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Showing posts from June, 2016

Stephen Hawking's god

A recent PBS documentary on science, “Genius by Stephen Hawking” beckoned. Anything about genius and Stephen Hawking promised to be good. I hoped nothing would interrupt me when it was on TPT. Hawking challenged volunteers to think like geniuses in finding answers to seemingly unanswerable questions. I expected to be intrigued. Volunteers saw plates suspended in the air and spinning. Magic?  No, it turned out to be magnets. We were to conclude that the laws of nature answer mysteries of the universe. All mysteries? Some scientists thought so. Pierre-Simon LaPlace asserted: If we knew all facts of the universe, we would know everything that will happen in the future. He and others posited the clockwork universe of determinism, but I won’t get into that because I didn’t buy it and Hawking didn’t either. In another puzzle that Hawking set up, a volunteer's head was wired up so that his brain was connected to a screen. When he moved his finger, something moved on the screen. A t

Israel & Palestine—facts

News widely reported in the U.S. the past few days. Two Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis in a Tel Aviv retail center. Israel reacted by banning Palestinians from visiting relatives in Israel, traveling to Jerusalem for Ramadan prayers or to Tel Aviv for travel out of the country. Since October Palestinian attacks have killed 33 Israelis. News not reported in the US. Since September 29, 2000, Palestinians killed by Israelis— 9,370 Palestinians, 2,112 of them children. Israelis killed by Palestinians— 1,224 Israelis,  133 of them children More news not reported in the US: Military aid from the U.S. going to Israel: $10.2 million per day ! Military aid from the U.S. going to Palestine:   0 Whenever Israel and Palestine are in the news I recommend   If Americans Knew   or   Jews for Justice for Palestinians   or numerous other sites. I especially recommend this engaging video about Israeli atrocities in Palestine , which should be viewed by every Ameri