thats blasphemy" idea has ruined world spirituality.

You should be able to look at a religion as a practical code for life and living and getting along with people, philosophical even, and take what you want from it. Why not? It shouldn't have to be black and white... which is another naive, ignorant way of viewing things - its either "this" or "that", it "is" or it "isn't". In reality, most things are in the grey area - things/life/religion/spirituality are complicated, multi-layered... in some ways it "is" and in other ways it "isn't". No one is willing to compromise.

[[It is very difficult for the average person.  Thinking is too difficult.  And I am the first to agree that one does need a set of rules to go by, because it's just too time-consuming to examine each action beforehand. I get up in the morning and make my bowl of muesli and a cup of coffee.  I've been doing it for  30 years now.  I can't
afford to think about it each day.  Yet sometimes I do sit down and think about my habits to see if they are still adapted to the circumstances.  I have also said to our children (well, young ladies) that I am a man of habits: I have many and change them all the time.I know a number of people who do their jobs well, but in fact have no
clue at all about what it is they do or where it fits in a bigger picture.  They have been taught sequences of motions and perhaps a small vocabulary, and they just repeat that every day.  As soon as a problem crops up they are totally helpless. I think you must have observed such people too.  They also need some form of religion or at least a set of simple rules in order to live within society.]]

I agree 100% with everything you said there. "Pod people" are everywhere. Its really scary actually!

[[We are on a path, dynamic and changeable.  That's the only thing that gives me some hope that we will survive: that we do have the possibility to change.]]

Its always nice to end on a positive note : )

But the truth is most people don't change until they have to, until it gets more uncomfortable for them to stay the same than it would be to change. I think, global climate-ly speking, that time is approaching fast. Let's hope the world can learn how to compromise and cooperate before then.

Renee

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 3:53 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

>That's INSANE. I really hate the idea of not allowing free speech,
>free thought. One of the main ideas in Islam is that there is no
>compulsion in religion - it's written in the Quran.

But it is also written explicitly that apostasy is not allowed and
must be punished with death.  I have reflected on this attitude.  It
is also recurring in commerce:  you can get into Skype, Facebook etc.
but you cannot get out.  It seems that there are parallels here.
States treat traitors with the death penalty too, but at least there
is a crime committed in that case.  Still, it is difficult to say "I
don't want to be in your nation, I want to be in a different one".
Soviet Russia and today Korea don't allow citizens to leave.

By the way, the death penalty on apostasy is also in the Torah and in
the Old Testament (Deuteronomy)

If you look at anthropology I'm pretty certain you will find that
most tribes did/do not allow leaving the tribe, and if you do they
have the right to kill you.  It seems to be built-in to our genes.

>But somehow, there is a loop-hole for Muslims who either speak out
>against the religion in any way or who decide to leave the religion.
>I was talking to someone the other day who said that anyone who
>leaves the religion should be put to death - this guy said it with a
>straight face. He didn't even think on a human level, no empathy. It
>was just a "rule" that had to be followed because it "came from
>God". Then I looked it up and there are some scholars who agree with
>that and some who don't. It doesn't make sense to me, and since
>there are at least 4 main schools of Islamic (legal) thought in the
>religion, there will always be some who are leniant and some who are
>the complete opposite.

Perhaps.  Once Christians had "won" and taken over the Roman Empire
(and replaced it with the Catholic Church, modelling nearly all of
its institutions on the Roman ones) they too began to be intolerant
to apostasy.

>It always seems to be the crazies that get their ideas and names out
>there in the media.

Exactly. I think the best thing to do with the extremists is simply
to ignore them.  Or at least as much as possible to ignore them.
How can a religion be termed tolerant when it does not allow apostasy?

>It seems to me that if a religion and its followers were really
>secure in their beliefs they wouldn't freak out every time someone
>challenged them.

And here we come back to my preferred phrase:  "change your mind in
the face of evidence".  Scientists are not liked because they do
exactly that:  they are very secure about what they do, but they
always are in doubt.  Most people cannot cope with that, they need
certainty.

>  But somehow, this kind of thing keeps happening... I really wish
>there was more of a voice from the every-day Muslims in the world.

It would help.  I wish it were so.  And also that over time there
would not be again a separation into sects, some of which would
become like Evangelicals.

>...The US has an interesting Muslim community ... And I believe the
>most representative of the true spirit of the religion.

I tend to agree that any religious group that does not study the
books by the letter is better than those who do.  What is necessary
then, is that all those "holy books" are taken for what they are:
just attempts at setting up a workable code for living in a society,
with some practical and psychological guidelines, and that all that
is in those books is open for interpretation and change.  Without
making any pro-Catholic statement, I think that the Vatican has
somehow realised that and allows much of it.  Except of course that
they too have kept some hard limits: no women in priesthood,
celibacy, no abortion, no birth control, ...
At least they did apologise for Galileo, and they do admit the Earth
is round and more than 6000 years old.

>It's too bad that the Muslim community is so fractured and isolated
>globally because they have developed their own style of practicing
>and enforcing on others that actually has no basis in the religion -
>and goes against big themes - like the "no compulsion in religion"
>thing.

Did you actually read the text of the Koran?

>It also seems to be a general theme among religious types - being
>violent or threatening towards those who don't agree or challenge
>their beliefs. If they really knew and understood what they believed
>why would they be threatened?

If they really studied and understood, they would not be religious.
Being religious is opposite almost to being inquisitive.

>... can't be bothered with inspecting and logically examining that
>paradigm to see if there's anything missing, wrong, etc...

It is very difficult for the average person.  Thinking is too
difficult.  And I am the first to agree that one does need a set of
rules to go by, because it's just too time-consuming to examine each
action beforehand. I get up in the morning and make my bowl of muesli
and a cup of coffee.  I've been doing it for  30 years now.  I can't
afford to think about it each day.  Yet sometimes I do sit down and
think about my habits to see if they are still adapted to the
circumstances.  I have also said to our children (well, young ladies)
that I am a man of habits: I have many and change them all the time.

I know a number of people who do their jobs well, but in fact have no
clue at all about what it is they do or where it fits in a bigger
picture.  They have been taught sequences of motions and perhaps a
small vocabulary, and they just repeat that every day.  As soon as a
problem crops up they are totally helpless. I think you must have
observed such people too.  They also need some form of religion or at
least a set of simple rules in order to live within society.

>I think that religion is a personal, spiritual thing and that if
>someone wants to believe something, its better if they just keep it
>to themselves. What good can it do to show off or try to force other
>people to believe the same as them?

True, but it still affects me.
Maybe I did or did not give this example, forgive me if I repeat myself.
Some time ago when I flew out of Geneva to Dubai I had to state my
preferences for on-board dinner.  I had a choice of vegetarian,
vegan, ..., kosher and "other".  So I stated "non-halal, non-kosher,
no live animals".  I am definitely against undue harm to animals, so
I will not eat meat from force-fed animals (foie-gras), live animals
(oysters, monkey brains), and animals slaughtered while conscious.
(we can discuss ritual slaughter and Chinese cuisine another time).
However, the girl at the check-in desk told me all meat was halal, so
as to provide me with the best service and experience.  So I had to
eat fish.  I love fish, so it was not a big deal, but I was being
discriminated against. If a practicing Jew flew a European or US
airline that refused to serve kosher, there woudl be an outcry.

>Religion in the public sphere has usually lead to violence and death

Correct.

>  - and never just focuses on what brings us all together like the
>religion professes to be about. I don't think religion itself is so
>flawed, but humans are... very flawed.

We are on a path, dynamic and changeable.  That's the only thing that
gives me some hope that we will survive: that we do have the
possibility to change.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Diverse problems
Hi Renée:

Interesting how many parallels there are.
And the anthropological angle too. I find anthropology fascinating -
I'm always observing the way people behave and express their culture,
its so interesting to me...

And the definition of culture. To many it includes religion
and politics (together perhaps better called "ideologies").
Including those two has been insisted upon by dictatorial regimes
especially. Then we have to "respect" them. But
they use the lever of cuture to worm in manipulation.
To me, the culture of a people means their cuisine, music,
literature, other arts, sports, architecture, dress. But it does
not include their belief set or political system. Because if you
allow those in, you allow in repression.
i would argue that even the list I gave is quite dependent on
geography.
For example, suppose there is a food that is a really important
part of a people's cuisine, but that grows only in a certain area.
You can't expect immigrants to have access when they are far away from
it. Or, worse, expect the receiving country to subsidise
transport or special growing of those foods.
And even worse, suppose the plant or animal is a pest in the new
country, like rabbits were when they were taken to Australia.
There are many other examples of geography-bound pieces of
"culture". I remember being struck by a scene in a
film (a long time ago, can't remember anything else than that scene)
in which a young woman inherits an estate far away from her native
country. She goes there, and finds the place guarded by an old
woman, and everything shuttered. She opens all the shutters,
against the protests of the woman, "to let light in".
The problem is that she is from the north, but the house is in a very
hot climate where one shoudl keep the shutters closed during the day
to keep the house cool. Conflict of "cultures", on a
very minor scale, but even so. The old woman just followed
custom, she could not explain why, the young one followed her custom,
also without thinking.

figuring out the general,
stereotypical similarities in a people, and then seeing how those
stereotypes are broken. Also, the gradual fade of one culture into a
neighboring one - cultures don't just stop at some imaginary border
and appear completely different on the other side. I like to see the
blend between peoples.

True, and you lend support to the geogrphy hypothesis.

There's another interesting 'blend' - the
Roman pagan beliefs and how they worked their way into Christianity
and out came Catholicism.

The interesting word here is "pagan", as if those
beliefs were any worse than those of the Christians. Pagan is
like peasant and other words with a slightly negative connotation, but
they have to be used because there is no neutral word.
Homosexuals sometimes say they are gay or homosexual, but
heterosexuals never declare their heterosexuality. Hmm...
interesting, I bet there are a lot of other such minority
designations. An obvious one is "black", which at
least is more neutral than "negro" (which of course also
means black).

I was raised Catholic, went to
Catholic school and everything.

So did I.

I remember questioning the rituals
and beliefs a lot. One thing that stood out was the whole "idols"
thing, our church was a big circular room and all around the perimeter
were white stone, Roman-looking statues of the saints. And on Mary's
feast day they brought out a big statue of her and put it on the alter
and all the kids would bring flowers to the statue as an offering.
Very, very odd.

If you think about it, it's very odd indeed. It is a form
of entertainment and relaxation as well. And I'm pretty certain
that Christ did spend some time in India where he picked up Buddhism.
Too many parallels.

I agree, unfortunately the media loves
bad, crazy, violent news and that won't end. "Good news is bad
and bad news is good" is pretty much the slogan of mainstream
media.

:) That is a very nice and simple summing up, I like it!

I don't understand the whole death for
apostates rule... especially when it's in a religion that professes to
encourage free will and the "no compulsion" thing. It goes
against those basic tenets.

Somewhere I read something about intelligence being the ability
to live with multiple conflicting ideas in your head. I found it
an interesting idea. Perhaps true, because in order to make any
progress in understanding you must indeed look at those conflicts to
find out how they interact and which one is possibly false and which
one possibly true. But you must first hold both.

I have a feeling that you were
right about tribal society not allowing members to leave or killing
them if they tried, and that it is the tribal influence on some
religions - especially the Abrahamic ones - that has infiltrated
religion and created that rule.

Yes. Very likely. Talking of Abraham, can you seen
anyone today attempting to kill his son pretending God ordered him
to? I think in most countries he would immediately be carried
off to a psychiatric hospital.

I've been thinking about that idea a lot
lately - people needing certainty. Its the only reason I can come up
with for why people do what they do, think how they think, and don't
question any of it. Are they drones?

Drones? So you did see Star Trek. ;)

Pod people? What's going on? The
only reasons they wouldn't question is because of laziness, lack of
awareness/intelligence or fear. 

Or, as a physicist would say, a linear superposition of all of
those.

I'm guessing its the 'fear' part that is
the strongest. So, people become conditioned to live and think in the
way society or whatever circumstances they're in influences them to
be... and after a while they don't even question it. Its comfortable
and easy that way.

It is also a very strong survival item. In a dangerous
situation it is important to do the right thing immediately.
Rephrasing that: take those actions that are the most likely to let
you survive. After a few millions of years, those animals
survived whose genes told them to do just that. The others
died. The current hypothesis is that human behaviour was
selected to suppress reasoning and make a "standard manoeuver"
in dangerous circumstances, be that fleeing or agressing or whatever.
And so you are right: fear is probably the strongest. Then,
since we live in packs (tribes), it is also likely that those tribes
with a strong leader who is unconditionally obeyed had better chances
of survival. Let me rephrase that again, because I used
unwarranted anthropomorphism there: individuals who by
instinct joined into groups and who by instinct accepted the
leadership of a strong (male) leader, had (individually!) more chance
to survive.
No, wrong again: those who didn't had a greater probability
to die and NOT pass on their genes. Evolution is a negative
thing, it weeds out bad stuff, it does NOT foster good stuff, though
the latter way is our preferred human way of looking at it.

So, most of us have it in their genes not to think but to follow
simple principles. When I was 16 I was in a high-school debate
group (which we had formed ourselves) and I had long discussions with
a friend hwo argued that always consciously thinking about your
actions stood in the way more than it helped. I still have
difficulty accepting that, but there is certainly truth in it:
when you are driving a car, if you had to think all the time about the
traffic rules and what you were doing, you would probably cause
accidents instead of getting where you wanted to be.

I agree, religion is a guidebook for
living successfully with other people and developing an inner
peace/spiritualtiy/connection to life/the world/the creator.
Regardless of whether or not their is a higher power, most religions
have good, practical advice for living in general.

Unfortunately, in some cases that advice (1)has been take to be a
strict order, and (2) has been superceded by technologies.

I wish people would realize the
'intention' of religion as that - then they might express their
religiosity in a more positive, friendly way. Not an excuse for hate,
killing, war, violence... The whole world seems backwards and upside
down.

Yet I also see some glimmers of hope. But yes, it's not going
well, and it goes worse when material conditions are bad.

On the Catholic church, they are a little
late with those apologies, but at least they admit that as the world,
people, society changes some rules have to change as
well.

Let me try this on you to see what you think: society
changes only because of technology. [Robert's 1st Law?
;-)]
No new technologies, no change.
Find me a counterexample.

That's something that's absolutely
forbidden in Islam - there should be NO innovation whatsoever. I think
that idea was a reaction to Christianity ... The other obvious
innovation in Christianity was the pagan influence on the religion as
it became 'official'.

And we were lucky that happened.
Interesting though that you say the rigidity is a reaction to the
evolutions seen in Christianity. So could Islam then be seen as
some sort of Evangelicalism "avant la lettre"? A sort
of very rigid protestantism also? It seems probable.

... caused lots of problems within
the Muslim community... living in 500/600AD until the end of the world
doesn't seem realistic.

Definitely. I always wonder how Muslims can live close to
or above the Polar Circle, because they cannot observe the rules for
darkness.

I haven't read the entire Quran, have
you? 

Yes. Extremely boring and repetitive.
I have a project that is certainly blasphemous to some: see
what remains if you eliminate all the repetitions. For example,
take the New Testament: it comes in four books (more, if you count the
apocryphal gospels), but they are almost the same four books.
Roughly speaking there is a redundancy of almost a factor 4.
One can reduce each sentence of a book to its fundamental
meaning, using some abstract notation. Then, the sentences

This guy did a lot of good works for his friends

and the sentence

There was a person living in a caring community, where he
undertook actions to help its members

would reduce to much the same mathematical expression, if not
identical.

I'm not saying I am capable of writing a program that could
translate text into such formulae, but you can be sure that Google
does, or attempts it. Computer translation is based on that.
So you take the holy books and pass them through such a program.
You get a list of formulae that capture the meaning, but are written
in a standardised form. Now you sort that list in some
way(*).
Then you throw out all duplicates. What is left? Not
much I think.

(*) notice that it is not important what you use to do the
sorting, after all an alphabetic sort is also arbitrary since the
sequence of the alphabet is arbitrary: there is no logical reason why
B follows A, or even why A needs to come first.

That's another thing I think
Muslims are a little too gung-ho about is claiming that the text is
the "original words of God and haven't been changed or
interpreted by man in any way". That's naive, and very
problematic. Each word becomes law because of that - with no
interpretation or acknowledgement that there might be 'metaphors' or
whatever. It's really annoying to me, and frankly
ignorant.

Ignorant of them I hope. :)
Yes, I have the same position on that. It is shocking.
Having met quite a few Muslims (but not as many as you) and sometimes
discussed the subject, I have found that the reaction is one of
non-commitment, i.e. I think most of them don't really believe it but
do not dare to say so openly. When I sense that I politely
change the subject.

... There's almost no sin that cannot be
forgiven if a person repents, changes his/her behavior. (Besides
apostating? haha)

And besides, perhaps, tricking people into financial
crises.

... Is there any point to constantly
berating yourself for past mistakes? 

No, as you say: if you realise and change or at least work on
changing. Catholicism introduced the confession rite for that,
and I know of no sin that is unforgiveable. Plus that the
punishment is limited to some prayers in most cases.

It's really puzzling to me that there
seems to be no 'in between' when it comes to religion. The world
(religion, society, religious people, atheists, etc..) says you either
are religious or you're not. If you are religious, you have to believe
in that religion with 100% faith, you have to accept EVERYTHING it
says or else you are 'disagreeing with God' and therefore are outside
of the religion.

Yup. Just like Facebook. Try to disagree with
them.
I would propose the term "ideologists", because it is
much the same for communists and capitalists (in their extremes
anyway)

... I think the whole blindly religious,
non-questioning "because thats blasphemy" idea has ruined
world spirituality.

Agreed. Some years ago the Dalai Lama visited CERN.
Someone asked if he would change his views if some scientific
experiment contradicted his beliefs. He answered yes, saying
that he would never go against manifest and reproducible evidence.
No wonder that most scientists who do practice some rituals are
buddhists.

You should be able to look at a religion
as a practical code for life and living and getting along with people,
philosophical even, and take what you want from it.

Obviously. It may be a practical, simple way to give a
framework to people who are not intellectually strong enough to face
the complexities of reality. And I would say that is about half
the population.

Personally I derive my views from studying reality ("doing
science" is an expression I want to avoid, because it is too
theoretical).

Why not? It shouldn't have to be
black and white...

Indeed. Let's note however that coming to grips with
quantum mechanics was difficult for most scientists, because it showed
that determinism is not true. Even Einstein had great trouble with it
and tried to re-introduce determinism until the end. Feynman did
not have that problem and went perhaps to the other extreme, although
his methods of doing the calculations are still much in use.
(did you ever read "Surely you're joking Mr.
Feynman!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You're_Joking,_Mr._Feynman!
Quite entertaining, especially the chapters on his stay in Los
Alamos.
A very strange character. I never met him, but he did
lecture at CERN.

[[It is very difficult for the average
person. Thinking is too difficult....]]

I agree 100% with everything you said
there. "Pod people" are everywhere. Its really scary
actually!

If they are managed within a reasonable framework it's OK.
If they are exploited by power-hungry manipulators it is
frightening.

... we do have the possibility to
change.]]

Its always nice to end on a positive note : )

Star Trek.
Here is a quote from one of the captains of the USS
Enterprise:
"villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those
who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged. "

But the truth is most people don't change
until they have to, until it gets more uncomfortable for them to stay
the same than it would be to change. I think, global climate-ly
speking, that time is approaching fast. Let's hope the world can learn
how to compromise and cooperate before then.

Yes. First the Greek crisis, then lock up the financial
manipulators, then ...
:)

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2012 18:51:04 +0300
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

Hi,

How's everything going? I'm back in Washington state for a bit while Al Jazeera renews my contract. So I have been jetlagged and totally out of it since I got back, now starting to come out of the fog! My hometown is a small town in southeast Washington - most famous for its nuclear reactor - ever heard of the Manhattan Project? Yep, thats why my grandparents came out here. We have an unusually high density of PhD's here because they are still trying to figure out how to clean up the nuclear waste and store it safely. The last effort I heard about was vitrification - don't know if it worked or if they've even finished developing or testing it. Anyways, one of our highschools here has a mascot of a B52 bomber and a mushroom cloud - the "Richland Bombers!" Believe it or not...

[[ I remember being struck b ya scene in a film (a long time ago, can't remember anything else than that scene) in which a young woman inherits an estate far away from
her native country.  She goes there, and finds the place guarded by an old woman, and everything shuttered.  She opens all the shutters, against the protests of the woman, "to let light in".
The problem is that she is from the north, but the house is in a very hot climate where one shoudl keep the shutters closed during the day to keep the house cool.  Conflict of "cultures", on
a very minor scale, but even so.  The old woman just followed custom, she could not explain why, the young one followed her custom, also without thinking.]]

Its funny how many things we do we dont think about the intention of WHY we are doing them, they've become cultural habits/norms - and sometimes the point of has already expired - or are specific to a certain place or climate as in your example.

>There's another interesting 'blend' - the Roman pagan beliefs and how they worked their way into Christianity and out came Catholicism.

[[The interesting word here is "pagan", as if those beliefs were any worse than those of the Christians.  Pagan is like peasant and other words with a slightly negative connotation, but
they have to be used because there is no neutral word.  Homosexuals sometimes say they are gay or homosexual, but heterosexuals never declare their heterosexuality.  Hmm... interesting, I bet there
are a lot of other such minority designations. An obvious one is "black", which at least is more neutral than "negro" (which of course also means black).]]

Good point, so what is a neutral term for pre-Abrahamic beliefs? Pre-Abrahamic beliefs? Polytheistic, Animist....

 [[If you think about it, it's very odd indeed.  It is a form of entertainment and relaxation as well.  And I'm pretty certain that Christ did spend some time in India where he picked up
Buddhism.  Too many parallels.]]

Ive heard theories about Jesus having travelled to India, about Jesus being an incarnation of the Buddha, etc... Jesus was like the "hippy prophet" he was a much needed break from the fire and brimstone approach. Advocating loving of enemies, turning the cheek, etc... Definitely couldn't have come out of the Middle East hahaha

[[Somewhere I read something about intelligence being the ability to live with multiple conflicting ideas in your head.  I found it an interesting idea.  Perhaps true, because in order
to make any progress in understanding you must indeed look at those conflicts to find out how they interact and which one is possibly false and which one possibly true.  But you must first hold
both.]]

I find this summation very interesting because Ive been discussing this subject with a lot of different people - What is intelligence? Its not people who do homework well or memorize enough information to score well on a test. That's all stuff a machine could do. So from there... we came up with ideas like the ability to question what your told, think critically about information received, common sense, ability to observe and interpret other people's words actions and underlying intentions... its a big question I think

[[ Talking of Abraham, can you seen anyone today attempting to kill his son pretending God ordered him to?  I think in most countries he would immediately be carried off to
a psychiatric hospital.]]

Thats the kind of story that makes me think, either people living in that age were EXTREMELY different than us orrrr... these are metaphors!

>I've been thinking about that idea a lot lately  people needing certainty. Its the only reason
>I can come up with for why people do what they do, think how they think, and don't question any
>of it. Are they drones?

[[Drones? So you did see Star Trek.  ;)]]

Downloading the original series now. Thats the one you said to start with right?

[[It is also a very strong survival item.... individuals who by instinct joined into groups and who by instinct accepted the leadership of a strong (male) leader, had (individually!) more
chance to survive. No, wrong again:  those who didn't had a greater probability to die and NOT pass on their genes. Evolution is a negative thing, it weeds out bad stuff, it does NOT foster good stuff, though the latter way is our preferred human way of looking at it. So, most of us have it in their genes not to think but to follow simple principles.  When I was 16 I was in a high-school debate group (which
we had formed ourselves) and I had long discussions with a friend hwo argued that always consciously thinking about your actions stood in the way more than it helped.  I still have
difficulty accepting that, but there is certainly truth in it:  when you are driving a car, if you had to think all the time about the traffic rules and what you were doing, you would probably cause
accidents instead of getting where you wanted to be.]]

Thats true, nothing is black and white - even though its easier to set things out and understand them that way. There are circumstances where you can trust your habitual behavior to take over in most cases, like traffic rules. An interesting side note: Which do you think is safer? Jay-walking across a busy street (not on the pedestrian cross-walk) or waiting at the cross walk for the "green" symbol that you can go? More people actually get hit by cars crossing at a cross walk than jay walking. Why? Because at a cross walk, your habits take over and when you see the green guy walking you walk. You don't look, it says go so you go because 99% of the time its safe for you to walk because cars will respect their red light and not hit you. But, when jaywalking, you are taking responsibility for your own life, no one is watching out for you, so you look both ways and keep your eyes on what nearby cars are doing.

[[Unfortunately, in some cases that advice (1)has been take to be a strict order, and (2) has been superceded by technologies.]]

Whats an example of religious advice being superceded by technologies?

[[Let me try this on you to see what you think: society changes only because of technology.
[Robert's 1st Law? ;-)] No new technologies, no change. Find me a counterexample.]]

What about religion? Religion changes societies without new technology... Islam changed a lot of how Arab tribal society worked. Introduced a lot of reforms (which are admittedly now outdated, like women having the right to own property and divorce, not allowed to kill female babies if you don't want them, rules of engagement, etc...) What about communism in the Soviet Union? Didn't that change society?

[[And we were lucky that happened. Interesting though that you say the rigidity is a reaction to the evolutions seen in Christianity. So could Islam then be seen as some sort of
Evangelicalism "avant la lettre"?  A sort of very rigid protestantism also?  It seems probable.]]

Yes according to Islam, Judaism was the first message from God in the Holy land (there were other messengers all over the world, but their messages were "corrupted"). Then after thousands of years Judaism was finally corrupted, the message got changed by people, practices changed and were no longer valid. So Christianity was a message of correction to Judaism. Reminding the people of the intention of the message. Then according to Islam, Christianity was also corrupted after a few hundred years, people added and deleted from the message as they saw fit, so God had to send a final messenger to correct the message for the last time - Mohammed. Its all the same religion, literally, its just older versions were corrupted and had to be corrected.

[[Definitely.  I always wonder how Muslims can live close to or above the Polar Circle, because they cannot observe the rules for darkness.]]

I asked about that too, Muslims go by the same times as Mecca when there is no sun.

>I haven't read the entire Quran, have you?

[[Yes.  Extremely boring and repetitive. I have a project that is certainly blasphemous to some:  see what remains if you eliminate all the repetitions....]]

I had an idea of doing something similar to that years ago. But my intention was not to show that when you get rid of the repetitions theres hardly anything left, but to get rid of the repetitions, boil down to the intention of the message and compare all major world religions to show they are all saying the same damn thing. I see religion like a language - humans are all different, we have different cultures, religions, languages, we are all expressing the same basic emotions and thoughts and intentions in different ways. Language is one of the most obvious metaphors. You say Ciao, I say Hello. Saying the same thing in a different way. I think that religion is the same thing, religious people all want to worship the one who created them and live successfully with other people - help other people, be good people. According to what culture they are, they have different paths to achieve those goals - different books that speak to their cultural, historical backgrounds in a way they understand. I met a priest once who admitted Christianity may not be "THE ONE TRUE RELIGION" but he followed it with the clear understanding that it was the religion he was raised in and taught about since childhood so he had a better chance at understanding it fully than any other foreign religion.

[[Agreed.  Some years ago the Dalai Lama visited CERN.  Someone asked if he would change his views if some scientific experiment contradicted his beliefs.  He answered yes, saying that he would
never go against manifest and reproducible evidence.  No wonder that most scientists who do practice some rituals are buddhists.]]

Thats cool, I think the Dalai Lama is a very good guy... and you can tell by what he says about religion and spirituality that his intention is good - he really just wants to connect with the spiritual reality and live in peace with others. He visited my college when I was there and I got to go see him speak. Not many people have an actual aura of positivity around them to the extent that he does. He seemed so happy and peaceful and uncorrupted. It could be an exaggeration but that's what I got from him. I also liked when someone asked him about how to make the world a better place, what to do, what to focus on... He immediately said that you have to start from within. If everyone was at peace with themselves there wouldn't be as much violence and anger in the world. I thought that was profound at a time when I was trying to figure out "what difference I could make in the world" after graduation. The thing is, I am a part of the world, so if I make myself better I have made a positive change in the world.

[[Indeed.  Let's note however that coming to grips with quantum mechanics was difficult for most scientists, because it showed that determinism is not true. Even Einstein had great trouble with it
and tried to re-introduce determinism until the rend.  Feynman did not have that problem and went perhaps to the other extreme, although his methods of doing the calculations are still much
in use. (did you ever read "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman!"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You're_Joking,_Mr._Feynman!
Quite entertaining, especially the chapters on his stay in Los Alamos.A very strange character.  I never met him, but he did lecture at CERN.]]

Will check that book out...

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 3:45 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

Hi Renée:

>Interesting how many parallels there are. And
>the anthropological angle too. I find
>anthropology fascinating - I'm always observing
>the way people behave and express their culture,
>its so interesting to me...

And the definition of culture.  To many it
includes religion and politics (together perhaps
better called "ideologies").  Including those two
has been insisted upon by dictatorial regimes
especially.  Then we have to "respect" them.  But
they use the lever of cuture to worm in
manipulation.
To me, the culture of a people means their
cuisine, music, literature, other arts, sports,
architecture, dress.  But it does not include
their belief set or political system.  Because if
you allow those in, you allow in repression.
i would argue that even the list I gave is quite dependent on geography.
For example, suppose there is a food that is a
really important part of a people's cuisine, but
that grows only in a certain area.  You can't
expect immigrants to have access when they are
far away from it.  Or, worse, expect the
receiving country to subsidise transport or
special growing of those foods.
And even worse, suppose the plant or animal is a
pest in the new country, like rabbits were when
they were taken to Australia.
There are many other examples of geography-bound
pieces of "culture".  I remember being struck by
a scene in a film (a long time ago, can't
remember anything else than that scene) in which
a young woman inherits an estate far away from
her native country.  She goes there, and finds
the place guarded by an old woman, and everything
shuttered.  She opens all the shutters, against
the protests of the woman, "to let light in".
The problem is that she is from the north, but
the house is in a very hot climate where one
shoudl keep the shutters closed during the day to
keep the house cool.  Conflict of "cultures", on
a very minor scale, but even so.  The old woman
just followed custom, she could not explain why,
the young one followed her custom, also without
thinking.

>  figuring out the general, stereotypical
>similarities in a people, and then seeing how
>those stereotypes are broken. Also, the gradual
>fade of one culture into a neighboring one -
>cultures don't just stop at some imaginary
>border and appear completely different on the
>other side. I like to see the blend between
>peoples.

True, and you lend support to the geogrphy hypothesis.

>There's another interesting 'blend' - the Roman
>pagan beliefs and how they worked their way into
>Christianity and out came Catholicism.

The interesting word here is "pagan", as if those
beliefs were any worse than those of the
Christians.  Pagan is like peasant and other
words with a slightly negative connotation, but
they have to be used because there is no neutral
word.  Homosexuals sometimes say they are gay or
homosexual, but heterosexuals never declare their
heterosexuality.  Hmm... interesting, I bet there
are a lot of other such minority designations.
An obvious one is "black", which at least is more
neutral than "negro" (which of course also means
black).

>  I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school and everything.

So did I.

>  I remember questioning the rituals and beliefs
>a lot. One thing that stood out was the whole
>"idols" thing, our church was a big circular
>room and all around the perimeter were white
>stone, Roman-looking statues of the saints. And
>on Mary's feast day they brought out a big
>statue of her and put it on the alter and all
>the kids would bring flowers to the statue as an
>offering. Very, very odd.

If you think about it, it's very odd indeed.  It
is a form of entertainment and relaxation as
well.  And I'm pretty certain that Christ did
spend some time in India where he picked up
Buddhism.  Too many parallels.

>I agree, unfortunately the media loves bad,
>crazy, violent news and that won't end. "Good
>news is bad and bad news is good" is pretty much
>the slogan of mainstream media.

:) That is a very nice and simple summing up, I like it!

>I don't understand the whole death for apostates
>rule... especially when it's in a religion that
>professes to encourage free will and the "no
>compulsion" thing. It goes against those basic
>tenets.

Somewhere I read something about intelligence
being the ability to live with multiple
conflicting ideas in your head.  I found it an
interesting idea.  Perhaps true, because in order
to make any progress in understanding you must
indeed look at those conflicts to find out how
they interact and which one is possibly false and
which one possibly true.  But you must first hold
both.

>  I have a feeling that you were right about
>tribal society not allowing members to leave or
>killing them if they tried, and that it is the
>tribal influence on some religions - especially
>the Abrahamic ones - that has infiltrated
>religion and created that rule.

Yes.  Very likely.  Talking of Abraham, can you
seen anyone today attempting to kill his son
pretending God ordered him to?  I think in most
countries he would immediately be carried off to
a psychiatric hospital.

>I've been thinking about that idea a lot lately
>- people needing certainty. Its the only reason
>I can come up with for why people do what they
>do, think how they think, and don't question any
>of it. Are they drones?

Drones? So you did see Star Trek.  ;)

>  Pod people? What's going on? The only reasons
>they wouldn't question is because of laziness,
>lack of awareness/intelligence or fear.

Or, as a physicist would say, a linear superposition of all of those.

>I'm guessing its the 'fear' part that is the
>strongest. So, people become conditioned to live
>and think in the way society or whatever
>circumstances they're in influences them to
>be... and after a while they don't even question
>it. Its comfortable and easy that way.

It is also a very strong survival item.  In a
dangerous situation it is important to do the
right thing immediately.  Rephrasing that: take
those actions that are the most likely to let you
survive.  After a few millions of years, those
animals survived whose genes told them to do just
that.  The others died.  The current hypothesis
is that human behaviour was selected to suppress
reasoning and make a "standard manoeuver" in
dangerous circumstances, be that fleeing or
agressing or whatever.  And so you are right:
fear is probably the strongest.  Then, since we
live in packs (tribes), it is also likely that
those tribes with a strong leader who is
unconditionally obeyed had better chances of
survival.  Let me rephrase that again, because I
used unwarranted  anthropomorphism there:
individuals who by instinct joined into groups
and who by instinct accepted the leadership of a
strong (male) leader, had (individually!) more
chance to survive.
No, wrong again:  those who didn't had a greater
probability to die and NOT pass on their genes.
Evolution is a negative thing, it weeds out bad
stuff, it does NOT foster good stuff, though the
latter way is our preferred human way of looking
at it.

So, most of us have it in their genes not to
think but to follow simple principles.  When I
was 16 I was in a high-school debate group (which
we had formed ourselves) and I had long
discussions with a friend hwo argued that always
consciously thinking about your actions stood in
the way more than it helped.  I still have
difficulty accepting that, but there is certainly
truth in it:  when you are driving a car, if you
had to think all the time about the traffic rules
and what you were doing, you would probably cause
accidents instead of getting where you wanted to
be.

>I agree, religion is a guidebook for living
>successfully with other people and developing an
>inner peace/spiritualtiy/connection to life/the
>world/the creator. Regardless of whether or not
>their is a higher power, most religions have
>good, practical advice for living in general.

Unfortunately, in some cases that advice (1)has
been take to be a strict order, and (2) has been
superceded by technologies.

>  I wish people would realize the 'intention' of
>religion as that - then they might express their
>religiosity in a more positive, friendly way.
>Not an excuse for hate, killing, war,
>violence... The whole world seems backwards and
>upside down.

Yet I also see some glimmers of hope.  But yes,
it's not going well, and it goes worse when
material conditions are bad.

>On the Catholic church, they are a little late
>with those apologies, but at least they admit
>that as the world, people, society changes some
>rules have to change as well.

Let me try this on you to see what you think:
society changes only because of technology.
[Robert's 1st Law? ;-)]
No new technologies, no change.
Find me a counterexample.

>  That's something that's absolutely forbidden in
>Islam - there should be NO innovation
>whatsoever. I think that idea was a reaction to
>Christianity ... The other obvious innovation in
>Christianity was the pagan influence on the
>religion as it became 'official'.

And we were lucky that happened.
Interesting though that you say the rigidity is a
reaction to the evolutions seen in Christianity.
So could Islam then be seen as some sort of
Evangelicalism "avant la lettre"?  A sort of very
rigid protestantism also?  It seems probable.

>...  caused lots of problems within the Muslim
>community... living in 500/600AD until the end
>of the world doesn't seem realistic.

Definitely.  I always wonder how Muslims can live
close to or above the Polar Circle, because they
cannot observe the rules for darkness.

>I haven't read the entire Quran, have you?

Yes.  Extremely boring and repetitive.
I have a project that is certainly blasphemous to
some:  see what remains if you eliminate all the
repetitions.  For example, take the New
Testament: it comes in four books (more, if you
count the apocryphal gospels), but they are
almost the same four books.  Roughly speaking
there is a redundancy of almost a factor 4.
One can reduce each sentence of a book to its
fundamental meaning, using some abstract
notation.  Then, the sentences

This guy did a lot of good works for his friends

and the sentence

There was a person living in a caring community,
where he undertook actions to help its members

would reduce to much the same mathematical expression, if not identical.

I'm not saying I am capable of writing a program
that could translate text into such formulae, but
you can be sure that Google does, or attempts it.
Computer translation is based on that.  So you
take the holy books and pass them through such a
program.  You get a list of formulae that capture
the meaning, but are written in a standardised
form.  Now you sort that list in some way(*).
Then you throw out all duplicates.  What is left?  Not much I think.

(*) notice that it is not important what you use
to do the sorting, after all an alphabetic sort
is also arbitrary since the sequence of the
alphabet is arbitrary: there is no logical reason
why B follows A, or even why A needs to come
first.

>  That's another thing I think Muslims are a
>little too gung-ho about is claiming that the
>text is the "original words of God and haven't
>been changed or interpreted by man in any way".
>That's naive, and very problematic. Each word
>becomes law because of that - with no
>interpretation or acknowledgement that there
>might be 'metaphors' or whatever. It's really
>annoying to me, and frankly ignorant.

Ignorant of them I hope. :)
Yes, I have the same position on that.  It is
shocking.  Having met quite a few Muslims (but
not as many as you) and sometimes discussed the
subject, I have found that the reaction is one of
non-commitment, i.e. I think most of them don't
really believe it but do not dare to say so
openly.  When I sense that I politely change the
subject.

>... There's almost no sin that cannot be
>forgiven if a person repents, changes his/her
>behavior. (Besides apostating? haha)

And besides, perhaps, tricking people into financial crises.

>... Is there any point to constantly berating yourself for past mistakes?

No, as you say: if you realise and change or at
least work on changing.  Catholicism introduced
the confession rite for that, and I know of no
sin that is unforgiveable.  Plus that the
punishment is limited to some prayers in most
cases.

>It's really puzzling to me that there seems to
>be no 'in between' when it comes to religion.
>The world (religion, society, religious people,
>atheists, etc..) says you either are religious
>or you're not. If you are religious, you have to
>believe in that religion with 100% faith, you
>have to accept EVERYTHING it says or else you
>are 'disagreeing with God' and therefore are
>outside of the religion.

Yup.  Just like Facebook.  Try to disagree with them.
I would propose the term "ideologists", because
it is much the same for communists and
capitalists (in their extremes anyway)

>... I think the whole blindly religious,
>non-questioning "because thats blasphemy" idea
>has ruined world spirituality.

Agreed.  Some years ago the Dalai Lama visited
CERN.  Someone asked if he would change his views
if some scientific experiment contradicted his
beliefs.  He answered yes, saying that he would
never go against manifest and reproducible
evidence.  No wonder that most scientists who do
practice some rituals are buddhists.

>You should be able to look at a religion as a
>practical code for life and living and getting
>along with people, philosophical even, and take
>what you want from it.

Obviously.  It may be a practical, simple way to
give a framework to people who are not
intellectually strong enough to face the
complexities of reality.  And I would say that is
about half the population.

Personally I derive my views from studying
reality ("doing science" is an expression I want
to avoid, because it is too theoretical).

>  Why not? It shouldn't have to be black and white...

Indeed.  Let's note however that coming to grips
with quantum mechanics was difficult for most
scientists, because it showed that determinism is
not true. Even Einstein had great trouble with it
and tried to re-introduce determinism until the
end.  Feynman did not have that problem and went
perhaps to the other extreme, although his
methods of doing the calculations are still much
in use.
(did you ever read "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You're_Joking,_Mr._Feynman!
Quite entertaining, especially the chapters on his stay in Los Alamos.
A very strange character.  I never met him, but he did lecture at CERN.

>[[It is very difficult for the average person.
>Thinking is too difficult....]]
>
>I agree 100% with everything you said there.
>"Pod people" are everywhere. Its really scary
>actually!

If they are managed within a reasonable framework
it's OK.  If they are exploited by power-hungry
manipulators it is frightening.

>... we do have the possibility to change.]]
>
>Its always nice to end on a positive note : )

Star Trek.
Here is a quote from one of the captains of the USS Enterprise:
"villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to
spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds
are well camouflaged. "

>But the truth is most people don't change until
>they have to, until it gets more uncomfortable
>for them to stay the same than it would be to
>change. I think, global climate-ly speking, that
>time is approaching fast. Let's hope the world
>can learn how to compromise and cooperate before
>then.

Yes.  First the Greek crisis, then lock up the financial manipulators, then ...
:)

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

Hi,

How's everything going?

Fine. I did get my pilot's medical renewed (had some
doubts, re heart but it was nothing serious) and have been out a few
times, once with my wife (finally). The weather has been
beautiful.

I'm back in Washington state for a
bit while Al Jazeera renews my contract. So I have been
jetlagged

Melatonin? 2x3mg at 20:00 hours od destination time.

My hometown is a small town in southeast
Washington - most famous for its nuclear reactor - ever heard of the
Manhattan Project?

Yes, but was that not in Chicago? I have visited Los Alamos lab of
course.

Yep, thats why my grandparents came
out here.

Giving away your age?

We have an unusually high density
of PhD's here because they are still trying to figure out how to clean
up the nuclear waste and store it safely.

It's easy, but it is not politically acceptable: put it in a deep
mine, e.g. Yucca mountain. It does work, but no-one wants to
believe it. Everyone is so afraid that they prefer a far riskier
solution: leave it out in the open air...

... a mascot of a B52 bomber and a
mushroom cloud - the "Richland Bombers!" Believe it or
not...

I do.

Good point, so what is a neutral term for
pre-Abrahamic beliefs? Pre-Abrahamic beliefs? Polytheistic,
Animist....

Maybe just "freethinking" ?
It took me quite a long time to realise that the "Free"
in "Brussels Free University" meant "not bound by
Christian ideologies". Just the fact that a word like
"freethinking" had to be used shows how much these Abrahamic
thoughts have been ingrained.

Ive heard theories about Jesus having
travelled to India, about Jesus being an incarnation of the Buddha,
etc... Jesus was like the "hippy prophet" he was a much
needed break from the fire and brimstone approach. Advocating loving
of enemies, turning the cheek, etc... Definitely couldn't have come
out of the Middle East hahaha

Funnily I thought of these things myself, unaided, a very long
time ago. Then discovered that others had too. Perhaps not
too surprising.

...What is intelligence? ... That's all
stuff a machine could do.

Watch out!! Voyager's doctor and the Enterprise's
Lieutenant-commander Data would disagree with you. It's all
stuff a machine can do right now.

So from there... we came up with
ideas like the ability to question what your told, think critically
about information received, common sense, ability to observe and
interpret other people's words actions and underlying intentions...
its a big question I think

But I'm pretty certain a machine can do all these other things as
well. I remember another thing from my discussions in a
debate-club when I was still at school. We were having this
argument about what computers could and could not do. It was
about the time of Eliza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA). My
conclusion was that attempts at artificial intelligence would
miserably fail as long as the computer (or robot or machine) did not
have enough sensory inputs nor ways of moving around. I.e.
to succeed there must be vision (interpretation of an image), and
motion (being able to approach something) and other ways to examine
the environment. Vision especially requires massive parallel
computing of the kind done by neural nets. We're getting there,
but we're still some way off. Then there must be a lot of
associative memory. That too is coming (yesterday, cleaning up
in the basement I found a large hard drive from about ten years ago:
1GB... The same volume would now hold 4000GB and it would cost
half the price). I also remember attemps at voice recognition.
They all failed, and people would say "we need faster and bigger
computers to do voice processing. But that is not at all the
problem: when I say "this book was read" I'm using
context to distinguish it from "this book was red".
Knowing when to use the past tense of "to read" and when to
use the colour will be based on other knowledge. If you dictate
that phrase to a computer, it almost has to spend time with you for a
while so it can know which situation you were talking about. Humans
are no better: it takes a new recruit a long time to adapt to the
working environment, and even the best ones need to slowly "move
up the ladder" because they need to absorb all that information
that we do not look upon as information. Humans make so many
errors all the time because of lack of context, but when a machine
does, they just snicker at its behaviour. Just think of
"culture shock" which happens when you are in an unfamiliar
environment, yet it is a human environment. In the web
conference committee we once had a very large misunderstanding with
dire consequences: it was agreed to "table the motion"
and go for a coffee break. During the break two camps formed:
the Americans on one side and the rest of us on the other side.
We did not understand why there was this growing mistrust over
coffee. It turned out that the Americans understood the motion
had been turned down, whereas we thought it had been accepted for
discussion. Talk about voice recognition! Each side would
have written down the words correctly, yet they derived opposite
conclusions. Machines could not do that? I would bet that
machines would actually know that there were two opposite
interpretations and probably, noting there were non-Americans in the
room, warn about a possible misunderstanding before the coffee
break.

Over history we have always thought our place in the universe was
central, and we have been proved wrong over and over again.
First the land was in the centre (the Chinese still talk of the Middle
Empire, but other countries also always made maps with them in the
middle and even today world maps have Europe on top and in the
centre), then Earth was the centre and people were burned at the stake
for thinking otherwise. Then the Sun was. Now we know that we
are near an average star, somewhere in a corner of an arm of the
Galaxy etc. But the ideology of putting humans at the centre
then took up a stand in a different realm: we were the pinnacle of
creation, then of evolution. It turns out we are not, but now we
are intelligent, and conciousness is uniquely human. I bet it
will turn out we are not very intelligent (we can't get our brains
around quantum mechanics) and not very conscious either.

Thats the kind of story that makes me
think, either people living in that age were EXTREMELY different than
us orrrr... these are metaphors!

Or maybe a linear superposition of both: they had much less
time to think, needed a book of simple rules to be efficient, and made
up these stories by embellishing or exaggerating example cases.
I have annexed an article by David Eagleman. Maybe you should
interview him once!
BTW: your interview with me has already been mentioned often and
even as the reason for an invitation to talk at a conference!

[[Drones? So you did see Star Trek.
;)]]
Downloading the original series now. Thats the one you said to start
with right?

Yes. I think the best ones are later, but the original sets
the tone, even though the acting and plots are somewhat dated
now.

... Which do you think is safer?
Jay-walking across a busy street (not on the pedestrian cross-walk) or
waiting at the cross walk for the "green" symbol that you
can go?

We were given a variant of that example at a traffic course:
long straight roads have more accidents than curvy ones with little
visibility, because people pay more attention. True.

Whats an example of religious advice
being superceded by technologies?

Ritual slaughter and not eating pork or seafood: in the
first case the reason was to ensure the animal was alive and healty at
the moment of slaughter (but we now have means to prevent the pain
without altering the meat quality); pigs are not very good in hot
climates; seafood must be properly refrigerated, and, as they say
here, the refrigeration-chain must not be broken, i.e. there must not
be a period without refrigeration. When I was a kid you simply
could not eat seafood unless you went to the seaside. Now we can
eat mussels in Geneva, because they can be flown in.
Circumcision is probably another one.

No new technologies, no change. Find me a
counterexample.

What about religion? Religion changes
societies without new technology... Islam changed a lot of how Arab
tribal society worked. Introduced a lot of reforms (which are
admittedly now outdated, like women having the right to own property
and divorce, not allowed to kill female babies if you don't want them,
rules of engagement, etc...) What about communism in the Soviet Union?
Didn't that change society?

You have a point. I would tend to say that communism was a result
of exploitation in the industrial revolution and hence an indirect
consequence of technologies. Islam and Christianity are more
difficult to argue. I do include slavery as a technology, so to
what extent was the cultural development of ancient Greece the result
of more spare time due to the employment of slaves?
Did Christianity spread as a reaction against the Roman's
military technology (including administration and organised standing
armies, another technology albeit "software" more than
hardware)?
Hmm... more complex than I thought.
Yes, one should include resistance against oppression. That
will happen whatever the technological levels.

Yes according to Islam, ... Its all the
same religion, literally, its just older versions were corrupted and
had to be corrected.

Therefore rigidity is at the very fundamental level.
Worrying. Very worrying.

I asked about that too, Muslims go by the
same times as Mecca when there is no sun.

Yes, I knew the answer, but it is an interpretation and could be
viewed as a corruption. The solution is one of convenience, not
one of admitting that the spirit of the rule is different. We'll
always run into that problem with all ideologies.

I had an idea of doing something similar
to that years ago. But my intention was not to show that when you get
rid of the repetitions theres hardly anything left, but to get rid of
the repetitions, boil down to the intention of the message and compare
all major world religions to show they are all saying the same damn
thing.

Well, "damn" is perhaps not the right word. :)
Somewhere I came across a question once asked a rabbi: if you had
to sum up your religion in all you can say while you can balance
yourself on the tip of one foot, what would it be? and his answer was:
"don't do to others what you don't want to be done to you."
Slightly negative, but good. And probably a result of
evolution.

I see religion like a language ...
I met a priest once who admitted Christianity may not be "THE ONE
TRUE RELIGION" but he followed it with the clear understanding
that it was the religion he was raised in and taught about since
childhood so he had a better chance at understanding it fully than any
other foreign religion.

Indeed. And frankly I don't care, as long as the believers
do not impose their rituals on others. It's the rituals I'm
worried about. I have a granddaughter from an Egyptian father.
My wife and I both dread the idea that some day she may be taken to
Egypt and have to undergo circumcision rituals there. I'm pretty
certain the danger of that happening is not zero.

And tell me what you thought of Eagleman's view.

There is also the danger to view everything as a religion.
This is the ploy that tries to get rid of evolution and global
warming. It is the same ploy that some philosophers and
sociologists use to label science as a human invention with no more
truth in it than can be found in any other belief. (note that I
just fell into their trap by writing "other belief" as if
the laws of nature are also a belief system)

Thats cool, I think the Dalai Lama is a
very good guy... and you can tell by what he says about religion and
spirituality that his intention is good - he really just wants to
connect with the spiritual reality and live in peace with others. He
visited my college when I was there and I got to go see him speak.

Lucky you. I was not at CERN when he was there.

Not many people have an actual aura of
positivity around them to the extent that he does. He seemed so happy
and peaceful and uncorrupted. It could be an exaggeration but that's
what I got from him. I also liked when someone asked him about how to
make the world a better place, what to do, what to focus on... He
immediately said that you have to start from within. If everyone was
at peace with themselves there wouldn't be as much violence and anger
in the world.

That is correct: all the troubles we have with our Egyptian
son-in-law come from his inability to find peace with himsself.

I thought that was profound at a
time when I was trying to figure out "what difference I could
make in the world" after graduation. The thing is, I am a part of
the world, so if I make myself better I have made a positive change in
the world.

That is the whole of the Star Trek theme.

It's a beautiful day here, but no way to go flying: too
much traffic with all the holiday skiiers going in and out, so there
are weekend restrictions on what small planes can do.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: technology as the origin of change

Protestantism certainly was the result of book printing.

The come-back of conservative Republicans in the US was the result of air conditioning.

Feminism was the result of employing women which was driven by factories.

Astronomy influenced loads of changes indirectly.

OK, these are positive examples.  Many social changes followed "class struggle" of some sort.  So another great force is the resistance to exploitation by others.

R.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2012 21:43:35 +0300
Subject: RE: technology as the origin of change

I have to hear about the air conditioning facilitating the conservative come back!

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2012 11:33 AM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: technology as the origin of change

Protestantism certainly was the result of book printing.

The come-back of conservative Republicans in the US was the result of
air conditioning.

Feminism was the result of employing women which was driven by factories.

Astronomy influenced loads of changes indirectly.

OK, these are positive examples.  Many social changes followed "class
struggle" of some sort.  So another great force is the resistance to
exploitation by others.

R.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: technology as the origin of change

I have to hear about the air conditioning
facilitating the conservative come back!

According to the analysis, the air conditioner made life in the
South more bearable, giving more hours a day for active work and
thinking (read scheming I guess) at least to the important
people.

I do not remember where I read that, but it was a serious
source. Don't know of an in-depth study with figures and data,
but it sounded believable.

In 1970, when I was trying to find a job in a developing country
as a substitute for my obligatory military service, I was worried
because all qualifying jobs were in hot countries. I did imagine
that I might possibly survive if I could have an office with air
conditioning. So when I read that analysis about twenty years
later, I accepted it as plausible.

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Mon, 14 May 2012 16:52:54 +0300
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

Hello...

Sorry for the extreme delay in responding. My contract ended with Al Jazeera and while I was waiting for our notoriously slow HR to renew my contract for another 6 months I was on leave in the States and Colombia for almost 2 months. During which time my AJE email account was shut down - and your emails and address were temporarily lost.

Anyways... now I am back in Doha and getting settled into work again after a very long, relaxing vacation in 'normal' countries. Did take a 3 week trip to check out Colombia while on leave - it was my first trip to South America and made me want to get back there as soon as possible, but also showed me you need a bit of time to really explore the entire continent. 3 weeks just in 3 cities of Colombia felt a bit rushed. I started out in Bogota - which felt like a South American Seattle to me - very artsy and kind of a dark vibe - lots of clouds on most days. But HUGE and tons of different neighborhoods with different feels to explore and walk around. Also, the rumors about Colombia being extremely dangerous are in my opinion exaggerations or government propaganda meant to keep the people in line. It was odd, every night when I tried to leave the hotel the woman at reception would try to stop me from going out (I wasn't alone either) after dark saying "muy peligroso!" - very dangerous. And she was really scared for us, I could tell.

But I would walk around in the streets at night with my boyfriend pretty much on a daily basis, and although there are a lot of street people who probably have mental issues, they are easily avoided. There was one close call but that was our stupidity - Colombia seems safer than NYC to me, but is also a place where you have to be smart and be aware of your surroundings.

I also visited Medellin - which has a completely different vibe than Bogota. Its sunny, the people there are very separtist and nationalistic - calling themselves the "Paisas" as if they are their own people different than the rest of Colombians. They do have more Arab and Jewish influence than any other city in Colombia - which makes the place very interesting. I would say, for the most part, Colombians were extremely friendly and open - even to foreigners, which surprised me. Its easy to meet them and talk to them, and if you need help they will go out of their way. Very cool people. But Medellin, along with Kali - another city in Colombia, is the center of the drug cartels. So you can see all the Narco-girlfriends - Medellin is known for having some of the most beautiful women in the world - who have everything from breast implants to butt implants and appear perfect and wear flashy clothes and jewelry. Strange ... and annoying to those real life women who come in contact with them Im sure...

But my favorite part of Colombia was a tip from a friend, Santiago, who I had met on a family vacation in Europe while I was in college. I met up with him in Bogota and he made sure to recommend a place called "Minca" in the north on the Caribbean coast in the mountainous jungles. He described it first as a hippy commune and that's all he needed to say to have me convinced. I talked my boyfriend into it and we took off for Santa Marta - the coastal city near Minca. Kind of a party, beach town. Nothing too special but pretty relaxed and nice. From there, we took a car up the partially dirt, potholed road to the village of Minca. We had gotten in contact with Oscar, the owner of the hostel/commune beforehand through Santiago and he was in the village to meet us.

First of all the village was amazing. Right in the jungle up in the mountains, isolated and small. With a real feeling of community. There are a couple bars with pool tables where all the men hang out, there are a couple coffee shops for the few ex-pats that have moved there or any random tourists like myself who manage to find out about the place. Very few foreigners there, although some ex-pats are trying to get the place on the map for extreme sports tours - like mountain biking down a mountain, "extreme" mule rides, and that kind of thing. Luckily, there are very few tourists so far and nothing is spoiled. From the small village, we walked/hiked about 20 minutes with all our bags down through the jungle, across a stream, and up through the jungle again to get to Oscar's place. He worked as a computer programmer for years in California before returning to his native Colombia and buying a bunch of land up in the mountains by Minca. So he owns this long piece of land on a mountain ridge that goes down towards the coast and from his land you have a 360 degree view of beautiful mountains and jungle, and down below in the distance Santa Marta and the sea. Amazing view, and his land has one main house he built himself, with one room in it to rent out, a nice basic kitchen with no refrigerator or modern appliances, he and his wife sleep on the roof in a sort of half open room, only thing modern is the bathroom which is always a good exception to primitive life ; ) The shower was open on one side to the mountains with an incredible view - no need for a wall there because youre in the middle of nowhere. Amazing! Then he built some huts with mosquito nets as walls for people to stay in, which is what I did. Couldn't believe the natural beauty there. And Oscar dug a well, made a big tank in the ground that doubles as a swimming pool on hot afternoons to store the well water, and he uses the water to make his own electricity! He also has a few mules which are his new obsession, training them and everything. And he grows some of his own food and plants for medicinal uses - like when I got massacred by mosquitoes, Oscar just chopped off a big leaf of some plant, sliced it open and told me to put the gel inside on the bites. It was magical...

Really got me thinking about leaving society again and living off the land outside of civilization... but most people I tell the idea to say, oh yeah it sounds amazing but shouldn't you be trying to change the world for the better instead of leaving it? What do you think? Its something Im really struggling with right now. I kind of got disallussioned to the whole "save the world" idea after my years living in Palestine and working for NGOs that were corrupt (like pretty much all other NGOs, and pretty much anything in the world actually, ha)... realizing how much power and weapons the ones in charge of this world have made me question the point/logic of trying to fight them. Can anyone really change the world, should they try?

Anyways... that's the update on me. What's new with you?

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 3:53 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

>That's INSANE. I really hate the idea of not allowing free speech,
>free thought. One of the main ideas in Islam is that there is no
>compulsion in religion - it's written in the Quran.

But it is also written explicitly that apostasy is not allowed and
must be punished with death.  I have reflected on this attitude.  It
is also recurring in commerce:  you can get into Skype, Facebook etc.
but you cannot get out.  It seems that there are parallels here.
States treat traitors with the death penalty too, but at least there
is a crime committed in that case.  Still, it is difficult to say "I
don't want to be in your nation, I want to be in a different one".
Soviet Russia and today Korea don't allow citizens to leave.

By the way, the death penalty on apostasy is also in the Torah and in
the Old Testament (Deuteronomy)

If you look at anthropology I'm pretty certain you will find that
most tribes did/do not allow leaving the tribe, and if you do they
have the right to kill you.  It seems to be built-in to our genes.

>But somehow, there is a loop-hole for Muslims who either speak out
>against the religion in any way or who decide to leave the religion.
>I was talking to someone the other day who said that anyone who
>leaves the religion should be put to death - this guy said it with a
>straight face. He didn't even think on a human level, no empathy. It
>was just a "rule" that had to be followed because it "came from
>God". Then I looked it up and there are some scholars who agree with
>that and some who don't. It doesn't make sense to me, and since
>there are at least 4 main schools of Islamic (legal) thought in the
>religion, there will always be some who are leniant and some who are
>the complete opposite.

Perhaps.  Once Christians had "won" and taken over the Roman Empire
(and replaced it with the Catholic Church, modelling nearly all of
its institutions on the Roman ones) they too began to be intolerant
to apostasy.

>It always seems to be the crazies that get their ideas and names out
>there in the media.

Exactly. I think the best thing to do with the extremists is simply
to ignore them.  Or at least as much as possible to ignore them.
How can a religion be termed tolerant when it does not allow apostasy?

>It seems to me that if a religion and its followers were really
>secure in their beliefs they wouldn't freak out every time someone
>challenged them.

And here we come back to my preferred phrase:  "change your mind in
the face of evidence".  Scientists are not liked because they do
exactly that:  they are very secure about what they do, but they
always are in doubt.  Most people cannot cope with that, they need
certainty.

>  But somehow, this kind of thing keeps happening... I really wish
>there was more of a voice from the every-day Muslims in the world.

It would help.  I wish it were so.  And also that over time there
would not be again a separation into sects, some of which would
become like Evangelicals.

>...The US has an interesting Muslim community ... And I believe the
>most representative of the true spirit of the religion.

I tend to agree that any religious group that does not study the
books by the letter is better than those who do.  What is necessary
then, is that all those "holy books" are taken for what they are:
just attempts at setting up a workable code for living in a society,
with some practical and psychological guidelines, and that all that
is in those books is open for interpretation and change.  Without
making any pro-Catholic statement, I think that the Vatican has
somehow realised that and allows much of it.  Except of course that
they too have kept some hard limits: no women in priesthood,
celibacy, no abortion, no birth control, ...
At least they did apologise for Galileo, and they do admit the Earth
is round and more than 6000 years old.

>It's too bad that the Muslim community is so fractured and isolated
>globally because they have developed their own style of practicing
>and enforcing on others that actually has no basis in the religion -
>and goes against big themes - like the "no compulsion in religion"
>thing.

Did you actually read the text of the Koran?

>It also seems to be a general theme among religious types - being
>violent or threatening towards those who don't agree or challenge
>their beliefs. If they really knew and understood what they believed
>why would they be threatened?

If they really studied and understood, they would not be religious.
Being religious is opposite almost to being inquisitive.

>... can't be bothered with inspecting and logically examining that
>paradigm to see if there's anything missing, wrong, etc...

It is very difficult for the average person.  Thinking is too
difficult.  And I am the first to agree that one does need a set of
rules to go by, because it's just too time-consuming to examine each
action beforehand. I get up in the morning and make my bowl of muesli
and a cup of coffee.  I've been doing it for  30 years now.  I can't
afford to think about it each day.  Yet sometimes I do sit down and
think about my habits to see if they are still adapted to the
circumstances.  I have also said to our children (well, young ladies)
that I am a man of habits: I have many and change them all the time.

I know a number of people who do their jobs well, but in fact have no
clue at all about what it is they do or where it fits in a bigger
picture.  They have been taught sequences of motions and perhaps a
small vocabulary, and they just repeat that every day.  As soon as a
problem crops up they are totally helpless. I think you must have
observed such people too.  They also need some form of religion or at
least a set of simple rules in order to live within society.

>I think that religion is a personal, spiritual thing and that if
>someone wants to believe something, its better if they just keep it
>to themselves. What good can it do to show off or try to force other
>people to believe the same as them?

True, but it still affects me.
Maybe I did or did not give this example, forgive me if I repeat myself.
Some time ago when I flew out of Geneva to Dubai I had to state my
preferences for on-board dinner.  I had a choice of vegetarian,
vegan, ..., kosher and "other".  So I stated "non-halal, non-kosher,
no live animals".  I am definitely against undue harm to animals, so
I will not eat meat from force-fed animals (foie-gras), live animals
(oysters, monkey brains), and animals slaughtered while conscious.
(we can discuss ritual slaughter and Chinese cuisine another time).
However, the girl at the check-in desk told me all meat was halal, so
as to provide me with the best service and experience.  So I had to
eat fish.  I love fish, so it was not a big deal, but I was being
discriminated against. If a practicing Jew flew a European or US
airline that refused to serve kosher, there woudl be an outcry.

>Religion in the public sphere has usually lead to violence and death

Correct.

>  - and never just focuses on what brings us all together like the
>religion professes to be about. I don't think religion itself is so
>flawed, but humans are... very flawed.

We are on a path, dynamic and changeable.  That's the only thing that
gives me some hope that we will survive: that we do have the
possibility to change.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

Renee:

Sorry for the extreme delay in
responding.

And me for mine. Too many things happening.

Anyways... now I am back in Doha and
getting settled into work again after a very long, relaxing vacation
in 'normal' countries. Did take a 3 week trip to check out Colombia
while on leave - it was my first trip to South America and made me
want to get back there as soon as possible, but also showed me you
need a bit of time to really explore the entire
continent.

"It's Thursday, this must be Belgium".

3 weeks just in 3 cities of
Colombia felt a bit rushed.

And of course that's only cities. I avoid cities.

I started out in Bogota - which felt like
a South American Seattle to me - very artsy and kind of a dark vibe -
lots of clouds on most days.

No doubt, given where it is.

But HUGE

Unfortunately. Far too many people again.

and tons of different neighborhoods
with different feels to explore and walk around. Also, the rumors
about Colombia being extremely dangerous are in my opinion
exaggerations or government propaganda meant to keep the people in
line. It was odd, every night when I tried to leave the hotel the
woman at reception would try to stop me from going out (I wasn't alone
either) after dark saying "muy peligroso!" - very dangerous.
And she was really scared for us, I could tell.

"Do not put in the microwave; Batteries not included; no
user serviceable parts inside; ..."

But I would walk around in the streets at
night with my boyfriend pretty much on a daily basis, and although
there are a lot of street people who probably have mental issues, they
are easily avoided. There was one close call but that was our
stupidity - Colombia seems safer than NYC to me, but is also a place
where you have to be smart and be aware of your
surroundings.

Agreed. One always has to be aware of one's surroundings.
I have had only four problems of that kind: one on a bus in
Hungary, where it was very clear and nothing untoward happened (except
the guy managed to pickpocket a small camera), and the other three
times were in Geneva city. Once my handbag (with all my papers
in it...) got stolen inside a restaurant in the centre of town, and I
suspect the two old ladies at the next table because all other
explanations have been eliminated. Another time my car got
vandalised while being parked on a normal street in a residential
area, but we suspect it was because it had French number plates and
there was a big anti-foreigner mood. And then I got swindled for
about 15'000 dollars by a very chic lady who rented my appartment but
never paid the rent, and it took me 6 months just to get her out.
She was driving a Mercedes coupé, had a manicured poodle and Hermes
scarves. It turned out later that I was not the only one she
swindled, and a little later again that Geneva City now subsidises
her, because she has no means of living; no job and no income.
But a Swiss passport in a well-known Swiss family.
Muy pericoloso indeed.

I also visited Medellin

Drugs. Or rather, that's what the world thinks.

... So you can see all the
Narco-girlfriends - Medellin is known for having some of the most
beautiful women in the world - who have everything from breast
implants to butt implants and appear perfect and wear flashy clothes
and jewelry. Strange ... and annoying to those real life women who
come in contact with them Im sure...

But would you want to be one of them? Muy pericoloso I
suppose.

... he made sure to recommend a
place called "Minca" ... First of all the village was
amazing. Right in the jungle up in the mountains, isolated and small.
With a real feeling of community. There are a couple bars with pool
tables where all the men hang out,

Ah, so classical then.

... , only thing modern is the bathroom
which is always a good exception to primitive life ; )

Yes, I am a bathroom freak. Bathrooms have to work.

The shower was open on one side to
the mountains with an incredible view - no need for a wall there
because youre in the middle of nowhere.

I have a friend who has (had) a similar bathroom in Hawaii...
Amazing indeed.

... Couldn't believe the natural beauty
there.

No people to destroy it.

Really got me thinking about leaving
society again and living off the land outside of
civilization...

Er... Perhaps. But what does Oscar do for a living?
Surely he must generate some money in order to buy things he cannot
make himself. Or does he still use what he saved while being a
programmer? That would then be "inside" civilisation,
no?

but most people I tell the idea to
say, oh yeah it sounds amazing but shouldn't you be trying to change
the world for the better instead of leaving it? What do you
think?

Remember that in 2003 I went to explore Tasmania to be as far
away from coming troubles as possible (or maybe I never mentioned
that).

Its something Im really struggling
with right now. I kind of got disallussioned to the whole "save
the world" idea after my years living in Palestine and working
for NGOs that were corrupt (like pretty much all other NGOs, and
pretty much anything in the world actually, ha)... realizing how much
power and weapons the ones in charge of this world have made me
question the point/logic of trying to fight them. Can anyone really
change the world, should they try?

Yes, I think one can, and one should try.
When I get somehow disillusioned I think not of where I would
like to live, but when. And history is not so good. The
best period is probably now. So in my case it's considering
which time period would be better that makes me more or less
optimistic again. I would not want to go back to anywhere in the
20th century. We are just back from some holidays at the Belgian
coast. I visited a museum about the Atlantikwal, the string of
fortresses the Nazis built to keep the allies out. That was just
before I was born. No, thank you. And then there was the
whole cold war stuff. Thanks again. Before those times it
was perhaps better but only if you were inexcellent healt and never
got a wound, because there were no antibiotics. The times of the
industrial revolution were good for very few, the majority had to work
extremely hard. Before that there were constant wars everywhere
(not just Europe).

Agreed that Doha is not "normal", but in time that too
will change.
I just hope we get the cllimate and the population density under
control.

Otherwise not much news. We'll see how Hollande will do
with Merkel, and also how the US elections will go.

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2012 16:45:41 +0300
Subject: SUSPECT: RE: Diverse problems

Hi,

How is everything? Things here are getting a little crazy as the temperature gets higher and higher, above 50 = danger for civilization! One example, the government sent out a warning telling people not to fill up their car's gas tanks all the way full because when the temperature gets above 50C that can explode!

That's not even mentioning the series of fires that have happened in Doha. Im sure you heard about the "Doha Mall Fire" last week. It was in one of the more upscale malls here called the Villaggio - modeled after the Bellaggio and Venetian Las Vegas hotels/casinos. So the ceiling is painted as a sky (can't put any pesky fire sprinklers up there because it "wouldn't LOOK good"... one of the reasons the fire got so big at the mall) and there are mock venetian apartments above the stores, as well as a fake canal with motorized gondolas you can take around the mall (sooo lame!). But, hey, its Doha.

So anyways, there was a small fire at the Villaggio the DAY BEFORE and no one took that as a warning (by no one, Im referring to the non-existent safety and codes people which I really think this country forgot to implement... like so many things) and the next day a bigger fire caught. The daycare center, which was actually owned by a friend of mine - a very nice Qatari woman named Eman, is tucked back in an old storage room - literally. If you're walking down the main drag in the mall, theres a narrow hallway that goes off to the side in between a couple stores. From there, you walk up a flimsy staircase (which burned quickly and was the only escape route) and then on the second floor you walk all the way down a corridor with no windows until you get to the daycare center. Eman was there about 10 mins before the fire started, she had just walked outside to meet a relative when she noticed smoke billowing and people being evacuated.

She was on the phone with the 4 teachers that worked for her from then until they died. There were 2 firemen that died and the rest of the 19 casualties were small children. Eman is traumatized and basically hospitalized because of the shock of losing those people and feeling responsible for their deaths. The first police to talk to her told her she was a 'murderer'. After that, she collapsed and was taken to the hospital where she still is.

My question: Why would it be Eman's fault? The person who gave her the license to open the business there is the one who is responsible for making sure of the overall safety of the building, making sure it complies with health and safety codes. But the thing is, I dont think Qatar even HAS health/safety codes. I suddenly feel SO unsafe. They are not prepared for anything. The rescue crew was running around for ONE HOUR looking for a map of the building so they could tell where to hack through the roof to get to the children and teachers. There were some men on the roof in thobes (the long white dress) and were tripping and slowed down by their thobes but wouldn't take it off to try to save the kids faster because they are so incompetent. They didn't save one of the people trapped inside. 3 of the children were triplets from an expat family from New Zealand. I can't imagine what they are going through.

The bigger picture of the government blaming Eman for the deaths, in my opinion, and their complete lack of taking responsibility for a COMPLETELY avoidable tragedy (which they said in the press conference the night of the fire was "not completely avoidable"... idiots) is because of the World Cup they are supposed to host in 2020 or something around there. This country is being built FOR the world cup... everything they are doing to try and look "modernized" (while having absolutely no idea what they are doing but still building "pretty" things) is to impress the international community and make them think that Qatar is modern and western and civilized. But its top down. They have no experience, they have no idea of the details behind civilization. Building safety codes is one example. "Dont let a daycare set up in an old storage room down a long corridor with no way to escape in a fire!!!!" The other example is the skyline - if you haven't seen it, try to google the Doha skyline. From a distance, it looks pretty cool. Very futuristic architecture and lots of pretty colors and lights. But if you want to walk around this seemingly "downtown" area, you will find.... NOTHING.

The buildings are 80% empty, but that doesnt matter when you have 100 more years of free money (aka gas). In a REAL city, like New York, things were built from the bottom up. First there were small houses and shacks and a few churches and bigger buildings here and there. Everything on ground level filled in as the population grew. There are apartments, shops, restaurants, cafes, bars, etc... all on ground level to walk around. Then, as time passed, they started building upwards due to lack of space. So buildings became taller and skyscrapers were born. But at the bottom on street level there is a whole community and city and things to do. In Doha, the downtown is like a Hollywood set, like the Emir was like daydreaming one day and stenciled out a skyline and said "build this so I can look out my window and see a real city with a real skyline" but had no idea what the POINT of a skyscraper is. Do you need it when the ground level is sparse and empty. NO. You can't even walk around downtown, there's no sidewalks, theres nothing to do or see on street level. Just a bunch of big, empty, cool-looking skyscrapers.

Insanity.

Thats the end of my rant about Doha ; )

>Really got me thinking about leaving society
>again and living off the land outside of
>civilization...

Er...  Perhaps.  But what does Oscar do for a
living?  Surely he must generate some money in
order to buy things he cannot make himself.  Or
does he still use what he saved while being a
programmer?  That would then be "inside"
civilisation, no?

Remember that in 2003 I went to explore Tasmania
to be as far away from coming troubles as
possible (or maybe I never mentioned that).

>> By the way, Oscar only has to make a couple hundred dollars a month for basics he needs, including health insurance in case something happens! haha. So he rents out the huts and hammocks and for the most part his only purchases are basic food items (no fridge) and extras like alcohol or a coffee in "town". He lives a very VERY simple lifestyle. Spends half the day taking his mules to an open pasture, taking them back. Going into the village nearby for food, coffee or to see other humans. Rest of the day working on different projects like a primitive stable, new huts, gathering firewood for the night fire, and chilling under the stars at night.

What happened to your Tasmania plan? It wasn't the right spot or you gave up on leaving civilization?

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 9:36 AM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Diverse problems

Renee:

>Sorry for the extreme delay in responding.

And me for mine.  Too many things happening.

>Anyways... now I am back in Doha and getting
>settled into work again after a very long,
>relaxing vacation in 'normal' countries. Did
>take a 3 week trip to check out Colombia while
>on leave - it was my first trip to South America
>and made me want to get back there as soon as
>possible, but also showed me you need a bit of
>time to really explore the entire continent.

"It's Thursday, this must be Belgium".

>  3 weeks just in 3 cities of Colombia felt a bit rushed.

And of course that's only cities.  I avoid cities.

>I started out in Bogota - which felt like a
>South American Seattle to me - very artsy and
>kind of a dark vibe - lots of clouds on most
>days.

No doubt, given where it is.

>  But HUGE

Unfortunately.  Far too many people again.

>  and tons of different neighborhoods with
>different feels to explore and walk around.
>Also, the rumors about Colombia being extremely
>dangerous are in my opinion exaggerations or
>government propaganda meant to keep the people
>in line. It was odd, every night when I tried to
>leave the hotel the woman at reception would try
>to stop me from going out (I wasn't alone
>either) after dark saying "muy peligroso!" -
>very dangerous. And she was really scared for
>us, I could tell.

"Do not put in the microwave; Batteries not
included; no user serviceable parts inside; ..."

>But I would walk around in the streets at night
>with my boyfriend pretty much on a daily basis,
>and although there are a lot of street people
>who probably have mental issues, they are easily
>avoided. There was one close call but that was
>our stupidity - Colombia seems safer than NYC to
>me, but is also a place where you have to be
>smart and be aware of your surroundings.

Agreed.  One always has to be aware of one's
surroundings.  I have had only four problems of
that kind:  one on a bus in Hungary, where it was
very clear and nothing untoward happened (except
the guy managed to pickpocket a small camera),
and the other three times were in Geneva city.
Once my handbag (with all my papers in it...) got
stolen inside a restaurant in the centre of town,
and I suspect the two old ladies at the next
table because all other explanations have been
eliminated.  Another time my car got vandalised
while being parked on a normal street in a
residential area, but we suspect it was because
it had French number plates and there was a big
anti-foreigner mood.  And then I got swindled for
about 15'000 dollars by a very chic lady who
rented my appartment but never paid the rent, and
it took me 6 months just to get her out.  She was
driving a Mercedes coupé, had a manicured poodle
and Hermes scarves.  It turned out later that I
was not the only one she swindled, and a little
later again that Geneva City now subsidises her,
because she has no means of living; no job and no
income.  But a Swiss passport in a well-known
Swiss family.
Muy pericoloso indeed.

>I also visited Medellin

Drugs.  Or rather, that's what the world thinks.

>... So you can see all the Narco-girlfriends -
>Medellin is known for having some of the most
>beautiful women in the world - who have
>everything from breast implants to butt implants
>and appear perfect and wear flashy clothes and
>jewelry. Strange ... and annoying to those real
>life women who come in contact with them Im
>sure...

But would you want to be one of them?  Muy pericoloso I suppose.

>...  he made sure to recommend a place called
>"Minca" ... First of all the village was
>amazing. Right in the jungle up in the
>mountains, isolated and small. With a real
>feeling of community. There are a couple bars
>with pool tables where all the men hang out,

Ah, so classical then.

>... , only thing modern is the bathroom which is
>always a good exception to primitive life ; )

Yes, I am a bathroom freak.  Bathrooms have to work.

>  The shower was open on one side to the
>mountains with an incredible view - no need for
>a wall there because youre in the middle of
>nowhere.

I have a friend who has (had) a similar bathroom in Hawaii...  Amazing indeed.

>... Couldn't believe the natural beauty there.

No people to destroy it.

>Really got me thinking about leaving society
>again and living off the land outside of
>civilization...

Er...  Perhaps.  But what does Oscar do for a
living?  Surely he must generate some money in
order to buy things he cannot make himself.  Or
does he still use what he saved while being a
programmer?  That would then be "inside"
civilisation, no?

>  but most people I tell the idea to say, oh yeah
>it sounds amazing but shouldn't you be trying to
>change the world for the better instead of
>leaving it? What do you think?

Remember that in 2003 I went to explore Tasmania
to be as far away from coming troubles as
possible (or maybe I never mentioned that).

>  Its something Im really struggling with right
>now. I kind of got disallussioned to the whole
>"save the world" idea after my years living in
>Palestine and working for NGOs that were corrupt
>(like pretty much all other NGOs, and pretty
>much anything in the world actually, ha)...
>realizing how much power and weapons the ones in
>charge of this world have made me question the
>point/logic of trying to fight them. Can anyone
>really change the world, should they try?

Yes, I think one can, and one should try.
When I get somehow disillusioned I think not of
where I would like to live, but when.  And
history is not so good.  The best period is
probably now.  So in my case it's considering
which time period would be better that makes me
more or less optimistic again.  I would not want
to go back to anywhere in the 20th century.  We
are just back from some holidays at the Belgian
coast.  I visited a museum about the Atlantikwal,
the string of fortresses the Nazis built to keep
the allies out.  That was just before I was born.
No, thank you.  And then there was the whole cold
war stuff.  Thanks again.  Before those times it
was perhaps better but only if you were
inexcellent healt and never got a wound, because
there were no antibiotics. The times of the
industrial revolution were good for very few, the
majority had to work extremely hard.  Before that
there were constant wars everywhere (not just
Europe).

Agreed that Doha is not "normal", but in time that too will change.
I just hope we get the cllimate and the population density under control.

Otherwise not much news.  We'll see how Hollande
will do with Merkel, and also how the US
elections will go.

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2012 17:38:33 +0300
Subject: RE: SUSPECT: RE: Diverse problems

Hi,

||After having sent my previous reply, I wondered about this:

You did visit the day care centre at least once. From what you then casually observed, would you have found it a place full of risk?

I ask this, because your friend may or may not have seen risk. Observing risk is a difficult thing and depends on many factors, which makes it difficult to know who was responsible and for what fraction.  There
are:

-- one's own education in the matter, for which one is not responsible (must we all obligatorily be drilled in risk perception?  probably not)

-- one's own alertness,

-- hidden flaws (a famous clause in most contracts of property transfer or renting), which by their nature cannot be taken into account,

-- security measures (e.g. flammable goods are stored in spaces with more security measures than others, escape ladders help in built up areas, smoke alarms help, fire brigade proximity and training help (e.g. the CERN fire brigade is autonomous and specially trained in handling the special materials we have on the site))

-- one's own capacity to deal with an emergency, e.g. a fit person may be easily able to escape, but a less fit person who also has to care for a number of children may not, so the risk is higher to one than to the other, and one may be willing to take a bigger risk than the other,

-- you raised the important point of cultural awareness and cultural attitudes to risk taking, and so on.  Very complex.

But what did you se when you went there?||

When I was walking through the mall, I saw the Gympanzee place... its a narrow little hallway that goes back in between two regular mall shops like Puma or something. I walked down the hall way a bit because a friend wanted to show me a picture of his nephew that was up in the entrance. I didn't know at that point that you not only had to walk down that hallway, but up a flight of stairs, and down to the end of a corridor on the second floor. That's something I found out after the fire. And no, safety or lack thereof didn't even cross my mind, although I remember thinking it was weird that a daycare center was down a dark hallway with no windows. But it was a fleeting thought unfortunately. I think if I was planning a business and was going there to check it out I would think about safety though... although I don't blame Eman at all, because the one who gave her the business license or permit should be the one in charge of safety and emergency planning. Eman's own children stayed there, so obviously she thought the place was safe for some reason...

||>My question: Why would it be Eman's fault? The person who gave her >the license to open the business there is the one who is responsible >for making sure of the overall safety of the building, making sure
>it complies with health and safety codes.

True, but your friend also has to inspect and push for safety.  Or, when it cannot be obtained, not set up business there.  But I do agree that it is tempting to overlook such aspects, especially if one
has not really been brought up to look into such details.  (see also later towards the end) This worries me greatly:  youngsters are not paying attention to safety as much as we did, one reason may be that the world looks like it is safe to start with.||

What a good point... about the younger generations just assuming things are alright and safe and someone else thought about it already. We are not the most responsible generation in history... at least the Western middle-class and up. I mean, if you are poor its more likely youve had to really watch your own back and can't fall back on other people as easily. In the West, life is set up to look perfect... like Disneyland. Every time I go back to the states from "developing" countries I can't get over how 'fake' everything looks - like its too perfect. I think that really messes with peoples' heads.

My generation and below (in the West, middle class and up) were given a lot... we didn't need to think as much, just do what we were told so that we too could live this perfect fairy tale life. As I get older, I realize how college until now has been a constant stream of disallussionments and a process of "unlearning" all the lies about life I was taught in school, by my parents to some extent (things are black and white, this is good, this is bad... no grey areas - while I have now realized life is a grey area... ha) and of course by the thing that taught my generation the most about life - way more than our parents or school ever did about what to expect from life and careers and love and everything... TV, movies, music, etc... They have set up this unattainable happiness and perfection and fairtale life that we will never possess. As we grow older, we start to realize that, and get disallussioned. Did you experience this? In what way?

Well, my taxis here to pick me up so I will continue later! Hope you are well...

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2012 10:46 AM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Re: SUSPECT: RE: Diverse problems

>... not to fill up their car's gas tanks all the way full because
>when the temperature gets above 50C that can explode!

?!?  I am trying to figure out what the mechanism could be?  Overflow perhaps.

>... the ceiling is painted as a sky (can't put any pesky fire
>sprinklers up there because it "wouldn't LOOK good"... one of the
>reasons the fire got so big at the mall)

We have been in one of those in Las Vegas.  Form over Function will
always die first.

>... was on the phone

Yes, mobile phones are much more important than safety regulations.

>  with the 4 teachers that worked for her from then until they died.
>There were 2 firemen that died and the rest of the 19 casualties
>were small children. Eman is traumatized and basically hospitalized
>because of the shock of losing those people and feeling responsible
>for their deaths. The first police to talk to her told her she was a
>'murderer'.

How could they say that?

>My question: Why would it be Eman's fault? The person who gave her
>the license to open the business there is the one who is responsible
>for making sure of the overall safety of the building, making sure
>it complies with health and safety codes.

True, but your friend also has to inspect and push for safety.  Or,
when it cannot be obtained, not set up business there.  But I do
agree that it is tempting to overlook such aspects, especially if one
has not really been brought up to look into such details.  (see also
later towards the end)
This worries me greatly:  youngsters are not paying attention to
safety as much as we did, one reason may be that the world looks like
it is safe to start with.

>  But the thing is, I dont think Qatar even HAS health/safety codes.
>I suddenly feel SO unsafe. They are not prepared for anything. The
>rescue crew was running around for ONE HOUR looking for a map of the
>building

And in a high-tech environment such a map should have been at the
fire station and in electronic form in many places.

>... men on the roof in thobes (the long white dress) and were
>tripping and slowed down by their thobes but wouldn't take it off to
>try to save the kids faster because they are so incompetent.

Form over Function and a lot of attention to what other people might
think rather than getting the job done.

>The bigger picture of the government blaming Eman for the deaths, in
>my opinion, and their complete lack of taking responsibility for a
>COMPLETELY avoidable tragedy (which they said in the press
>conference the night of the fire was "not completely avoidable"...
>idiots) is because of the World Cup they are supposed to host in
>2020 or something around there.

This tragedy seems to have many parallels to the plane crash of the
Polish president.  He had put so much pressure on the pilot to land
because of this historic ceremony where he wished to show himself,
that everyone died.  The Polish government (and its people) then
tried to put the blame on all sorts of things; the airport, the
traffic controllers, the pilot, but not on the president.
However, the pilot was to a certain extent responsible:  after FOUR
failed attempts to land in impossible weather conditions, he should
have flown to the alternate airport and stood up to the political
pressure.  Of course, his predecessor got fired for a similar
incident a few years earlier, and of course if you do land safely at
the alternate airport, then you cannot prove that it was truly
impossible to land at the original destination.  That proof comes
only when everyone dies.

>  This country is being built FOR the world cup... They have no
>experience, they have no idea of the details behind civilization. ...

It takes a long time for attitudes to change, at least two
generations, and then it also has to be built into the school system
and then you have to constantly watch over it.  Otherwise it gets
attacked by the manipulators.  That is why religious and ideological
groups always try to set up their own school system.

>The other example is the skyline - if you haven't seen it,

I have, I was there for a WEF conference once.

>... In a REAL city, like New York, things were built from the bottom up.

Or Paris, or London, or Berlin.  They took over 2000 years.  But they
also had their city-wide fires...

>... Just a bunch of big, empty, cool-looking skyscrapers.
>Insanity.

Form over Function.

>Thats the end of my rant about Doha ; )

I understand.  Money warps everything.

Coming back briefly to your friend Eman:  I don't know what her
background is, what her family is like, how much education she had,
how aware she is about technology.  So it is very difficult to know
if she should have seen warning signs and set up her centre
elsewhere.  It is also not clear to me what started the fire.
Candles on a birthday cake?  An electric fire?  A cigarette?

>  >> By the way, Oscar only has to make a couple hundred dollars a month...

OK.

>What happened to your Tasmania plan? It wasn't the right spot or you
>gave up on leaving civilization?

Well, it is a very nice spot, with good wine and cheese and fish.
However, the Antarctic is too close by: when the icebergs start
falling off those shelves and start floating North, it could get
pretty cold there.
Plus that Susan does not want to be so far away from the "children".  Etc.
In the end, it's probably not too bad here.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Re: SUSPECT: RE: Diverse problems

... not to fill up their car's gas tanks
all the way full because when the temperature gets above 50C that can
explode!

?!? I am trying to figure out what the mechanism could be?
Overflow perhaps.

... the ceiling is painted as a sky
(can't put any pesky fire sprinklers up there because it
"wouldn't LOOK good"... one of the reasons the fire got so
big at the mall)

We have been in one of those in Las Vegas. Form over
Function will always die first.

... was on the phone

Yes, mobile phones are much more important than safety
regulations.

with the 4 teachers that worked for
her from then until they died. There were 2 firemen that died and the
rest of the 19 casualties were small children. Eman is traumatized and
basically hospitalized because of the shock of losing those people and
feeling responsible for their deaths. The first police to talk to her
told her she was a 'murderer'.

How could they say that?

My question: Why would it be Eman's
fault? The person who gave her the license to open the business there
is the one who is responsible for making sure of the overall safety of
the building, making sure it complies with health and safety
codes.

True, but your friend also has to inspect and push for safety.
Or, when it cannot be obtained, not set up business there. But I
do agree that it is tempting to overlook such aspects, especially if
one has not really been brought up to look into such details.
(see also later towards the end)
This worries me greatly: youngsters are not paying
attention to safety as much as we did, one reason may be that the
world looks like it is safe to start with.

But the thing is, I dont think
Qatar even HAS health/safety codes. I suddenly feel SO unsafe. They
are not prepared for anything. The rescue crew was running around for
ONE HOUR looking for a map of the building

And in a high-tech environment such a map should have been at the
fire station and in electronic form in many places.

... men on the roof in thobes (the long
white dress) and were tripping and slowed down by their thobes but
wouldn't take it off to try to save the kids faster because they are
so incompetent.

Form over Function and a lot of attention to what other people
might think rather than getting the job done.

The bigger picture of the government
blaming Eman for the deaths, in my opinion, and their complete lack of
taking responsibility for a COMPLETELY avoidable tragedy (which they
said in the press conference the night of the fire was "not
completely avoidable"... idiots) is because of the World Cup they
are supposed to host in 2020 or something around there.

This tragedy seems to have many parallels to the plane crash of
the Polish president. He had put so much pressure on the pilot
to land because of this historic ceremony where he wished to show
himself, that everyone died. The Polish government (and its
people) then tried to put the blame on all sorts of things; the
airport, the traffic controllers, the pilot, but not on the
president.
However, the pilot was to a certain extent responsible:
after FOUR failed attempts to land in impossible weather conditions,
he should have flown to the alternate airport and stood up to the
political pressure. Of course, his predecessor got fired for a
similar incident a few years earlier, and of course if you do land
safely at the alternate airport, then you cannot prove that it was
truly impossible to land at the original destination. That proof
comes only when everyone dies.

This country is being built FOR the
world cup... They have no experience, they have no idea of the details
behind civilization. ...

It takes a long time for attitudes to change, at least two
generations, and then it also has to be built into the school system
and then you have to constantly watch over it. Otherwise it gets
attacked by the manipulators. That is why religious and
ideological groups always try to set up their own school system.

The other example is the skyline - if you
haven't seen it,

I have, I was there for a WEF conference once.

... In a REAL city, like New York, things
were built from the bottom up.

Or Paris, or London, or Berlin. They took over 2000 years.
But they also had their city-wide fires...

... Just a bunch of big, empty,
cool-looking skyscrapers.
Insanity.

Form over Function.

Thats the end of my rant about Doha ;
)

I understand. Money warps everything.

Coming back briefly to your friend Eman: I don't know what
her background is, what her family is like, how much education she
had, how aware she is about technology. So it is very difficult
to know if she should have seen warning signs and set up her centre
elsewhere. It is also not clear to me what started the fire.
Candles on a birthday cake? An electric fire? A
cigarette?

>> By the way, Oscar only has to
make a couple hundred dollars a month...

OK.

What happened to your Tasmania plan? It
wasn't the right spot or you gave up on leaving
civilization?

Well, it is a very nice spot, with good wine and cheese and
fish.
However, the Antarctic is too close by: when the icebergs start
falling off those shelves and start floating North, it could get
pretty cold there.
Plus that Susan does not want to be so far away from the
"children". Etc.
In the end, it's probably not too bad here.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Doha fire

Renée:

After having sent my previous reply, I wondered about this:

You did visit the day care centre at least once.  From what you then casually observed, would you have found it a place full of risk?

I ask this, because your friend may or may not have seen risk.
Observing risk is a difficult thing and depends on many factors, which makes it difficult to know who was responsible and for what fraction.  There are:

-- one's own education in the matter, for which one is not responsible (must we all obligatorily be drilled in risk perception?  probably not)

-- one's own alertness,

-- hidden flaws (a famous clause in most contracts of property transfer or renting), which by their nature cannot be taken into account,

-- security measures (e.g. flammable goods are stored in spaces with more security measures than others, escape ladders help in built up areas, smoke alarms help, fire brigade proximity and training help (e.g. the CERN fire brigade is autonomous and specially trained in handling the special materials we have on the site))

-- one's own capacity to deal with an emergency, e.g. a fit person may be easily able to escape, but a less fit person who also has to care for a number of children may not, so the risk is higher to one than to the other, and one may be willing to take a bigger risk than the other,

-- you raised the important point of cultural awareness and cultural attitudes to risk taking,

and so on.  Very complex.

But what did you se when you went there?

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: SUSPECT: RE: Diverse problems

When I was walking through the mall, I
saw the Gympanzee place... its a narrow little hallway that goes back
in between two regular mall shops like Puma or something. I walked
down the hall way a bit because a friend wanted to show me a picture
of his nephew that was up in the entrance. I didn't know at that point
that you not only had to walk down that hallway, but up a flight of
stairs, and down to the end of a corridor on the second floor. That's
something I found out after the fire.

Ah.

And no, safety or lack thereof
didn't even cross my mind, although I remember thinking it was weird
that a daycare center was down a dark hallway with no windows. But it
was a fleeting thought unfortunately. I think if I was planning a
business and was going there to check it out I would think about
safety though... although I don't blame Eman at all, because the one
who gave her the business license or permit should be the one in
charge of safety and emergency planning. Eman's own children stayed
there, so obviously she thought the place was safe for some
reason...

Perhaps. I'll quote again what physicists usually say:
"it's a linear superposition of all possibilities", meaning
in this case that the 100% of responsibility is divided over many
people and nobody is entirely free of any. Even the people on
the other side of the planet, who drive a car they fuel with petrol
that gave revenue to Doha so that they became rich too quickly and
built these places without much understanding.

I think part of why Eman is in such a psychological state is that
she realises (even if subconsciously) that she should have looked out
better. But it is difficult to be painstakingly rigourous when
one also has a business to run.

What a good point...

Yes, and thanks for making me think of it.

life is set up to look perfect...
like Disneyland.

:|

Every time I go back to the states
from "developing" countries I can't get over how 'fake'
everything looks - like its too perfect. I think that really messes
with peoples' heads.

But there are imperfect places in the US. I've seen
many.

... I realize how college until now has
been a constant stream of disallussionments and a process of
"unlearning" all the lies about life I was taught in
school,

This reads like it comes straight out of a Kurt Vonnegut
story.

... I have now realized life is a
grey area... ha)

A linear superposition.

... They have set up this unattainable
happiness and perfection and fairtale life that we will never possess.
As we grow older, we start to realize that, and get disallussioned.
Did you experience this? In what way?

I did, but less so than you. Remember, I'm from the
50s/60s
(By the way: do I know how old you are and what you look
like?)

I've had some disillusions, but nothing like what this generation
is going through. We did have job stability and there was much less
virtuality than there is now. Of course there was TV and so, but
not much. And certainly not as much advertising as now.

I try to keep focusing on projects, building things (not
necessarily physical stuff) and always learning and finding out how
things tick, whether that is s real gizmo or a social group of people
or whatever. Like why this fire accident happened and what the
causes could be.

My biggest disillusions have been with human nature. But I
stil have some hope too.

R.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 13:54:01 +0300
Subject: Higgs Boson

Hi,

How's it going?

I just read on Al Jazeera news that US physicists said they found "strong hints" of the Higgs Boson particle and expect Europe to confirm their results in the next few days.

What do you think?

Renee Lewis

From ???@??? Wed Jul 04 07:40:23 2012
To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Re: Higgs Boson

Hi,

How's it going?

I just read on Al Jazeera news that US physicists said they found
"strong hints" of the Higgs Boson particle and expect Europe
to confirm their results in the next few days.

What do you think?

Hi Renee,

(we are in Galloway, near Atlantic City and we lived through the
storm last week that took out a lot of electric power, but at least
for the hotel where we are it is now restored)

Heuer (our Director General) announced it today.

The Tevatron at Fermilab has claimed to have seen something for
years. But from my understanding the Tevatron is not nearly
powerful enough to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak. That is
why the SSC (Superconducting SuperCollider) was planned, alongside the
LHC. But Clinton stopped it. Then all the effort went into
the LHC.

5 sigma is quite a high probability, so this must be very
interesting. However, it now remains to be seen if the signals
seen at the Tevatron are consistent with the stuff from the LHC.
And if they are, who claims what? It is like the Tevatron
hearing noises in the forest, but not knowing what it might be, and
the LHC then catching a bear and bringing the animal to display in the
village. But the Tevatron could have heard a squirrel too.
OK, I obviously make this up, but it's something like that. We
are certain to hear more precise stories this week. I knew since
last week that a number of conference rooms all over the world had
been set up with video conferencing and special invitations.

Before one announces a 5 sigma event, a huge amount of data
correlation must be made, and so this must have been in the works for
quite some time.

If you want to know the real story I'm afraid you will have to
talk to a physicist. I'm going to listen too.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Ice

Hi,

How are you?

Check this out: "Shock Greenland ice thaw has experts
gushing"

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/07/201272565759801478.html

What do you think? Cyclical event or
global warming?

It's a part of both.
Things go up and down.
There is a perverse "procession" in the city of
Echternach: the faithful walk to the church but to show their
devotion they go three steps forwards and then two steps backwards.
Eventually they get there, of course, but they will have walked 5
times as much.

Whenever the climate goes cold (steps backwards) those who deny
global warming scream global warming clearly is a hoax and we can
continue burning fossil fuels, and whenever the climate goes forwards
those who are activists scream that it is already too late.

But, unfortunately, like in Echternach, global warming will
eventually get there. Also unfortunately it is difficult for the
general public to see the trend in all the swings up and down.
Plus that it's really very difficult to predict which parts of the
world will get really hot and which may cool down for a while.
For example, if some models are right, then one effect is that the
Gulf stream will stop, and that means Europe will get a lot colder and
wetter. This seems effectively to be so from what I have
observed in my lifetime.
Europe is of course very high in the North (I think I already
mentioned that Geneva is north of Montreal, or North of Portland,
Oregon, and Oslo is about the same latitude as Anchorage.) so our
climate here is a freak of the Gulf stream.
We may get colder here for a while, but on average the world is
definitely heating up, and fast too.

It is not a cyclical event, rather an unusual event (like
throwing heads five times in a row) that on average so far seems to
have occurred about once every 150 years. The scientist Lora
Koenig made a very bad error in public communication by adding
"this event is right on time" where she should have said
nothing at all. It is a pure coincidence that it happened almost
exactly after 150 years, and she could not resist talking about that
coincidence. Bad communication, but something that a journalist
would jump on.
Unless I have misunderstood, the spacing of the events is random,
so they are not cyclical, but if you look at a space of 1500 years you
will have a high probability of observing about ten of them.
She then continued with a statement she should have elaborated
on:
"if we continue to observe melting events like this in
upcoming years, it will be worrisome"
And that too she should have rephrased to:
"if we're beginning to observe them more frequently than in
the past, it is a sign of global warming".

People just do not understand statistics and probability, and
even scientists have very great difficulty talking about them.

Sigh.

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 08:53:50 +0300
Subject: RE: Higgs Boson

Hi,

How are you?

Check this out: "Shock Greenland ice thaw has experts gushing"

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/07/201272565759801478.html

What do you think? Cyclical event or global warming?

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2012 2:40 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Re: Higgs Boson

>Hi,
>
>How's it going?
>
>I just read on Al Jazeera news that US physicists said they found
>"strong hints" of the Higgs Boson particle and expect Europe to
>confirm their results in the next few days.
>
>What do you think?

Hi Renee,

(we are in Galloway, near Atlantic City and we lived through the
storm last week that took out a lot of electric power, but at least
for the hotel where we are it is now restored)

Heuer (our Director General) announced it today.

The Tevatron at Fermilab has claimed to have seen something for
years.  But from my understanding the Tevatron is not nearly powerful
enough to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak. That is why the
SSC (Superconducting SuperCollider) was planned, alongside the LHC.
But Clinton stopped it.  Then all the effort went into the LHC.

5 sigma is quite a high probability, so this must be very
interesting.  However, it now remains to be seen if the signals seen
at the Tevatron are consistent with the stuff from the LHC.  And if
they are, who claims what?  It is like the Tevatron hearing noises in
the forest, but not knowing what it might be, and the LHC then
catching a bear and bringing the animal to display in the village.
But the Tevatron could have heard a squirrel too.  OK, I obviously
make this up, but it's something like that.  We are certain to hear
more precise stories this week.  I knew since last week that a number
of conference rooms all over the world had been set up with video
conferencing and special invitations.

Before one announces a 5 sigma event, a huge amount of data
correlation must be made, and so this must have been in the works for
quite some time.

If you want to know the real story I'm afraid you will have to talk
to a physicist.  I'm going to listen too.

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 18:05:26 +0300
Subject: RE: Ice

Hi,

How are you? Surviving the summer?

Check out this article:

"The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here--and-worse-than-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html?socialreader_check=0&denied=1

Pretty hard-hitting article on climate change... and I found the website of the National Science Academy that released the report with evidence to prove it:

http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/new-resources-about-climate-change/

I just returned to Doha from 2 weeks in Palestine for a vacation. I used to work in Ramallah for a couple years as a journalist and in NGOs, so I got to see all of my good friends that are still living there and see what's changed in terms of the occupation.

Many checkpoints, some of the worst in the West Bank actually, were dismantled. But now the Israeli military sets up flying checkpoints in random places and at random times to train their new soldiers on West Bank protocol.

There are 3 zones of control in the West Bank, Area A is Palestinian Authority, Area B is no mans land, and Area C is Israeli controlled. Area C makes up about 60% of the West Bank. There are still Palestinians living on land in Area C and they are constantly being harrassed by the Israeli settlers and military. They get demolition orders on entire villages and towns. The Bedouin are especially hard hit by this policy... I visited some Bedouin villages in the South Hebron Hills that have pending demolition orders. There are 8 of these villages due to be demolished in the coming months. These are Bedouin communities made of tents and the people have nothing but some animals for income.

Many of my friends said that the Israelis are planning to officially annex Area C soon, and then what's left will be the future "state" of Palestine. If they do that, it will probably start the 3rd Intifada because what's left will be isolated 'bantustans' of Area A land that aren't contiguous and won't really control their borders completely.

Anyways... lots happening over there.

Let me know what you think about the climate change articles!

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 10:24 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Ice

>Hi,
>
>How are you?
>
>Check this out: "Shock Greenland ice thaw has experts gushing"
>
>http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/07/201272565759801478.html
>
>What do you think? Cyclical event or global warming?

It's a part of both.
Things go up and down.
There is a perverse "procession" in the city of Echternach:  the
faithful walk to the church but to show their devotion they go three
steps forwards and then two steps backwards.  Eventually they get
there, of course, but they will have walked 5 times as much.

Whenever the climate goes cold (steps backwards) those who deny
global warming scream global warming clearly is a hoax and we can
continue burning fossil fuels, and whenever the climate goes forwards
those who are activists scream that it is already too late.

But, unfortunately, like in Echternach, global warming will
eventually get there.  Also unfortunately it is difficult for the
general public to see the trend in all the swings up and down.  Plus
that it's really very difficult to predict which parts of the world
will get really hot and which may cool down for a while.  For
example, if some models are right, then one effect is that the Gulf
stream will stop, and that means Europe will get a lot colder and
wetter.  This seems effectively to be so from what I have observed in
my lifetime.
Europe is of course very high in the North (I think I already
mentioned that Geneva is north of Montreal, or North of Portland,
Oregon, and Oslo is about the same latitude as Anchorage.) so our
climate here is a freak of the Gulf stream.
We may get colder here for a while, but on average the world is
definitely heating up, and fast too.

It is not a cyclical event, rather an unusual event (like throwing
heads five times in a row) that on average so far seems to have
occurred about once every 150 years.  The scientist Lora Koenig made
a very bad error in public communication by adding "this event is
right on time" where she should have said nothing at all.  It is a
pure coincidence that it happened almost exactly after 150 years, and
she could not resist talking about that coincidence.  Bad
communication, but something that a journalist would jump on.
Unless I have misunderstood, the spacing of the events is random, so
they are not cyclical, but if you look at a space of 1500 years you
will have a high probability of observing about ten of them.
She then continued with a statement she should have elaborated on:
"if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming
years, it will be worrisome"
And that too she should have rephrased to:
"if we're beginning to observe them more frequently than in the past,
it is a sign of global warming".

People just do not understand statistics and probability, and even
scientists have very great difficulty talking about them.

Sigh.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Ice

... "The odds that natural
variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small.
To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the
lottery every morning to pay the bills."...

Yes, I have always thought that the scientists were far too timid
and cautious. They are driven by peer opinions, so if they make a
wrong statement then their careers are severely damaged. Hence
they will only go for what is proved. However, they all know the
situation is far, far, worse than they can scientifically prove.
So they are not as outspoken as they should be.
This is bad in one sense. Yet if they were more outspoken
and then even a tiny detail is wrong, the global warming deniers will
just have won the entire argument.
:-(

I think we have loused up the planet, and while I will freely
admit that Europe loused up the world with the wars of the 20th
century, the US is lousing up the world now, with denial of global
warming. (so are the Chinese and the Indians)

So... what to do to survive? I think we'll soon see massive
catastrophes. Billions of people dying. I give it another
ten years before all hell breaks loose.

I just returned to Doha from 2 weeks in
Palestine for a vacation.

Sounds good.

Many checkpoints, some of the worst in
the West Bank actually, were dismantled. But now the Israeli military
sets up flying checkpoints in random places and at random times to
train their new soldiers on West Bank protocol.

It's a mess. Anyone who has not understood that the State
of Israel is the cause of all the troubles in the Middle East and much
of Islamic fundamentalism, just has no brains. These guys just
keep building and annexing and creating fait-accomplis. And they
get away with it each time.

... These are Bedouin communities made of
tents and the people have nothing but some animals for
income.

It's difficult when the adversary has all the power of the West
behind them.

Many of my friends said that the Israelis
are planning to officially annex Area C soon, and then what's left
will be the future "state" of Palestine. If they do that, it
will probably start the 3rd Intifada because what's left will be
isolated 'bantustans' of Area A land that aren't contiguous and won't
really control their borders completely.

Absolutely. But anytime one dares to say anything against
Israel they are accused of antisemitism. Did you see the stuff
about the German state that declared that circumcision was bodily harm
done to minors? Immediately the rabbis cried "Shoah"
(which is of course irrelevant, but Judaism is extremely good at
mixing everything with everything). And of course the Muslims
advanced the argument of religious freedom. And of course
circumcision *IS* bodily harm done to non-consenting minors. Or
rather minors who even do not yet have the awareness to be consenting
or non-consenting. Religious freedom? For the mutilated
little kids? Those kids have no religious freedom whatever.
(*)

Anyways... lots happening over
there.

Yes. And the temperature is rising too.

Well, I'm going to watch "University Challenge" in half
an hour. Some fun at least.

Robert.

(*) there is also the argument of enhanced sexual pleasure.
But how can that be measured? How many men have had a great sex
life before circumcision, then had it done and then had another great
time with sex? Only those have any right to talk about it.
Similar to the crap (sorry, "well-founded opinion") that
meat from ritually slaughtered animals is so much better. I have
eaten both, and I can testify that badly cooked bad meat is badly
cooked bad meat, and good meat is good meat, irrespective of how it
was killed. But those who argue in favur are usually those who
have not even had non-halal or non-kosher meat. So they are
talking about it in the same way the Pope is talking about marital
sex.
Bah. I'm getting carried away again.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:28:23 +0300
Subject: RE: Ice

Hi,

Summary of world news: fuel crises, droughts, food prices up/world-wide food riots predicted, war mongering that could possibly lead to WWIII, floods, extreme weather....

Ughh...

That makes sense what you said about scientists not wanting to risk their reputation on something they are not 100% sure about... but at the same time, we need something to wake up the world. Something strong enough so that people pressure the people making millions and billions and trillions off of the oil and natural gas industry to stop/switch to green and renewable energy. They can make money there too can't they?? What is their deal?

So, I agree with your 10 year theory... except I don't expect it to take that long! I think things are going to start accelerating rapidly downhill soon. We are just seeing the rumbles at this point of something really big. But then there are the people who say, "Oh everyone thinks their time is "especially bad" and that they will see the end of the world! How are we any different?!"

What would you say to those people? I mean, I would start with the environmental damage we have inflicted since the Industrial 'Revolution' as being completely unprecedented. We used up most of the oil we could find in about 100 years - oil that has taken billions (?) of years to accumulate... and we used it that fast. That's definitely strange, unprecedented.

The extreme weather... it seems obvious to me, I don't really know what to say to people who deny it.

I think the fact that we have consolidated power into larger and larger nation-states means increased ability to do some real damage to people, and the fact that we have nuclear weapons and chemical weapons - all of which are more destructive than anything I have heard about.

Another factor is the homogenization of the world. Diversity is an evolutionary tactic, we should be as diverse as possible as a species in terms of what we eat, how we live, etc... that way if one way of life collapses there are still other options. But now we are moving towards all living the same way - a very destruction of the earth-intensive way.... that will inevitably collapse as we destroy the environment.

That means MASS deaths because everyone's trying to live the same way. Exceptions being some rural villagers/tribal societies....

On a slightly related note, have you heard of the Bilderberg Group? New World Order and all that good stuff.... their plan is to (at some point in the near future) convince the world that its better to all live under ONE government/leadership/monetary system.

What would world leaders/elite have to do to make that happen? Mass chaos and destruction to the point where people would "need" them to come in and create order.

David Rockefeller (A member of Bilderberg) Sept. 23, 1994: "This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long — We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."

What do you think? Too conspiratorial?

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 9:33 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Ice

>... "The odds that natural variability created these extremes are
>minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like
>quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the
>bills."...

Yes, I have always thought that the scientists were far too timid and
cautious. They are driven by peer opinions, so if they make a wrong
statement then their careers are severely damaged.  Hence they will
only go for what is proved.  However, they all know the situation is
far, far, worse than they can scientifically prove.  So they are not
as outspoken as they should be.
This is bad in one sense.  Yet if they were more outspoken and then
even a tiny detail is wrong, the global warming deniers will just
have won the entire argument.
:-(

I think we have loused up the planet, and while I will freely admit
that Europe loused up the world with the wars of the 20th century,
the US is lousing up the world now, with denial of global warming.
(so are the Chinese and the Indians)

So... what to do to survive?  I think we'll soon see massive
catastrophes.  Billions of people dying.  I give it another ten years
before all hell breaks loose.

>I just returned to Doha from 2 weeks in Palestine for a vacation.

Sounds good.

>Many checkpoints, some of the worst in the West Bank actually, were
>dismantled. But now the Israeli military sets up flying checkpoints
>in random places and at random times to train their new soldiers on
>West Bank protocol.

It's a mess.  Anyone who has not understood that the State of Israel
is the cause of all the troubles in the Middle East and much of
Islamic fundamentalism, just has no brains.  These guys just keep
building and annexing and creating fait-accomplis.  And they get away
with it each time.

>... These are Bedouin communities made of tents and the people have
>nothing but some animals for income.

It's difficult when the adversary has all the power of the West behind them.

>Many of my friends said that the Israelis are planning to officially
>annex Area C soon, and then what's left will be the future "state"
>of Palestine. If they do that, it will probably start the 3rd
>Intifada because what's left will be isolated 'bantustans' of Area A
>land that aren't contiguous and won't really control their borders
>completely.

Absolutely.  But anytime one dares to say anything against Israel
they are accused of antisemitism.  Did you see the stuff about the
German state that declared that circumcision was bodily harm done to
minors?  Immediately the rabbis cried "Shoah" (which is of course
irrelevant, but Judaism is extremely good at mixing everything with
everything).  And of course the Muslims advanced the argument of
religious freedom.  And of course circumcision *IS* bodily harm done
to non-consenting minors.  Or rather minors who even do not yet have
the awareness to be consenting or non-consenting.  Religious freedom?
For the mutilated little kids?  Those kids have no religious freedom
whatever. (*)

>Anyways... lots happening over there.

Yes.  And the temperature is rising too.

Well, I'm going to watch "University Challenge" in half an hour.
Some fun at least.

Robert.

(*) there is also the argument of enhanced sexual pleasure.  But how
can that be measured?  How many men have had a great sex life before
circumcision, then had it done and then had another great time with
sex?  Only those have any right to talk about it.  Similar to the
crap (sorry, "well-founded opinion") that meat from ritually
slaughtered animals is so much better.  I have eaten both, and I can
testify that badly cooked bad meat is badly cooked bad meat, and good
meat is good meat, irrespective of how it was killed.  But those who
argue in favur are usually those who have not even had non-halal or
non-kosher meat.  So they are talking about it in the same way the
Pope is talking about marital sex.
Bah.  I'm getting carried away again.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Ice

Hi,

Summary of world news: fuel crises, droughts, food prices
up/world-wide food riots predicted, war mongering that could possibly
lead to WWIII, floods, extreme weather....

Ughh...

Yes.
That's why ten years ago I tried to find a place on the planet to
survive these storms.
Could not find one though.

That makes sense what you said about
scientists not wanting to risk their reputation on something they are
not 100% sure about...

It is a very unfortunate thing that they are generally so bad at
communication.

but at the same time, we need
something to wake up the world. Something strong enough so that people
pressure the people making millions and billions and trillions off of
the oil and natural gas industry to stop/switch to green and renewable
energy. They can make money there too can't they?? What is their
deal?

I agree, but short of a very bloody revolution in which about
half the people die, it seems there is not much hope.

So, I agree with your 10 year theory...
except I don't expect it to take that long!

And I thought I was pessimistic.

I think things are going to start
accelerating rapidly downhill soon. We are just seeing the rumbles at
this point of something really big. But then there are the people who
say, "Oh everyone thinks their time is "especially bad"
and that they will see the end of the world! How are we any
different?!"

Quite.

What would you say to those people? I
mean, I would start with the environmental damage we have inflicted
since the Industrial 'Revolution' as being completely
unprecedented.

Nice phrase. May I use it in my talks?

We used up most of the oil we could
find in about 100 years - oil that has taken billions (?)

No, but hundreds of millions. A factor ten less.

of years to accumulate... and we
used it that fast. That's definitely strange,
unprecedented.

Indeed. I remember my professor of organic chemistry making
remarks about it, and that was 1966.

The extreme weather... it seems obvious
to me, I don't really know what to say to people who deny
it.

You can't say anything. I think it's a waste of time.
One just has to do things instead, concentrate on results, and avoid
arguments with deniers.

I just read an article in Scientific American (or was it New
Scientist?) which gives a very simple calculation. It goes like
this:
In our temperate zones there is a drop of 5¼C in the average
temperature for about every 800km you go North. (being a good
scientist, I checked this by looking up average temperatures for
Porthsmouth in the south of the UK and for places in Scotland in the
North; and it is indeed 5 degrees and they are approx. 800km
apart).
If the average temperature goes up by 5¼C but it takes a
century to do so, then all the environmental conditions move north by
800km. Animals and plants that need colder climes will have to
migrate North.
Fine, but 800km in a century is 8km per year or 8000metres per
year or 22metres PER DAY. The article said that squirrels might
be able to keep up with that, but oaks and earthmorms could not.
I think neither could ants. Bees might just do it: if they
make a nest one year, then the next year they have to fly 8km north to
build the next nest. But I don't know if it works that
way.
There are other effects though: Switzerland has
"marmottes", a kind of ground burrowing rodent that is
cuddly and toy marmottes are sold as stuffed animals for kids or for
tourists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot
However, because they prefer the cold mountains, they are now all
doomed: to get from one moutain to another, they have to travel
down the valley and then up again. The valleys are now too hot,
so they stay on their moutains. It's much like the sea rising
and the land becoming split into islands. So all populations are
now disconnected, inbreeding and going down rapidly.
Etc.

I think the fact that we have
consolidated power into larger and larger nation-states means
increased ability to do some real damage to people, and the fact that
we have nuclear weapons and chemical weapons - all of which are more
destructive than anything I have heard about.

Correct. Too large states and not quite a world state yet.
(According to Star Trek policy of the United Federation of
Planets, a planet must first have achieved a single global government
before it can apply for membership in the Federation).
The United Nations was a good attempt, but unfortunately it is
genuinely supported only by the smaller states. The big ones
don't like it: Russia, the US, China)

Another factor is the homogenization of
the world. Diversity is an evolutionary tactic,

Is it? I'd like to hear your argument.

we should be as diverse as possible
as a species in terms of what we eat, how we live, etc... that way if
one way of life collapses there are still other options.

This has indeed been put forward, but I'm not sure I believe it
is true. or rather,... see below:

But now we are moving towards all
living the same way - a very destruction of the earth-intensive
way.... that will inevitably collapse as we destroy the
environment.

I think there are two different mechanisms possible for dealing
with change: one is to observe the change and modify ways of
living accordingly. That is what most migrating peoples have
done over history. The other is to cramp up and stubbornly stick
to "traditional" ways, denying the necessity for change.
To my knowledge all societies who did that perished.
Your solution of diversity proposes implicitly that people
normally cramp up, and therefore when change comes most societies die,
leaving only those who by coincidence have the right way of life to
cope with the change.
But to survive the next change, the survivors of the first have
to diversify fast, before that next change hits.
That is the slow mechanism of evolution.
I agree it is one method, but is it not rather a sad method, that
denies that we can think. Some of us anyway.
Perhaps what will really happen is that the long-term thinkers
and most aware, ingenious people will survive and the cramped deniers
will perish?
Then we would have another step in evolution of the human
species.

That means MASS deaths because everyone's
trying to live the same way. Exceptions being some rural
villagers/tribal societies....

Curiously, another article in the September issue of Scientific
American argues the same: if we run out of resources, will we fall
back to tribal societies and endless wars?
Note: the September issue is always an issue with a single
theme. this one is interesting and perhaps you should buy it.
Its cover is grey, with the title "Beyond the Limits of
Science". It just arrived in the post yesterday and I have
not read it all.

On a slightly related note, have you
heard of the Bilderberg Group? New World Order and all that good
stuff.... their plan is to (at some point in the near future) convince
the world that its better to all live under ONE
government/leadership/monetary system.

As said, we need that before we can apply to the United
Federation of Planets, and we will not be allowed to travel outside
our solar system before wwe have achieved it. ;-)

David Rockefeller (A member of
Bilderberg) Sept. 23, 1994: "This present window of opportunity,
during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be
built, will not be open for too long Ñ We are on the verge of a
global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the
nations will accept the New World Order."

What do you think? Too
conspiratorial?

Good intention. However, between the lines I can see a perverse,
subconscious urge: to create that major crisis on purpose in order to
achieve the goal. It has been attempted before.
Dangerous.

The end result is however necessary. Problem is who will be
the police?

We have been attempting a mini-version of that in Europe after
WW2. But it is difficult, and after 60 years still very much a
work in progress.
:-|

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Re: Hey!

Hi,

How are you?

I just saw that Al Jazeera TV did an
interview with you! Awesome!

You must have had a hand in it I suppose.
(where/how can I see it??)

Now, I have met several Al Jazeera journalists, and they are
invariably women.
Here is Charlie Angela and the cameraman Ben Mitchell:

They are standing in front of a display that includes the
replica/twin of the original first web server.
The picture was taken in the CERN computing centre, where in fact
the web development never was.
Somehow journalists always come to CERN with their mind made up
that it all happened in the computing centre.
So I took them to all the relevant places, but they had to go see
the centre. Fine, I obliged.
And we did the interview there. I do admit that the
original web server is now in the "globe" and displayed in a
totally ridiculous way, unsuited for shooting, so the replica in the
computing centre reception hall was better as a background.

It was quite surprising to me that "Charlie" is the
first name of a girl, and "Angela" her family name.
But that probably shows my age more than anything else.

They arrived roughly at 13:00, and I took them back to the
airport by 18:00. They did not see much of CERN, but the
encounter was very nice (at least, it was to me!).

So, with you, Jessica Baldwin and Charlie Angela I now have a
sample of 3 females out of three.
But that is good. I have always thought that women are more
powerful than men in many ways. With my wife, three daughters
and a granddaughter, I am perhaps biased.

(BTW: this is Nora, the granddaughter, when she was a few
months old. You can already see the full attention,
determination, and perhaps stubbornness as well:

You are not going to fool this kid!
I love her, she is very sweet, but at 3.5 years now, also a
manipulator and intelligent.
We are great accomplices.
Future Al Jazeera investigator?
:)

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Hey!, etc.

At 3:23 PM +0000 12/13/12, Renee Lewis wrote:
Just saw this, they put me on the global
email list so I now receive hundreds of emails every day and most of
the time I don't have the patience to sort through
thoroughly...

You can make "filters" so that mail arrives
automatically in a special mailbox reserved for it, then you can look
at that when you want. You can even filter inside that
too.

I saw your interview! Very cool! I just
uploaded it to our YouTube channel so it can be more widely viewed for
those who don't get Al Jazeera English on TV.
Here's the link: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzJvXFsno8Y

Ah, yes, thanks, I saw it, but it's true that I saw this message
only after the earlier one, and I responded to the earlier one first
to get the link.
Thanks.

Shows that I too do not go through everyhting
consecutively...

Will send you a photo of myself soon to
be fair!

:)
Here is one of hte entire family (which I may have sent before, I
don't remember)

from left to right: me, my daughter Ariane, my wife Susan, her
daughter Sophie, granddaughter Nora-the-devil, and finally Nora's
mother Stéphanie, the second daughter of Susan.

R.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Hey!, etc.

I have tried to make filters but I think
I need to bring IT down to help me figure it out ;)
hahaha

IT? You manage to get help from IT?

I have a couple of photos
attached...

Thanks. I find it difficult to chat with someone if I have
no clue what they are like.

You have a great looking family! And I
can see what you mean about your granddaughter ;) She will be fun as a
teenager!

Here she is when she was only a few months old:

No way your'e going to fool that kid.
But she is usually sweet:

And I let her do too many things, at least when she was very
little, like walking on my desk:

She loves airplanes but her mother would never let her go up with
me:

Voilˆ. (I guess you can sense she has a very proud
grandfather, even if he is not at all genetically connected.)

Thanks,
Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Hey!

Hi,

How are you?

I just saw that Al Jazeera TV did an interview with you! Awesome!

Hope you are doing well!

Renee Lewis

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Hello!
Thread-Topic: Hello!

Hi,

How's it going?

Just saw this, they put me on the global email list so I now receive hundreds of emails every day and most of the time I don't have the patience to sort through thoroughly...

I saw your interview! Very cool! I just uploaded it to our YouTube channel so it can be more widely viewed for those who don't get Al Jazeera English on TV.

Here's the link: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzJvXFsno8Y

Will send you a photo of myself soon to be fair!

Renee Lewis

From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2012 10:36 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Hello!

How's it going?

Very hectic... Hence very late reply.

Check this out: 
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120625-sea-level-rise-east-coast-us-science-nature-climate-change/

(When I posted this on Facebook, I got a comment from a friend saying its because Americans are becoming so obese that when they go in the ocean they cause the rise... if only!)

Well, it's not far off I think.
;)

However, I just read that the quickest rise we can expect is 1m per century. But... those calculations are based on fossil measurements of what happened after the last ice age. That took a long time, whereas the current melting of Greenland and Antarctica
 is much much faster. So I don't believe this: I think we're in for 1m per decade, and "real soon now".

BTW, one of your colleagues has asked for an interview for Al Jazeera on Wednesday. About the ITU conference currently going on in Dubai. I don't know too much about it, but she thought I was interesting enough to send a reporter to CERN.
I will say a few things, and then point out that the climate conference in Doha is much more important.
It is in fact strange that it is easier to stir up interest for internet governance than for global warming. Sigh.

About the floods in the UK we had a similar, yet opposite, experience this summer in the Northwest US... all of Washington state was on fire while I was back home with my family in SE Washington. There were several large fires that merged
 into one superfire - at which point humans can't do anything about it but try to contain it with fire lines.

Indeed. Well, we could if we had Star Trek type technology.

I think the fires are getting more and more intense because humans don't allow natural burning of the underbrush because we want to control everything. So the underbrush gets thicker and thicker and then when summer comes around and
 a fire starts there's an unnatural amount of fuel so the fire gets massive.

That is indeed one of the reasons.

... like parsley has become a garnish now, but people used to put it on their food for a reason - because it helps with digestion... now its just a decoration and we hardly even eat it

I hate parsley. I love chervil.
(but I digress too)

Especially because we now have such a big population as humans, if we all try to live the same way it will completely overwhelm the earth... which we are already seeing. Its because the way most people want to live these days is the
 American/Western model of consuming and consuming and consuming... so its a bad way and now everyone's doing it.

The root of it is the monetary system. Because of automated production goods are cheaper to produce and the margin of profit falls. Yet you need just as much for certain other things such as housing or medical services. So we need to comsume more and
 more in order to still get the profit to pay for those non-automated things. We need to find a way to change the value of, say, paper towels, so that they cost a lot more than they do. But it is difficult except by regulations.

Have you heard of the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn? He talks about the "takers" versus "leavers"...
Our civilization is made of Takers... and Tribal/Indigenous people are the leavers.

It's more complicated than that, but it certainly began like that. Most of us now are takers.
I had not heard of Quinn. Looking up the Wikipedia article I was amused to read "he underwent two unsuccessful marriages". I'm undergoing my marriage? Interesting view, I'm sure my wife does not agree.
I also noted he wanted to become a Trappist monk but failed. He certainly is an "original" if not quite eccentric.

... Tribal people lived in a relative balance with the environment and at least understood the impact on the environment of what they did...

Yes, though tribes were also constantly at war with each other. It was not peaceful. And certainly not comfortable.

He also discusses tribal wars. ... So maybe a couple would die but it wasn't thousands or millions dying in these tribal wars.

A "couple". Say two in a tribe of 100. That's 2%.
In WWII there were 2.5% causalties. Does not sound very different to me.

Tribal systems are closer to animal societies. They dont kill for fun, they kill when they are hungry and eat everything. If a lion came up to an impala and wasn't hungry, he might practice pouncing on it and play around with it but
 it wouldn't kill it in most cases.

Have you seen this happen?

Anyways, Daniel Quinn's books are really good in my opinion. Almost like an alien view of our 'modern civilization' and not a nice view either. One of his other books called Story of B is about the institutionalized religions that came
 along with civilization... the main character is a priest who is sent to investigate a man who the church thinks is the anti-Christ.

Not to speak of what goes on in the much more dangerous monotheism of Islam.

Very interesting books...

Indeed. They at least put some existing stuff into a very new perspective. (which is what I also appreciated in Star Trek)

Hopefully I answered the questions that you meant...

Some indeed.

The one I'm most curious about is to know what you look like, since you know what I look like. :)

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Hey!

Hi,

Sent it to you earlier but here it is again :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F40xUfMX1zw

Renee Lewis

From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 10:38 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Re: Hey!

Hi,

How are you?

I just saw that Al Jazeera TV did an interview with you! Awesome!

You must have had a hand in it I suppose.
(where/how can I see it??)

Now, I have met several Al Jazeera journalists, and they are invariably women.
Here is Charlie Angela and the cameraman Ben Mitchell:

They are standing in front of a display that includes the replica/twin of the original first web server.
The picture was taken in the CERN computing centre, where in fact the web development never was.
Somehow journalists always come to CERN with their mind made up that it all happened in the computing centre.
So I took them to all the relevant places, but they had to go see the centre. Fine, I obliged.
And we did the interview there. I do admit that the original web server is now in the "globe" and displayed in a totally ridiculous way, unsuited for shooting, so the replica in the computing centre reception hall was better as a background.

It was quite surprising to me that "Charlie" is the first name of a girl, and "Angela" her family name.
But that probably shows my age more than anything else.

They arrived roughly at 13:00, and I took them back to the airport by 18:00. They did not see much of CERN, but the encounter was very nice (at least, it was to me!).

So, with you, Jessica Baldwin and Charlie Angela I now have a sample of 3 females out of three.
But that is good. I have always thought that women are more powerful than men in many ways. With my wife, three daughters and a granddaughter, I am perhaps biased.

(BTW: this is Nora, the granddaughter, when she was a few months old. You can already see the full attention, determination, and perhaps stubbornness as well:

You are not going to fool this kid!
I love her, she is very sweet, but at 3.5 years now, also a manipulator and intelligent.
We are great accomplices.
Future Al Jazeera investigator?
:)

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Hey!, etc.

Hi,

How's it going?

I have tried to make filters but I think I need to bring IT down to help me figure it out ;) hahaha

I have a couple of photos attached, don't have many recent ones so they are random!

The first is at my cousins wedding last spring:

Left to Right: Sister (Rachel) Brother in law (Kole) Sister (Teri) Cousin (Liz) and her husband Eric, Mom, Dad, then me

The second photo was just a few days ago at a hotel restaurant here in Doha with a friend of mine, EJ

You have a great looking family! And I can see what you mean about your granddaughter ;) She will be fun as a teenager!

Renee Lewis

From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 11:48 AM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Hey!, etc.

Just saw this, they put me on the global email list so I now receive hundreds of emails every day and most of the time I don't have the patience to sort through thoroughly...

You can make "filters" so that mail arrives automatically in a special mailbox reserved for it, then you can look at that when you want. You can even filter inside that too.

I saw your interview! Very cool! I just uploaded it to our YouTube channel so it can be more widely viewed for those who don't get Al Jazeera English on TV.
Here's the link: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzJvXFsno8Y

Ah, yes, thanks, I saw it, but it's true that I saw this message only after the earlier one, and I responded to the earlier one first to get the link.
Thanks.

Shows that I too do not go through everyhting consecutively...

Will send you a photo of myself soon to be fair!

:)
Here is one of hte entire family (which I may have sent before, I don't remember)

from left to right: me, my daughter Ariane, my wife Susan, her daughter Sophie, granddaughter Nora-the-devil, and finally Nora's mother Stéphanie, the second daughter of Susan.

R.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Photos

 I should have added that you all look brilliant, and far much younger than I had thought.

R.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Hello!

Hi,

How's it going? 

Check this out: 
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120625-sea-level-rise-east-coast-us-science-nature-climate-change/

(When I posted this on Facebook, I got a comment from a friend saying its because Americans are becoming so obese that when they go in the ocean they cause the rise... if only!)

Thanks for the link about Heinrich events... makes sense and is VERY scary. Considering that ice in the northern hemisphere is disappearing fast, faster than they even thought it could!

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/arctic-ice.htm

And some of the current satellite images compared to what they expected:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

About the floods in the UK we had a similar, yet opposite, experience this summer in the Northwest US... all of Washington state was on fire while I was back home with my family in SE Washington. There were several large fires that merged into one superfire
 - at which point humans can't do anything about it but try to contain it with fire lines.

I think the fires are getting more and more intense because humans don't allow natural burning of the underbrush because we want to control everything. So the underbrush gets thicker and thicker and then when summer comes around and a fire starts there's an
 unnatural amount of fuel so the fire gets massive.

I like the human-triggered disasters term... because I think most of what we call natural disasters are human triggered because we are so out of whack with the earth in these times. Our progressing 'civilization' is so unnatural, from the little things like
 how we eat (choosing foods separate from their function and purpose, as opposed to eating food and treating it like medicine... like parsley has become a garnish now, but people used to put it on their food for a reason - because it helps with digestion...
 now its just a decoration and we hardly even eat it).

But I digress...

I don't know which questions you meant when you said there were some unanswered. I did see a couple though so hopefully they are what you were talking about.

>What would you say to those people? I mean, I 
>would start with the environmental damage we 
>have inflicted since the Industrial 'Revolution' 
>as being completely unprecedented.

Nice phrase. May I use it in my talks?

Yep!

>Diversity as an evolutionary tactic?

Especially because we now have such a big population as humans, if we all try to live the same way it will completely overwhelm the earth... which we are already seeing. Its because the way most people want to live these days is the American/Western model of
 consuming and consuming and consuming... so its a bad way and now everyone's doing it.

If it was just one country that chose a dangerous path they would be the ones who face the consequences and the rest would live on. But now, its spreading around the world... and since its a bad way to live (earth-wise, health-wise...) and everyone wants to
 live that way we will meet the limit soon and collapse in my opinion. Then it will just be small tribes and indigenous people left that never assimilated into this "civilization" - thats IF the earth is still habitable at that point...

>Falling into tribal societies and endless wars...

Have you heard of the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn? He talks about the "takers" versus "leavers"...

Our civilization is made of Takers... and Tribal/Indigenous people are the leavers.

I dont think that our civilization and the direction its going is good for the earth or humans... we take more than we need and don't think about the consequences. Tribal people lived in a relative balance with the environment and at least understood the impact
 on the environment of what they did... they had a whole different mindset on their relationship with the earth. They thought about the next generations and leaving enough for them. Many civilized people dont even think about leaving enough for their own friends/family...

He also discusses tribal wars. Although they may have been more frequent they were not as intense and destructive. Basically they would spar with neighboring tribes every once in a while just to remind them of the unmarked borders and to prove the other tribe
 couldn't come in to their land without a fight.

So maybe a couple would die but it wasn't thousands or millions dying in these tribal wars. Tribal systems are closer to animal societies. They dont kill for fun, they kill when they are hungry and eat everything. If a lion came up to an impala and wasn't hungry,
 he might practice pouncing on it and play around with it but it wouldn't kill it in most cases.

Anyways, Daniel Quinn's books are really good in my opinion. Almost like an alien view of our 'modern civilization' and not a nice view either. One of his other books called Story of B is about the institutionalized religions that came along with civilization...
 the main character is a priest who is sent to investigate a man who the church thinks is the anti-Christ.

So the priest goes to all this guy's talks and by the end he ends up agreeing with what this guy says (very anti-organized religion but not necessarily anti-spirituality) and that he is the anti-Christ but thats not a bad thing....

Very interesting books...

Hopefully I answered the questions that you meant...

Renee Lewis

From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 11:18 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Re: Hello!

How are you?

Well, and you?

I'm back in Doha again with Al Jazeera after a break back in the US spending time with my family...

I just came across this article saying that groundwater extraction can cause earthquakes:

http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/3665-earthquake-triggered-by-humans.html

It made me wonder what else *(besides fracking... already know about that one...) we do that causes natural disasters.
What do you think?

Yes, certainly extracting groundwater at rates higher than it can be replenished can (will) cause earthquakes. Plausible, no?

Global warming -> ice shelf danger of Heinrich events
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event)
When I learned of those, I really got frightened.

The recent floods in the UK were predicted more than a decade ago as the plausible effect of drying up floodplains. And then building on them (which is why they were dried up in the first place) of course makes victims as soon as there is a lot of water
 that the plain will no longer absorb. But nobody listened of course.

In fact these disasters should not be called natural disasters, but human-triggered disasters.

I believe the dust-bowl disasters in the US were also human triggered.

The current ecological state of Greece finds its origin in severe deforestation about two millennia ago (unless I am remembering something wrongly).

Switzerland stopped all deep geothermal drilling (the Basel experiment) because of possible earthquakes.

As Kurt Vonnegut would have said: "and on and on".

Robert.

PS: Note that in previous messages there are some of my questions you have left unanswered. :)

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Hello!

How's it going?

Very hectic... Hence very late reply.

Check this out: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120625-sea-level-rise-east-coast-us-science-nature-climate-change/

(When I posted this on Facebook, I got a comment from a friend saying
its because Americans are becoming so obese that when they go in the
ocean they cause the rise... if only!)

Well, it's not far off I think.
;)

However, I just read that the quickest rise we can expect is 1m
per century. But... those calculations are based on fossil
measurements of what happened after the last ice age. That took
a long time, whereas the current melting of Greenland and Antarctica
is much much faster. So I don't believe this: I think
we're in for 1m per decade, and "real soon now".

BTW, one of your colleagues has asked for an interview for Al
Jazeera on Wednesday. About the ITU conference currently going
on in Dubai. I don't know too much about it, but she thought I
was interesting enough to send a reporter to CERN.
I will say a few things, and then point out that the climate
conference in Doha is much more important.
It is in fact strange that it is easier to stir up interest for
internet governance than for global warming. Sigh.

About the floods in the UK we had a
similar, yet opposite, experience this summer in the Northwest US...
all of Washington state was on fire while I was back home with my
family in SE Washington. There were several large fires that merged
into one superfire - at which point humans can't do anything about it
but try to contain it with fire lines.

Indeed. Well, we could if we had Star Trek type
technology.

I think the fires are getting more and
more intense because humans don't allow natural burning of the
underbrush because we want to control everything. So the underbrush
gets thicker and thicker and then when summer comes around and a fire
starts there's an unnatural amount of fuel so the fire gets
massive.

That is indeed one of the reasons.

... like parsley has become a garnish
now, but people used to put it on their food for a reason - because it
helps with digestion... now its just a decoration and we hardly even
eat it

I hate parsley. I love chervil.
(but I digress too)

Especially because we now have such a big
population as humans, if we all try to live the same way it will
completely overwhelm the earth... which we are already seeing. Its
because the way most people want to live these days is the
American/Western model of consuming and consuming and consuming... so
its a bad way and now everyone's doing it.

The root of it is the monetary system. Because of automated
production goods are cheaper to produce and the margin of profit
falls. Yet you need just as much for certain other things such
as housing or medical services. So we need to comsume more and
more in order to still get the profit to pay for those non-automated
things. We need to find a way to change the value of, say, paper
towels, so that they cost a lot more than they do. But it is
difficult except by regulations.

Have you heard of the book Ishmael by
Daniel Quinn? He talks about the "takers" versus
"leavers"...
Our civilization is made of Takers... and Tribal/Indigenous people are
the leavers.

It's more complicated than that, but it certainly began like that.
Most of us now are takers.
I had not heard of Quinn. Looking up the Wikipedia article
I was amused to read "he underwent two unsuccessful
marriages". I'm undergoing my marriage? Interesting
view, I'm sure my wife does not agree.
I also noted he wanted to become a Trappist monk but failed.
He certainly is an "original" if not quite eccentric.

... Tribal people lived in a relative
balance with the environment and at least understood the impact on the
environment of what they did...

Yes, though tribes were also constantly at war with each other.
It was not peaceful. And certainly not comfortable.

He also discusses tribal wars. ... So
maybe a couple would die but it wasn't thousands or millions dying in
these tribal wars.

A "couple". Say two in a tribe of 100. That's
2%.
In WWII there were 2.5% causalties. Does not sound very
different to me.

Tribal systems are closer to animal
societies. They dont kill for fun, they kill when they are hungry and
eat everything. If a lion came up to an impala and wasn't hungry, he
might practice pouncing on it and play around with it but it wouldn't
kill it in most cases.

Have you seen this happen?

Anyways, Daniel Quinn's books are really
good in my opinion. Almost like an alien view of our 'modern
civilization' and not a nice view either. One of his other books
called Story of B is about the institutionalized religions that came
along with civilization... the main character is a priest who is sent
to investigate a man who the church thinks is the
anti-Christ.

Not to speak of what goes on in the much more dangerous
monotheism of Islam.

Very interesting books...

Indeed. They at least put some existing stuff into a very
new perspective. (which is what I also appreciated in Star Trek)

Hopefully I answered the questions that
you meant...

Some indeed.

The one I'm most curious about is to know what you look like,
since you know what I look like. :)

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Happy New Years!

Hi,

How are you?

Just wanted to wish you a Happy New Year! Hope you are celebrating with family and friends :)

I am at work on the night shift, have watched a few New Years celebrations starting from Australia already and will be celebrating with my news desk colleagues with a shot of espresso at midnight :)

Renee Lewis

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Re: Happy New Years!

Just wanted to wish you a Happy New Year!
Hope you are celebrating with family and friends :)

Nora & her mother have just left yesterday after a week here
(exhausting!). Unfortunately the poor kid contracted chickenpox
a few days before coming, you can still see some spots:

As I expected, the illness did not at all affect her liveliness
and energy. So we were exhausted when she left and need to
recuperate now...
;-)

I am at work on the night shift, have
watched a few New Years celebrations starting from Australia already
and will be celebrating with my news desk colleagues with a shot of
espresso at midnight :)

Have fun.
It's really stupid, is it not, to celebrate the new year in this
way:

(a) at different times on the planet,
(b) at the same time in each time zone, whereby time zones have
rather arbitrary contours,
(c) at some arbitrary day of the year, when the actual passing of
the Earth through one of the important points of its orbit was ten
days ago, the difference being accumulated by various historic
accidents and political/religious manipulations.

As Spock of Star Trek would say: "You (Earthlings) are
after all essentially irrational."

Have fun, say hello to anyone I know,

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Picture in wishes
Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2012 15:01:16 +0000

Awesome!

Happy Holidays!

Renee Lewis

From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2012 10:48 PM
Subject: Picture in wishes

Dear all,

some of you have queried about the picture of the woman at the bottom left in the solstice wishes:

I myself do not(yet) read Arabic, and I suppose most of you do not either.
It says: "Uprising of Women in the Arab World".

I forgot to include the relevant link:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=501327303231431&set=a.279290865435077.72328.279245495439614&type=1&theater

(glide the pointer over the picture, a left and right arrow appear and you can click through a number of pictures.)

It is this movement that was the cause of my optimism.

:-)

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Happy New Years!
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 08:45:54 +0000

Hi,

How are you?

It's been a while! Hope everything is good with you in Europe... been pretty cold lately, odd isn't it?

Also the stuff about Cyprus going on right now is pretty interesting... making the people bail out the banks, literally taking money from their savings accounts. I have a Cypriot friend who said he will lose about 2,000 euros if they don't change the tax rate
 they already stated for accounts with less than 100,000 euros (6.7%).

Now, with all of the backlash, the ministers are trying to lower that rate by half and raise the rate for those with more than 100,000 to about 12% from 9.9. Headed in the right direction but I think the rich peoples' tax rate should be more like 30% ... kind
 of like it used to be in the US before Reagan when the rich people paid even more than that and our country was not buried in debt like today.

But overall, I think that Cypriots should reject this idea flat out and follow Iceland's lead and say they will not bail out the banks for the banks' own greed. Apparently, Cypriot banks were buying up Greek bonds before the crash like crazy and that's the
 main reason why they are failing now. So why should someone have to lose part of their life savings because of that??

Iceland is doing quite well now I think, the rebuilt the financial institutions from scratch and replaced the leaders who thought the people should have to pay for the banks' mistakes. I wonder why no one made a big deal out of Iceland... even Al Jazeera didn't
 cover it much as I recall. A few features or op-eds every now and then but compared to what the people accomplished there we didn't do much to promote it.

Things are good here in Doha... I am waiting to hear about a job with Al Jazeera America at the moment. I hope to get the job and transfer to San Francisco, although NYC and DC are also places they might place me if I get the job. I would really rather not
 live in either of those cities though, and since my family is in Washington state on the West coast I'd rather be there. I should hear back in a week or two about that...

I also just got back from a vacation to Palestine. I think I told you I worked there for 2 years before I came to Al Jazeera in Doha. I went at the end of February when there was a lot of protesting and talk of a 'third Intifada' going around. The last intifada
 ended in 2005, and thousands of Palestinians died... 

The Israeli military pretty much flattened the West Bank and of course some Palestinian militant groups did suicide attacks in Israel, I think they lost a couple hundred people during that time. Its not necessarily a good thing if a new Intifada starts for
 either side, but at the same time maintaining the status quo, for Palestinians, just means they will continue to lose land, rights and continue to be under a brutal military occupation....

The protests recently have been about the Palestinian prisoners who are on hunger strike in protest of Israel's policy of 'administrative detention' - meaning Israel can indefinitely detain any Palestinian without trial or charges or even evidence. Samer Issawi
 has been on an on and off hunger strike for almost 250 days - on and off because at times he was force fed by the military doctors... he was released in the 2011 Prisoner Swap deal where Israel released over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners (and hundreds bodies
 of prisoners who died in prison over the decades that they were holding on to to further anger and intimidate...) in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Samer Issawi (along with about a dozen others who were released in the deal) were rearrested soon after for dubious reasons.... and now they say he has to finish his 30 year sentence. In addition to rearresting some of those released soon after the deal, Israel
 also went on an arresting rampage across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem and soon filled up the emtpied slots.... oh Israel!

One of the other hunger strikers, Ayman Sharawna - who striked on and off for over 200 days, was just released by Israel but under the condition that he would be exiled to the Gaza Strip - which is pretty much just another prison because Israel has been illegally
 blockading it since they "left" the strip in 2005. 

They also regularly attack the territory from air, land and sea.... as well as prevent necessary items from being allowed in to reconstruct destroyed buildings, infrastructure - even the sewage treatment plant cant be fixed and was targeted by Israel so now
 waste just collects in lakes that flood every once in a while or simply run into the mediterranean sea.... so bad!

So Ayman has to go to Gaza... he is from the West Bank - where his wife, children and extended family and friends all are. So he is exiled to Gaza for 10 years away from everyone he knows and in an unsafe and hard place to live....

Anyways... The West Bank was protesting every day when I got there to free the hunger striking prisoners and anyone held under administrative detention. But it cooled off by the end of my trip, as usual...

Check out my photos from the trip: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101856735878318.1073741826.10703406&type=1&l=da0d826a61

And if you get the chance, I recommend two documentaries about Israel/Palestine... the first is 5 Broken Cameras - I know the filmmaker from my time covering the protests in his village, Bil'in. His film is amazing... really shows the struggle the village went
 through. Israel "annexed" over half of their village's land (most of the agricultural land they need to survive) to build illegal Israeli settlements and the Wall.

They began protesting every week ... and faced sometimes brutal repression from the Israeli military. I was at one protest when a villager and friend of mine named Bassem Abu Rahmah was killed when an Israeli soldier shot him from about 20m with a high velocity
 teargas canister into his chest. What was Bassem doing at the time? He was shouting in Hebrew "Reka!" (stop) because the soldiers had trapped Israeli activists between fences and they were choking on teargas.

The trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_93nOqwmhU

The other is "The law in these parts" which is a really good Israeli-made documentary about how the Israeli Supreme Court legitimizes what the military does and all about the legal system they made to govern the occupied people... and how it denies the Palestinians
 justice and fair trials. 

The trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzEy-FPw-iQ

Alright, gotta get back to work. Looking forward to hearing back from you... and getting back into the apocalyptic, conspiracy talks ;)

Renee Lewis

From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 10:57 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Re: Happy New Years!

Just wanted to wish you a Happy New Year! Hope you are celebrating with family and friends :)

Nora & her mother have just left yesterday after a week here (exhausting!). Unfortunately the poor kid contracted chickenpox a few days before coming, you can still see some spots:

As I expected, the illness did not at all affect her liveliness and energy. So we were exhausted when she left and need to recuperate now...
;-)

I am at work on the night shift, have watched a few New Years celebrations starting from Australia already and will be celebrating with my news desk colleagues with a shot of espresso at midnight :)

Have fun.
It's really stupid, is it not, to celebrate the new year in this way:

(a) at different times on the planet,
(b) at the same time in each time zone, whereby time zones have rather arbitrary contours,
(c) at some arbitrary day of the year, when the actual passing of the Earth through one of the important points of its orbit was ten days ago, the difference being accumulated by various historic accidents and political/religious manipulations.

As Spock of Star Trek would say: "You (Earthlings) are after all essentially irrational."

Have fun, say hello to anyone I know,

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Happy New Years!

It's been a while! Hope everything is
good with you in Europe... been pretty cold lately, odd isn't
it?

Not so much cold as just miserable weather. Fog mostly.

Also the stuff about Cyprus going on
right now is pretty interesting... making the people bail out the
banks, literally taking money from their savings accounts. I have a
Cypriot friend who said he will lose about 2,000 euros if they don't
change the tax rate they already stated for accounts with less than
100,000 euros (6.7%).

The problem is: where did he get his savings from?
According to what I hear & read there is a problem with Russian
money, overspending on projects etc.
Suppose that the government overspends on some fairly useless
project, and your friend (this is all hypothetical, I am just
sketching a possibility, not accusing him of anything) has a business
that prospered on that money (e.g. he runs a contracting business that
built part of a building that has no real use). He cannot really
complain. It would be worse if there had been nothing at
all.
Also, what happens (again, I am not defending the measures, nor
am I blaming your friend, just pointing out how things may be more
complex) if there is no bail-out at all? Because this tax is
only a small part of the deal. The rest of the money comes from
people like me, paying taxes and never having set foot in Cyprus.
If there is no bailout, then will Cyprus go completely bankrupt?
I guess so. Like Greece.
I am paying taxes on my savings.

I do agree that the people to really tax are those who made the
bad loans to Greece and other bad deals.

Now, with all of the backlash, the
ministers are trying to lower that rate by half and raise the rate for
those with more than 100,000 to about 12% from 9.9. Headed in the
right direction but I think the rich peoples' tax rate should be more
like 30% ... kind of like it used to be in the US before Reagan when
the rich people paid even more than that and our country was not
buried in debt like today.

Quite. We are not rich, we have a moderate income, but we
pay 33%. That is only the income tax. But there are a lot
more.
I think in general the people in the countries in trouble, mainly
in the South, have spent too much too fast, without thinking, and the
people in the North have not insisted enough on fiscal controls.

But overall, I think that Cypriots should
reject this idea flat out and follow Iceland's lead and say they will
not bail out the banks for the banks' own greed.

Agreed in some sense, but the money is gone.

Apparently, Cypriot banks were
buying up Greek bonds before the crash like crazy and that's the main
reason why they are failing now. So why should someone have to lose
part of their life savings because of that??

Because they did not deposit their savings in deposito banks but
in banks that gave them some interest. If you get interest then
obviously the bank has to get that interest money from someone else,
i.e. they "invest" it in something that is more or less
risky.
When I did have some savings in the Swiss UBS bank, but on my
currency account, at 0%, I was constantly called to put it into a
savings account, or to invest it. I talked several times to
them, listened to their proposals to buy shares or money investments,
but I could not understand at all how this would work, sometimes not
even what they were saying. So I stayed out of what I could not
myself uderstand as a positive investment. Luckily.

Iceland is doing quite well now I think,
the rebuilt the financial institutions from scratch and replaced the
leaders who thought the people should have to pay for the banks'
mistakes.

But Iceland is one of the world's oldest democracies (I visited
Thingvellir ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thingvellir ) ), it is a
small nation of less than half a million people, very much used to
being extremely organised because of the winters and the dangerous
environment. Also very highly educated. And not part of
the Eurozone, so they could not apply for a bailout from anyone else
anyway. Plus that their economy does not really depend on
financial instruments. But I guess also that everyone lost a lot
of money anyway. If not in actual numbers, then through
inflation and devaluation. Look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EUR_against_ISK_2000-2009.png

Between 2008 and 2010 the value of the krona more than halved. In
addition there is 5% inflation (meaning things double in price in less
than 13 years). If I had a million krona in the bank begin 2008,
worth 12'500 euros, then now I still have a million krona, but they
are worth only 5'550 euros now. So although I have not lost a
single krona, I have effectively lost more than half of my fortune IF
I want to spend it outside Iceland. Inside Iceland I am still
OK: my income as a number of krona is still the same. If I
want to buy a house or a piece of land, those prices have changed very
little. But I'll probably have to keep driving my old car
because a new one will cost me twice what I would have paid in 2008.
So in effect, because they are on an island (literally) and have their
own money, they do not perceive the crisis in the same way. But
it is just as bad!

Cyprus cannot devalue that way, because they use euros. So
the only way to get things straight for them is that the wages drop
dramatically. That is the only thing they can do. That and
tax their savings, which is the equivalent of losing money through
devaluation. Then they should (a) confront the bankers with the
mistakes they made (put them in prison, fine them, fire them, whatever
else they did in Iceland, (b) learn that you should understand what is
going on instead of spending what you do not have (especially my
money).

The other alternative is to get out of the eurozone, but that
would not help at all:
(1) they would have to print their own money again, which is a
total waste of effort, because nobody can eat that or build anything
with it,
(2) they would suffer immediate and massive devaluation the day
after the new money was put in circulation, all imported products
would rise enormously in price.
(3) nobody would offer to bail them out.
(4) there would be great inflation too.

So, unfortunately 12% tax on monetary values is not much compared
with the above catastrophes.
With wages dropping but staying in the eurozone, there is also
another benefit: Cyprus then becomes more attractive for
investors, and those investors can still count in euros.

I wonder why no one made a big deal
out of Iceland... even Al Jazeera didn't cover it much as I recall. A
few features or op-eds every now and then but compared to what the
people accomplished there we didn't do much to promote
it.

Because it was just a simple case of a massive break with
devaluation and inflation. Has happened before in history many
times in many countries.
Cyprus, Greece etc. are interesting because they are in the euro.
Europe has no (not yet) agreed system of systematically subsidising
weak parts of its territory. We will have to make such a
system. It exists in all federal nations. Australia is
constantly taking money from the rich states and pumping it into the
poor ones. The same is happening all the time in the US too, but
since the systems have been in place for a long time, nobody notices.
Maybe you should research this once, I have not done any research
about how it works in the US, but I'm sure there are US states that
need funds to survive. They get subsidies all the time.
The word subsidiy is not used perhaps, and there must be many
mechanisms such as different tax rates, special exemptions, and a
whole set of rules. But it comes down to the same thing:
permanent flow of money from the rich states to the poor ones.

We need to do this in the EU too, but have failed to put it into
place.

... waiting to hear about a job with Al
Jazeera America...

Good luck!

I also just got back from a vacation to
Palestine. I think I told you I worked there for 2 years before I came
to Al Jazeera in Doha. I went at the end of February when there was a
lot of protesting and talk of a 'third Intifada' going around. The
last intifada ended in 2005, and thousands of Palestinians
died...

The only recent thing I heard was that the UN Marathon was
cancelled because Hamas forbade women to participate. Really
retrograde those guys.

The Israeli military pretty much
flattened the West Bank and of course some Palestinian militant groups
did suicide attacks in Israel, I think they lost a couple hundred
people during that time. Its not necessarily a good thing if a new
Intifada starts for either side, but at the same time maintaining the
status quo, for Palestinians, just means they will continue to lose
land, rights and continue to be under a brutal military
occupation....

While the US and others continue to support a racist state.
Then again, I would not want to live under Hamas rule either!

Samer Issawi ... oh Israel!

I recently saw a news item on a woman who saved a lot of Jews
from the holocaust and got her name among the list of "righteous
gentiles" in Israel.
While I would have done the same, I would have refused to be
labeled "gentile" which I consider a racist word. I
would have accepted "citizen", but not a qualification that
categorises me as not-belonging-to-a-race.

... Anyways... The West Bank was
protesting every day when I got there to free the hunger striking
prisoners and anyone held under administrative detention. But it
cooled off by the end of my trip, as usual...

And all these protests, while justified, also take away effort,
emotion and energy from building a successful Palestinian
economy.

Check out my photos from the trip:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101856735878318.1073741826.10703406&type=1&l=da0d826a61

Interesting.

... to build illegal Israeli settlements
and the Wall.

I don't know why the US and others support them.

... The other is "The law in these
parts" which is a really good Israeli-made documentary about how
the Israeli Supreme Court legitimizes what the military does and all
about the legal system they made to govern the occupied people... and
how it denies the Palestinians justice and fair trials.

Yes, not all Israelis are bad. Like not all South African
whites were supporting Apartheid. And not all Muslims are
religious extremists.

Nora was here again for a week. Exhausting. We keep
worrying about her future.
She saw water turned to ice for the first time. She had
been playing with water outside, pretending to "make soup".
At the end of play, she left a little plastic shovel in the pail with
water (the "soup"). Next morning she went outside to play
again, and immediately came back in, screaming: "there is a big
worm in my soup!"
Susan and I could not understand what had happened, until we
realised that she meant "there is a big piece of glass in my
soup", as the words for glass and worm are pronounced the same in
French (verre and ver). The water had frozen during the night, and
when she pulled the shovel out of the pail, the ice had come with it
and she thought it was glass:

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Re: Hello!

Hi, How is everything? Hope everything is
good!

Yes, apart from the weather. It is end June, and I just
switched the heating in the bathroom on again: 10.8C this
morning.

Things have been pretty crazy for me the
past months. Al Jazeera announced they are going to launch an American
channel based in New York. So I applied and got the job!

Congratulations!

.. Is been pretty intense, lots of
training, workshops, meetings with our team of lawyers
hahaha.

Lawyers.

We realize that not everyone in America
is happy that "Al Jazeera" is going to be on cable TV -
mostly out of ignorance - and a lot of people will be critical of our
work so we can't make any major mistakes.

Indeed. You will have to tell me more about Al Jazeera's
take on things. We did not really discuss that ever.

We'll practicing and working out any
issues we come across for the next couple months before we launch. In
the meantime I'm just trying to figure out New York and get an
apartment - which is a whole different story!

New York is not part of the US, as you know. It's like
Paris is not in France, and London is not in England.

... my parents ... not too far from
CERN!
I was hoping you might be around to meet
them, either at CERN or they could meet you for a coffee in your town.
I think you and my Dad could have interesting conversations, and I
know they would be excited to meet you.

I'd love to do that.

They will be driving from Switzerland to
France and could be in the area on Friday afternoon, after
3pm.
Are you in the area, and think you may
have time? Let me know, thanks!

Unfortunately that is bad timing: we're not in on Friday
until later in the afternoon. It might or might not work. It's
the birthday of Sophie, one of our daughters, and some time ago we
booked a restaurant for lunch on Friday and this will not be over
before 16:00 at the earliest. Under other circumstances we might
envisage to go for dinner, but I can assure you that after a lunch in
that restaurant we do not want to eat anything for a day...
Can you give me more details?

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Hello!
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 02:40:59 +0000

Hi, How is everything? Hope everything is good!

Things have been pretty crazy for me the past months. Al Jazeera announced they are going to launch an American channel based in New York. So I applied and got the job!

So I finished out my contract in Doha and went back home to Washington state for about a month to visit my family. And I just moved out here to New York a couple weeks ago!

Is been pretty intense, lots of training, workshops, meetings with our team of lawyers hahaha.

We realize that not everyone in America is happy that "Al Jazeera" is going to be on cable TV - mostly out of ignorance - and a lot of people will be critical of our work so we can't make any major mistakes.

We'll practicing and working out any issues we come across for the next couple months before we launch. In the meantime I'm just trying to figure out New York and get an apartment - which is a whole different story!

On a different topic, my parents have been traveling around Europe for the past few weeks and they are in Switzerland, somewhere not too far from CERN!

I was hoping you might be around to meet them, either at CERN or they could meet you for a coffee in your town. I think you and my Dad could have interesting conversations, and I know they would be excited to meet you.

They will be driving from Switzerland to France and could be in the area on Friday afternoon, after 3pm.

Are you in the area, and think you may have time? Let me know, thanks!

Renee Lewis

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Did this not come through?
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 17:32:31 +0000

Hi,

No I didn't get a response till now...

Too bad the timing didn't work, wouldn't have wanted them to crash your daughter's birthday though haha.

Hope you had fun. If I can get ahold of my parents I will see what their plan is now, and where they are.

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2013 8:27 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: Did this not come through?

Hi Renée:

You wrote, and I replied:

-----------------------------------

>They will be driving from Switzerland to France
>and could be in the area on Friday afternoon,
>after 3pm.
>Are you in the area, and think you may have time? Let me know, thanks!

Unfortunately that is bad timing:  we're not in
on Friday until later in the afternoon. It might
or might not work.  It's the birthday of Sophie,
one of our daughters, and some time ago we booked
a restaurant for lunch on Friday and this will
not be over before 16:00 at the earliest.  Under
other circumstances we might envisage to go for
dinner, but I can assure you that after a lunch
in that restaurant we do not want to eat anything
for a day...
Can you give me more details?

------------------------------------

It is now 19:26 here.
We did indeed come back from the restaurant late, and very full.

If your parents are still in the area, tell me more!

Robert.

________________________________

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Did this not come through?

Hi Renée:

You wrote, and I replied:

-----------------------------------

They will be driving from Switzerland to
France and could be in the area on Friday afternoon, after
3pm.
Are you in the area, and think you may
have time? Let me know, thanks!

Unfortunately that is bad timing: we're not in on Friday
until later in the afternoon. It might or might not work. It's
the birthday of Sophie, one of our daughters, and some time ago we
booked a restaurant for lunch on Friday and this will not be over
before 16:00 at the earliest. Under other circumstances we might
envisage to go for dinner, but I can assure you that after a lunch in
that restaurant we do not want to eat anything for a day...
Can you give me more details?

------------------------------------

It is now 19:26 here.
We did indeed come back from the restaurant late, and very
full.

If your parents are still in the area, tell me more!

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Did this not come through?

If I can get ahold of my parents I will
see what their plan is now, and where they are.

OK.

Strange that did not come through, because I sent it yesterday
evening!
(maybe the NSA got it...)

R.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Did this not come through?

I guess it did not work out... Too bad, I'd have liked to
meet your parents.
Some other time I hope!
Robert.

If I can get ahold of my parents I will
see what their plan is now, and where they are.

OK.

Strange that did not come through, because I sent it yesterday
evening!
(maybe the NSA got it...)

R.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: After several

Renee:

Thanks for writing back... too bad it
didn't work out. Maybe next time, they would definitely like to meet
you!

OK.

Anyways, I have been very busy with my
new job....

Good luck...

The company was built from scratch..., TV
is also piloting but not on air.

That seems the way to do it: rehearsal.

There are definitely a lot of kinks to
work out but I think we will be ready by launch... "inshallah"
(god-willing)

I always quote an old saying from over here: "God
helps those who help themselves"

Other than that, I've been busy finding
an apartment -- which is a HUUUUUUGE hassle in New York, its like a
sport, a marathon actually to find a good place for a good
price.

New York is not a place I would want to live in, unless I had about a
million a year to spend.

I finally found one in Queens in a nice
Puerto Rican, family neighborhood. Its right by Brooklyn, near this
neighborhood called Bushwick which is the center of the
bohemian/artistic/musical NYC culture which is pretty
cool.

Sounds good for an upcoming young person.

What's new in Europe? How's your
family?

We are OK. I was down with a very bad cold, still not entirely
gone.
Weather has been awful since last year November. Right now
it is hot and sunny, but there are huge clouds too, and last night
there was an awful thunderstorm. No flying.

However, from 8 to 16 we were on holidays at the Belgian coast,
with our grandchild Nora.
It was hot and sunny and we got a good tan.

Using Google Streetview with the attached location file, you can
see the hotel we were in (but there is no longer a street with car
acces, the seafront is now all pedestrian)

She had never seen the sea or the beach. Nor, through
living in Paris, had she ever seen the horizon. So, as our hotel
rooms had seaview, and as the sun set in the west over the North Sea,

... she made her first astronomical observation: "the
sun is on the floor!" (remember she is four)

She loved the Belgian Waffles (which have nothing to do with what
is sold in the US under that name)

(remember also that this beach is at the latitude of
Calgary!)

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: After several

...That is so cute about what Nora said
about the sun! It is strange to live in a city and not be able to see
the horizon, I think it gives us perspective and when you can't see it
I personally feel trapped. 

All big cities are traps. The bigger they are, the worse
the trap.
Something to study, maybe do a show about.
Unfortunately, big cities also create

The good thing about my neighborhood in
Queens is that none of the buildings are over 4 stories tall (similar
to Paris, hahaha) so from the roof, there is actually a decent view. I
can see Manhattan skyline and for quite a distance in other
directions, so I like that.

:)

Thanks for the photos! The beach looks
amazing despite being on the same latitude as Calgary. So
weird!

No: it is because of the Gulf Stream which brings warm waters
from the Mexican Gulf all the way up to Scotland. Unfortunately,
because of global warming, this current is now changing and has
diminished a lot. That has two important consequences: (1)
Europe will get closer to the climate of Canada, colder and also
wetter, (2) public opinion will be even more difficult to convince
about warming. 
:-(

There are actually a couple decent
beaches in NYC that I had no idea about. The best and biggest is
Rockaway beach on a barrier island on the south-eastern side of
brooklyn. Its miles long, sandy beach with waves that you can surf on.
It has a nice boardwalk too... 

Yes, I know. Though I have not visited them, let alone
surfed there. The North Sea is not good for surfing: it is too
shallow for big waves.

I was thinking about renting an apt out
there because it was so cheap, but its over an hour from Manhattan on
the subway and after Hurricane Sandy last year, Rockaway got really
messed up and the subway didn't run for months, so people out there
had to drive, take the bus to another station. I ended up deciding
against that apt ;)

I guess so. And those hurricanes are going to get worse
too.

Attached is a photo from the 4th of July,
... Crazy night!

Cute. What did they give as reason for stopping the party?

R.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: After several

Interesting about the unexpected and
counter-intuitive effects of climate change... You seem to know a lot
about that.

I've been following it for 40 years.

Do you have predictions for how
long until we cross the point of no return?

We have crossed it.
It depends of course on what one means, but in any case:
-- change is always there, there is never "return"
(e.g. as in "back to the dinosaur age",
-- change in itself is OK, but if it is too fast then life cannot
evolve to adapt, it dies. And at the moment things go far too
fast. Temperatures can go up by several degrees and life on
Earth will survive, provided it takes several million years, but not
if it is in a few decades. There will be mass extinctions.
They are already happening.

So I think we will lose all the big wildlife in the tropical
areas, and much of the plant life too. And a lot in the
oceans.
I have seen it dwindle: I was on several wildlife trips in
Africa over 30 years, and each time there was less and less, and more
and more humans. What is worse is that the "new humans"
i.e. the people from the already overpopulated Asian regions, the
youngsters from the emerging countries, and the Muslim world just
don't give a damn (in general, there are of course exceptions), all
they want is their part of the cake.

One can (and should) of course argue that the industrial
revolution in the west was what started it all. It took people
in Europe and the US a long time before they began to care about the
environment. It's going to be a tough job to save anything,
because anything that stands in the way of producing food will just be
bulldozed over.

Very sad.

The cops, as usual in NYC, did not give a
reason. Everyone things they just wanted the roof. Almost every roof
in that area of brooklyn had parties bigger than ours going on, and
they werent shut down. So....

You mean they can get away with not giving a valid reason?
I'm sure they have to! Whatever, you had fun.

R.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: Did this not come through?
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 14:24:45 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for writing back... too bad it didn't work out. Maybe next time, they would definitely like to meet you!

Anyways, I have been very busy with my new job in New York, I transferred to Al Jazeera's new America channel -- we're finally going to be on U.S. cable TV!

I'm working with the website still, writing news articles and features from time to time. We haven't launched yet, we have less than a month until launch and we are all running around trying to make everything work before the end of August.

The company was built from scratch in less than a year, we are just finishing the hiring and on-boarding process and have been piloting (pretending) the news day as if it were real. So that means, writing news stories for the website, commissioning features and opinions, TV is also piloting but not on air.

There are definitely a lot of kinks to work out but I think we will be ready by launch... "inshallah" (god-willing)

Other than that, I've been busy finding an apartment -- which is a HUUUUUUGE hassle in New York, its like a sport, a marathon actually to find a good place for a good price.

I finally found one in Queens in a nice Puerto Rican, family neighborhood. Its right by Brooklyn, near this neighborhood called Bushwick which is the center of the bohemian/artistic/musical NYC culture which is pretty cool.

I have a friend here from my hometown who also went to University of Washington at the same time as me who has lived in Bushwick for a few years so I have met a lot of new friends through him and explored the neighborhood.

What's new in Europe? How's your family?

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2013 6:02 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: Did this not come through?

I guess it did not work out...  Too bad, I'd have liked to meet your parents.
Some other time I hope!
Robert.

>If I can get ahold of my parents I will see what their plan is now,
>and where they are.

OK.

Strange that did not come through, because I sent it yesterday evening!
(maybe the NSA got it...)

R.

________________________________

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: After several
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 15:54:23 +0000

Hi,

Hope you feel better soon! The weather around here has been pretty crazy, a lot of people were sick with a weird cold but not from cold weather, from hot, muggy weather that trapped bad air. We finally got some rain which broke the heat wave a few days
 ago and its been much more pleasant since then.

That is so cute about what Nora said about the sun! It is strange to live in a city and not be able to see the horizon, I think it gives us perspective and when you can't see it I personally feel trapped.

The good thing about my neighborhood in Queens is that none of the buildings are over 4 stories tall (similar to Paris, hahaha) so from the roof, there is actually a decent view. I can see Manhattan skyline and for quite a distance in other directions,
 so I like that.

Thanks for the photos! The beach looks amazing despite being on the same latitude as Calgary. So weird!

There are actually a couple decent beaches in NYC that I had no idea about. The best and biggest is Rockaway beach on a barrier island on the south-eastern side of brooklyn. Its miles long, sandy beach with waves that you can surf on. It has a nice boardwalk
 too...

I was thinking about renting an apt out there because it was so cheap, but its over an hour from Manhattan on the subway and after Hurricane Sandy last year, Rockaway got really messed up and the subway didn't run for months, so people out there had to
 drive, take the bus to another station. I ended up deciding against that apt ;)

Attached is a photo from the 4th of July, I went to a roof top party in Bushwick, Brooklyn and they had bands playing, lots of people, and a great view of Manhattan for the fireworks. However, 5 mins before sunset, the police showed up and kicked us all
 out.

Everyone, including me, thinks they were pissed off they had to work on the 4th and took over the roof because of the amazing view. Meanwhile, we had to run back to another building's roof to catch the fireworks. Crazy night!

Renee Lewis

From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 5:54 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: After several

Renee:

Thanks for writing back... too bad it didn't work out. Maybe next time, they would definitely like to meet you!

OK.

Anyways, I have been very busy with my new job....

Good luck...

The company was built from scratch..., TV is also piloting but not on air.

That seems the way to do it: rehearsal.

There are definitely a lot of kinks to work out but I think we will be ready by launch... "inshallah" (god-willing)

I always quote an old saying from over here: "God helps those who help themselves"

Other than that, I've been busy finding an apartment -- which is a HUUUUUUGE hassle in New York, its like a sport, a marathon actually to find a good place for a good price.

New York is not a place I would want to live in, unless I had about a million a year to spend.

I finally found one in Queens in a nice Puerto Rican, family neighborhood. Its right by Brooklyn, near this neighborhood called Bushwick which is the center of the bohemian/artistic/musical NYC culture which is pretty cool.

Sounds good for an upcoming young person.

What's new in Europe? How's your family?

We are OK. I was down with a very bad cold, still not entirely gone.
Weather has been awful since last year November. Right now it is hot and sunny, but there are huge clouds too, and last night there was an awful thunderstorm. No flying.

However, from 8 to 16 we were on holidays at the Belgian coast, with our grandchild Nora.
It was hot and sunny and we got a good tan.

Using Google Streetview with the attached location file, you can see the hotel we were in (but there is no longer a street with car acces, the seafront is now all pedestrian)

She had never seen the sea or the beach. Nor, through living in Paris, had she ever seen the horizon. So, as our hotel rooms had seaview, and as the sun set in the west over the North Sea,

... she made her first astronomical observation: "the sun is on the floor!" (remember she is four)

She loved the Belgian Waffles (which have nothing to do with what is sold in the US under that name)

(remember also that this beach is at the latitude of Calgary!)

Robert.


From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: After several
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:14:58 +0000

Interesting about the unexpected and counter-intuitive effects of climate change... You seem to know a lot about that. Do you have predictions for how long until we cross the point of no return?

The cops, as usual in NYC, did not give a reason. Everyone things they just wanted the roof. Almost every roof in that area of brooklyn had parties bigger than ours going on, and they werent shut down. So....

Renee Lewis

________________________________________
From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 8:54 PM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: RE: After several

>...That is so cute about what Nora said about the sun! It is strange
>to live in a city and not be able to see the horizon, I think it
>gives us perspective and when you can't see it I personally feel
>trapped.

All big cities are traps.  The bigger they are, the worse the trap.
Something to study, maybe do a show about.
Unfortunately, big cities also create

>The good thing about my neighborhood in Queens is that none of the
>buildings are over 4 stories tall (similar to Paris, hahaha) so from
>the roof, there is actually a decent view. I can see Manhattan
>skyline and for quite a distance in other directions, so I like that.

:)

>Thanks for the photos! The beach looks amazing despite being on the
>same latitude as Calgary. So weird!

No: it is because of the Gulf Stream which brings warm waters from
the Mexican Gulf all the way up to Scotland.  Unfortunately, because
of global warming, this current is now changing and has diminished a
lot.  That has two important consequences:  (1) Europe will get
closer to the climate of Canada, colder and also wetter, (2) public
opinion will be even more difficult to convince about warming.
:-(

>There are actually a couple decent beaches in NYC that I had no idea
>about. The best and biggest is Rockaway beach on a barrier island on
>the south-eastern side of brooklyn. Its miles long, sandy beach with
>waves that you can surf on. It has a nice boardwalk too...

Yes, I know.  Though I have not visited them, let alone surfed there.
The North Sea is not good for surfing: it is too shallow for big
waves.

>I was thinking about renting an apt out there because it was so
>cheap, but its over an hour from Manhattan on the subway and after
>Hurricane Sandy last year, Rockaway got really messed up and the
>subway didn't run for months, so people out there had to drive, take
>the bus to another station. I ended up deciding against that apt ;)

I guess so.  And those hurricanes are going to get worse too.

>Attached is a photo from the 4th of July, ... Crazy night!

Cute. What did they give as reason for stopping the party?

R.

________________________________


From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: What do you think about this?
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 20:03:46 +0000

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=warming-climate-may-drive-human-conflict

I'm writing about this today at work, its been rumored forever but very interesting to see a scientific study with evidence that shows the link between heat and violence.

More interesting to me is finding out how that psychological process works. What's happening in our brains when we get hot. I'm trying to talk to a psychologist who has done research on the Heat theory for years to get more information about it.

In the meantime, what do you think about this? Too obvious? Or are there interesting points we can extrapolate from this? politically, economically...

How's life?

Renee Lewis

From ???@??? Sat Aug 03 09:20:21 2013
To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Re: What do you think about this?

It was on the news here too.

I commented to Susan that such studies must be done in order to
get the data and the numbers right, but that the phenomenon is
obvious. It is so obvious that it is even in the language:

a heated discussion
it's going to be hot in there
there is a hot summer coming (student revolts 1968)
let's cool down
keep the head cool and the feet warm

and so on.
I do agree that most of the above refer to the effect rather than
the cause, but it's still so that outbursts are more likely when it is
hot than when it is cold.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=warming-climate-may-drive-human-conflict

I'm writing about this today at work, its
been rumored forever but very interesting to see a scientific study
with evidence that shows the link between heat and violence.

More interesting to me is finding out how
that psychological process works. What's happening in our brains when
we get hot. I'm trying to talk to a psychologist who has done research
on the Heat theory for years to get more information about
it.

I'd be interested to hear about it. Trying to think about
myself: I have "lost control" a few times in my life,
and it was nearly always during hotter times than during cooler
times.
Perhaps also when it is hot you cannot get rid of your body heat,
whereas when it is cold you can warm up by putting on clothes or doing
physical work. I suffer terribly from the current heat: I
cannot take off more clothes when I'm already wearing none. This
makes me nervous, looking for relief. I can no longer
concentrate and am restricted to total inactivity. It does make
me feel helpless, and that induces anger. But that's perhaps just
me.

In the meantime, what do you think about
this? Too obvious? Or are there interesting points we can extrapolate
from this? politically, economically...

It does not spell good things to come.

How's life?

too hot.
We manage to keep the house reasonably cool by opening at night
and closing during the day (switching as soon as the air temperatures
inside and outside switch over). It's early morning here, 24 inside
now, and 21 outside. In an hour or so I will have to close up.
Then it is predicted it will go all the way to 35 this
afternoon.
The alternative, lazy and rich, is to install air conditioning.
That of course does not help the climate. At least this running
all over the house twice a day to open and close all windows and
shutters does contribute to my fitness and does not damage the
environment.

Robert.


From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject:
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2013 02:49:03 +0000


Hey....

How is everything? 

Things are good here in New York... we finally launched the channel and we're now on US cable TV. We have received a lukewarm response. Partially because we tried to become so mainstream that we alienated our diehard audience and are not mainstream enough (and
 will never be with a name like Al Jazeera) for the American mainstream. ha.

Anyways... I've really been pushing environmental/climate change-related stories, and I came across some really interesting reports I wanted to pass along to you.

Remember when you wrote about how species will have to move faster than is possible to adapt to climate change, and that there are going to be mass extinctions because life just can't keep up with the pace of human destruction?

Although there will be mass extinctions... there will be mass evolution as well. Check out these articles, it's really uplifting... life is adapting faster than scientists thought possible and its expected to continue.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/first_comes_global_warming_then_an_evolutionary_explosion/2178/

http://uanews.org/story/ua-study-evolution-too-slow-to-keep-up-with-climate-change

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2013/05/05/boreal/

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/03/15/nature-adapts-to-survive-climate-change/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829214356.htm

Renee Lewis

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: Re: 

Hey....

How is everything?

Things are good here in New York... we finally launched the channel
and we're now on US cable TV. We have received a lukewarm response.
Partially because we tried to become so mainstream that we alienated
our diehard audience and are not mainstream enough (and will never be
with a name like Al Jazeera) for the American mainstream.
ha.

The American Mainstream is indeed quite a narrow thing.
But it's early days. It will all depend on perceived
impartiality, more than on style. Well, that's my
opinion. My friends in the US would certainly have a look, and
use it as a supplementary channel.
But I also can see a large fraction that would be against you
just out of prejudice.

Anyways... I've really been pushing
environmental/climate change-related stories, and I came across some
really interesting reports I wanted to pass along to you.

:)
Don't think I am some osrt of guru. I know more than most,
but not nearly as much as those who have studied it all.

Remember when you wrote about how species
will have to move faster than is possible to adapt to climate change,
and that there are going to be mass extinctions because life just
can't keep up with the pace of human destruction?

Yes.

Although there will be mass
extinctions... there will be mass evolution as well. Check out these
articles, it's really uplifting... life is adapting faster than
scientists thought possible and its expected to continue.

Yes, I heard about that too.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/first_comes_global_warming_then_an_evolutionary_explosion/2178/

Ouch... That is a good incentive for you to get a copy of
"The extended Phenotype" and read it twice. There is a
fundamental difference between that "plasticity" that the
article refers to and genetic evolution. It is in fact mentioned
lower down. I am much more of the opinion of Juha MerilŠ.
Fortunately also, there is the sentence
"Unfortunately, scientists may not be able to appreciate the
full scope of evolutionÕs effects for decades"

The problem with this type of articel is that it leads people to
believe that there is no problem: we'll just adapt. So go on and
drill, drill, drill.
It is also the type of statement from scientists that makes me
despair. What they say is right, but it leads to
confusion.
Sigh. Don't let a scientist near a journalist's
microphone.

http://uanews.org/story/ua-study-evolution-too-slow-to-keep-up-with-climate-change

This one give at least a figure:
1 degree Celsius per million years
and that sounds better, but is still not good.
Because what makes evolution go? The generations.
If a species has a generation of 1 year (many insects) then it is
going to be able to adapt quicker than one that has a generation of 25
years (humans). It's only during reproduction that you get a set
of random genetic differences between the parent and the offspring.
Some of those are good for surviving in the new circumstances, others
are not. There is also the number of such differences: in
some species it is low, in others it is quite high. Those with
lots of differences and short generation times have an andvantage in
adaptation. Unfortunately, those are also the least complex ones
usually.
And let's not forget that evolution is entirely negative: it
weeds out those who do not fit. It does not tend to egg on
adaptation. And it is entirely random in producing
changes.
When humans moved to the North, they lacked sunlight to produce
vitamin D. There could have been several different ways to
adapt:
-- not need vitamin D anymore,
-- generate it more on the skin of the head and favour
baldness
-- lighten the skin and become white.
We got the last one of those three. By accident.
There could have been many other ways, I don't know.

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2013/05/05/boreal/

Also quite good. And again shows how little we really know:
all these models predict different outcomes.
I liked the map of Europe: where in hell are the forests
depicted on that map? There are remnants of them, sure, but in
practice they are not there. Presumably the model looks at how
forests would move assuming they exist.
Those green areas are the most populated of Europe.
And it leaves out the effects of the disappearing Gulf stream.
I think.
A good article though, well written.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/03/15/nature-adapts-to-survive-climate-change/

Great. 60 miles in a century. OK, say 100. Ok,
say 200km. That is still far from the 800km we were talking
about in an earlier message.
Good article though. Like it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829214356.htm

Here too, I like the promulation of the last paragraph: when it
looks clean then it must be good. A few weeks ago I had visitors
from South Africa. We went around the lake, and standing at the
shore, looking at the water, the woman remarked that it was so nice
and clean. I told her it was probably because it was poisoned by
so much mercury.

My bottom line for now is: we do not yet know enough to make
accurate predictions. Each bit of research is very important, and we
should do a lot more. One thing is certain: time is running out
fast. Or has already run out.

Robert.

To: Renee Lewis 
From: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: SUSPECT: Re:

Hey...

About the rapid evolution in species, I
didn't see it as something that would be used as an argument against
the perils of climate change, but gave me a little bit of hope that
some things will survive.

Yes, slime in the ponds.
I just saw an article about cats. It said that it was no
surprise cats still had a predator nature since they have been
evolving alongside humans for only 10'000 years. With climate
change we are talking a mere 100 years, if that.

But on that note I have seen some
analysis pieces around the internet on how the anti-science,
climate-change-refuters have been on a media offensive ahead of
upcoming climate change talks at the UN -- getting published wherever
they can saying, writing about how climate change isn't really
happening... or that its not as bad as 'those crazy environmentalist
hippies' say it is.

It is much worse than the "greens" think.
I'm afraid the situation is somewhat like this:

1-- there are the scientists, who are studying the stuff
quantitatively, using numbers and models etc. and by far have not
enough data nor, more importantly, good enough models for predictions,
because many interactions are not known. In addition, by their
nature, scientists never want to express certainty, and are in
competition with each other about the formulation and hte details,
even if as a body they all agree that global warming is certainly here
and growing fast. So they give a very bad impression to the
public, especially since the public does not understand the numbers
and graphs, and the journalists always avoid those anyway.

2-- there are the politicians, big business, and
liberalism-fundamentalists who do not want to see any change to the
established order (I really sound like a communist of the Stalin era
here... but that is not on purpose) They will do all they can to deny
any evidence there is, and put the environmentalist hippies in a bad
light. They are used to arguments ad-hominem. They have
more difficulty with the scientists, so they stay away from
them.

3-- there are the crazy environmentalist hippies, as you rightly
call them. They target the liberalists, tend sheep on the
mountain pastures, put flowers in their hair (and until the end of
this year) drive VW minibuses. But just like the liberalists,
they refuse any figures, graphs, models, if they do not fit their
ideology. They do not calculate either. My own daughter
has some of those tendencies.

So group 3 and group 2 are fighting, but they would probably
fight each other for a different made-up reason if climate change were
not there.
In the 1960s they fought each other over nuclear war.
Before that is was communism. Now it is climate change.

It's always interesting to reply to your messages, because I had
not explicitly thought about these three groups and the way they
interact (or do not interact).
Perhaps it would be good to do a series of reports on each of
them separately first, then bring it all together.
There is a large fourth group: the population at large, which
only wants to know what to do next and awaits a reasonable scenario to
implement whatever needs to be done. They are getting worried I
think, but don't know who to believe.

Meanwhile, I've been writing a lot about
environmental topics at work. And about your ending comment saying it
may already be too late to stop the effects of global warming, for
some it seems that it is. 

I'm pretty convinced it is.

I interviewed the VP of the Marshall
Islands ... the Marshalls along with about a dozen other Pacific
Island Nations had drafted a declaration called the Majuro Declaration
calling on the world to become climate leaders... to change the
narrative from "I'll sign up after you sign up" which has
stalled any agreements from being cemented.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/2/kerry-pacific-islandersmustprepareforclimatechangeimpacts.html

Very good.
I'll keep the link.

Anyways... for the Marshalls, with many
of their atolls barley 3 feet above sea level, and predictions saying
that sea levels will rise by one meter by 2100... it looks like it may
already be too late. 

One meter is ridiculous.
Here is a very simple way to calculate the upper limit (i.e. the
level we will not reach, but might) (I may have done that calculation
with you before, if so, please forgive my bad memory...)
Take the Antarctic. It has a 5km thick ice layer on it.
Admittedly, it's not 5km thick everywhere, but just suppose it were.
Now take the surface areas (Wikipedia has them). The oceans
together are 361 million square kilometers.
Antarctica is 13.7 million square km. So the oceans are 26
times larger than Antarctica.
Good, so slice the 5km of ice into 26 slices and you can cover
the oceans.
But 5000m/26 = 192m!
Now, we have forgotten the ice on Greenland, but we have also
forgotten that ice melts to only 90% of water. We also did not
take into account that the cap on Antarctica is not really 5km thick
everywhere. Suppose it is more of a cone than a cylinder, then
its volume is only 1/3 of what we used.
OK, so 90% of 1/3 of 192m, but that is still 57 meters, and we
have not melted Greenland, and we have not accounted for the expansion
of the sea water itself because of higher temperature.

Now, as I said, that was an upper limit. It was an
engineer's calculation: the worst possible case scenario.
Alongside that, the 1m still seems very meek though.

A lot of people will say that melting the ice on Antarctica will
take hundreds of years. True, but it does not need to melt: it
only needs to slide off the continent and into the sea. This is
already happening, also in Greenland.

And geologically, Antarctica was once ice-free (because it was
not located at the pole). Earth has had much higher sea levels.
The changes took millions of years, not decades.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/6/pacific-islands-leadershopetoconvinceworldtomoveonclimatechange.html

It's good to see some international action. This may
convince more of the public, and then hopefully later more of the
leaders.

The President and VP are in New York...

apparently sea level rise
disproportionately affects the tropical zones/equatorial
areas

So it seems. but I have not understood how it can be. You
would think the seas are all connected...

On another disastrous note, did you
follow the floods in Colorado ...

No, I did not. Other things happened here.

So I looked into it, and this county,
Weld County, which was one of the hardest hit, also happens to be the
most heavily drilled county in the United States -- with over 20,000
active oil and gas wells. Apparently they are totally taken over by
the oil and gas industry -- in the state government and local
government levels.

Not surprising.

My first articlehttp://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/15/report-ruptured-pipelinegasleaksoilspillsincoloradofloods.html

raised the question of whether there was
contamination after the floods. The state government was being really
quiet about those concerns and it got me interested.

You are prolific, aren't you?
:)
Good though.

... They have hundreds of active wells
WITHIN city limits and say their city council is owned by the
industry.. they mentioned that the mayors reelection campaign party
was being thrown by Mineral Resources -- one of the local industry
companies.

I would not be surprised.
Now however, also ask these same residents to turn off the lights
and the air conditioner, to open shops only 8 hours a day and to get
very organised about how often they drive to the mall. Or ask
them to switch to nuclear power with a nuclear reactor in town.
Or better still, ask them how much they have spent on
super-insulating their houses and installing solar panels.
Because these things go together.

Sigh.
:(

Robert.

From: Renee Lewis 
To: Robert Cailliau 
Subject: RE: SUSPECT: Re:
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:45:02 +0000

Hey...

About the rapid evolution in species, I didn't see it as something that would be used as an argument against the perils of climate change, but gave me a little bit of hope that some things will survive. But on that note I have seen some analysis pieces
 around the internet on how the anti-science, climate-change-refuters have been on a media offensive ahead of upcoming climate change talks at the UN -- getting published wherever they can saying, writing about how climate change isn't really happening... or
 that its not as bad as 'those crazy environmentalist hippies' say it is.

Meanwhile, I've been writing a lot about environmental topics at work. And about your ending comment saying it may already be too late to stop the effects of global warming, for some it seems that it is.

I interviewed the VP of the Marshall Islands ... the Marshalls along with about a dozen other Pacific Island Nations had drafted a declaration called the Majuro Declaration calling on the world to become climate leaders... to change the narrative from
 "I'll sign up after you sign up" which has stalled any agreements from being cemented.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/2/kerry-pacific-islandersmustprepareforclimatechangeimpacts.html

Anyways... for the Marshalls, with many of their atolls barley 3 feet above sea level, and predictions saying that sea levels will rise by one meter by 2100... it looks like it may already be too late.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/6/pacific-islands-leadershopetoconvinceworldtomoveonclimatechange.html

The President and VP are in New York this week for the UN meetings on sustainable development goals for 2015. They are going to hand over the Majuro declaration, which aims to curb emissions now, and hope that people get on board. The Marshalls are already
 facing drought, heavier than normal typhoons and storms, sea level rise... apparently sea level rise disproportionately affects the tropical zones/equatorial areas so they may see levels rise even faster than previously thought.

On another disastrous note, did you follow the floods in Colorado by any chance? I just randomly looked deeper into the story because I have family living near the floods and I had seen an obscure warning about oil contamination in the flood waters although
 it wasnt being reported anywhere in the mainstream media.

So I looked into it, and this county, Weld County, which was one of the hardest hit, also happens to be the most heavily drilled county in the United States -- with over 20,000 active oil and gas wells. Apparently they are totally taken over by the oil
 and gas industry -- in the state government and local government levels.

My first articlehttp://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/15/report-ruptured-pipelinegasleaksoilspillsincoloradofloods.html

raised the question of whether there was contamination after the floods. The state government was being really quiet about those concerns and it got me interested.

The next article was after the first confirmed spills were made publichttp://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/19/colorado-oil-andgasindustryregulationsquestionedinwakeofflood.html

and went in depth into a small town, Greeley, in Weld County, and how the residents feel their town is being controlled by the oil and gas industry. They have hundreds of active wells WITHIN city limits and say their city council is owned by the industry..
 they mentioned that the mayors reelection campaign party was being thrown by Mineral Resources -- one of the local industry companies.

So... yeah as the days go on, they are discovering more and more spills... these are crude oil spills along with natural gas blow outs and fracking flow-back water (contaminated toxic stuff) that could have mixed in with the flood water.

And all the state, city people wanted to talk about was how there was 'untreated sewage' also mixed in with the waters.

Meanwhile, students at Universtiy of Boulder are taking pictures of themselves rafting and swimming in the flood waters.....

Renee Lewis

From: Robert Cailliau [robert@cailliau.org]
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2013 2:55 AM
To: Renee Lewis
Subject: SUSPECT: Re:

Hey....

How is everything?

Things are good here in New York... we finally launched the channel and we're now on US cable TV. We have received a lukewarm response. Partially because we tried to become so mainstream that we alienated our diehard audience and are not mainstream enough (and
 will never be with a name like Al Jazeera) for the American mainstream. ha.

The American Mainstream is indeed quite a narrow thing.
But it's early days. It will all depend on perceived impartiality, more than on style. Well, that's my opinion. My friends in the US would certainly have a look, and use it as a supplementary channel.
But I also can see a large fraction that would be against you just out of prejudice.

Anyways... I've really been pushing environmental/climate change-related stories, and I came across some really interesting reports I wanted to pass along to you.

:)
Don't think I am some osrt of guru. I know more than most, but not nearly as much as those who have studied it all.

Remember when you wrote about how species will have to move faster than is possible to adapt to climate change, and that there are going to be mass extinctions because life just can't keep up with the pace of human destruction?

Yes.

Although there will be mass extinctions... there will be mass evolution as well. Check out these articles, it's really uplifting... life is adapting faster than scientists thought possible and its expected to continue.

Yes, I heard about that too.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/first_comes_global_warming_then_an_evolutionary_explosion/2178/

Ouch... That is a good incentive for you to get a copy of "The extended Phenotype" and read it twice. There is a fundamental difference between that "plasticity" that the article refers to and genetic evolution. It is in fact mentioned lower down. I
 am much more of the opinion of Juha MerilŠ. Fortunately also, there is the sentence
"Unfortunately, scientists may not be able to appreciate the full scope of evolution's effects for decades"

The problem with this type of articele is that it leads people to believe that there is no problem: we'll just adapt. So go on and drill, drill, drill.
It is also the type of statement from scientists that makes me despair. What they say is right, but it leads to confusion.
Sigh. Don't let a scientist near a journalist's microphone.

http://uanews.org/story/ua-study-evolution-too-slow-to-keep-up-with-climate-change

This one give at least a figure:
1 degree Celsius per million years
and that sounds better, but is still not good.
Because what makes evolution go? The generations.
If a species has a generation of 1 year (many insects) then it is going to be able to adapt quicker than one that has a generation of 25 years (humans). It's only during reproduction that you get a set of random genetic differences between the parent
 and the offspring. Some of those are good for surviving in the new circumstances, others are not. There is also the number of such differences: in some species it is low, in others it is quite high. Those with lots of differences and short generation times
 have an andvantage in adaptation. Unfortunately, those are also the least complex ones usually.
And let's not forget that evolution is entirely negative: it weeds out those who do not fit. It does not tend to egg on adaptation. And it is entirely random in producing changes.
When humans moved to the North, they lacked sunlight to produce vitamin D. There could have been several different ways to adapt:
-- not need vitamin D anymore,
-- generate it more on the skin of the head and favour baldness
-- lighten the skin and become white.
We got the last one of those three. By accident. There could have been many other ways, I don't know.

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2013/05/05/boreal/

Also quite good. And again shows how little we really know: all these models predict different outcomes.
I liked the map of Europe: where in hell are the forests depicted on that map? There are remnants of them, sure, but in practice they are not there. Presumably the model looks at how forests would move assuming they exist.
Those green areas are the most populated of Europe.
And it leaves out the effects of the disappearing Gulf stream. I think.
A good article though, well written.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/03/15/nature-adapts-to-survive-climate-change/

Great. 60 miles in a century. OK, say 100. Ok, say 200km. That is still far from the 800km we were talking about in an earlier message.
Good article though. Like it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829214356.htm

Here too, I like the formulation of the last paragraph: when it looks clean then it must be good. A few weeks ago I had visitors from South Africa. We went around the lake, and standing at the shore, looking at the water, the woman remarked that it was
 so nice and clean. I told her it was probably because it was poisoned by so much mercury.

My bottom line for now is: we do not yet know enough to make accurate predictions. Each bit of research is very important, and we should do a lot more. One thing is certain: time is running out fast. Or has already run out.

Robert.