Happy Birthday, Fidel

I think Fidel Castro is senile, makes little noises with his throat, and drools. However once in a while we hear somebody had a conversation with the ancient dictator, they say “the old man is still thinking”, “he sure remembers Stalin!” and things like that.

Fidel being exhibited in public

As talkative as he was, if he could speak in public he would do it. Because he doesn´t, I think those shots of pluripotent rat cells he got didn´t work out. This is the reason why nowadays they pull him out of his room and try to make believe he´s talking sense. But he is so disconnected from reality he thinks the Soviet Union exists, that China is communist, and doesn´t even realize his brother Raúl sold the rights to use him in  Guaraná soft drink propaganda. 

Fidel selling Guaraná Antarctica soft drink 

Cooking the warming books

The climate wars involve intense media propaganda campaign waged by both extremist sides. However, there´s an interesting group in the middle which seems to be rather ignored.

All sides in the climate wars claim they get unfair coverage, this includes whining papers reported upon by The Guardian (a UK leftist paper I like to read), in which the authors complain their climate war opponents get more coverage than they should.

New Mexico Chili cooked Mexican Style

So, I´m going to show you how the climate warming books are cooked, and how the media tends to ignore the moderate 23 % of experts who think the CO2 causes moderate warming rather than the extreme position shown by 66 % who think CO2 causes “strong warming” (the remaining 10 % think CO2 doesn’t cause much warming, but to keep things simple I´ve focused on  the “strong” versus “moderate” groups).

First I´ll show you the graph shown at the Guardian to claim their “strong” group gets poor coverage.

Graph with data cooked Guardian style to show 

unfair  treatment for “strong” warming experts

(taken from  the Guardian here)

But the public isn´t told very much about a rather large group of experts who think CO2 causes moderate warming. So to show you how this works, I eyeballed the figures from the Guardian´s graphs, ignored the 10 % which thinks CO2 doesn´t have much of an impact (these guys are labeled "deniers", a rather insulting tag), and prepared this graph with the results for the moderates (good guys like me) versus the strongs (sometimes labeled "extreme warmists").

As you can see, even if I use the Guardian´s raw data (which may itself be cooked), I can see the moderates are getting less coverage than the extremists.

Graph I prepared with the Verheggen et al data used by the Guardian,

cooked to compare strong warmist to moderate media exposure,

this shows the good guy moderates tend to get ignored

The moderates, as reported in this study, are 23 % of the total.  This seems to be an important group, and I have the suspicion the moderates are the ones who are probably right.  So when you see the two extremes going at each other as if they were Mexican wrestlers in a dirty match, don´t forget somewhere in the background are very upstanding people who tend to like the middle rather than the extremes. They are scientists and experts who are like most of us.

Mexican Wrestlers (altered from the Guardian) 

The nature of Jesus

When talking to Christians about religion one can get quite confused,  because the majority adhere to beliefs that don´t  fit well with the Christian church´s official line. This seems to happen because the Bible includes passages which describe Jesus´ nature  vaguely or in what appears to be conflicting points of view.

Jesus

Not even the great Apostle  Paul of Tarsus  could write a lot or that clearly  about Jesus: Jesus was born, lived an ordinary life for a while, then began to preach and perform miracles, was crucified and then resurrected and ascended to heaven.

Paul (Saint Paul for Catholics) was a leader who was consulted by Christians in  his time to explain what he thought about Jesus. In  2 Corinthians 5: 16 Paul wrote:

"So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!"

Jesus at dinner time with a couple of friends 

Paul never met Jesus during his human life, this means he couldn´t  write much about Jesus the man. He could only describe Jesus  as a divine being whom he met when he was on his way to Damascus.  Paul is the intellectual force in the New Testament. But he couldn´t hold all Christians together as his followers.

Almost immediately after Jesus´ascent  into heaven,   Christianity fell apart  because Christians couldn´t  accommodate the multitude of opinions that emerged about his nature.  At that time Christians could believe  that Jesus was:

1. An ordinary man who had become God after dying and rising from the dead.
2. An ordinary man born, who became divine  sometime  during  his human life.
3. A divine being from conception.
4. A divine being who always existed (this is the official belief of Christians today).

These  diverse opinions were supported by the Bible, which lends itself to  confusing interpretations. For example, in Acts 2, Peter says:

"People of Israel, listen to my words: God attested Jesus of Nazareth to you. Made him perform miracles, wonders and all sort of  signs you already know about. You, however, turned him over to the Gentiles to be crucified and die on the cross, and thus the plan that God had arranged  was fulfilled. But God delivered him from the agony of death and raised him from the dead,  because it wasn´t  possible that He be held by the power of death. "

This type of comment can be seen in other books in the Bible. They are what led many in the past  (and lead many today)  to choose belief No. 1 be (Jesus became God after dying and rising). The logic used is quite simple. If the Apostle Peter said that God delivered Jesus from the dead then Jesus wasn´t  divine neither  when alive nor when He was dead when after the Crucifixion.

I don´t want to get in  trouble and get everybody mad at me, but I must point out that when you one reads  the Bible carefully, the existence of Jesus as the  part of the Holy Trinity called the Son (the others being the Father and the Holy Spirit) is based on the Gospel of John, and specifically in the part that says:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. "

This was officially interpreted to support  belief # 4 (Jesus was a divine being who always existed).  Nowadays anybody who  wants to be a good Christian has to get # 4 inside the head and can´t  have any doubts about it.  If you do have doubts then you  run the risk of becoming a heretic,  which can have serious consequences.

Anybody  can search the Bible quotes of  the apostles and other writers to support his beliefs. It´s very  easy to ignore what  other Christians believe, when their belief is  different,  even though they too use the Bible to support their opinion.

For almost 2000 years Christians have killed each other in droves to decide which is the best way to interpret the Bible.  

Christians fighting with each other

Violence does seem to solve these problems. For example, take Arianism.  Followers of Arianism  backed options # 1 or # 2. However,  today they barely exist, they  aren´t  organized, and many of them don´t  even realize they are considered  heretics.  

The  persecutions the Arians suffered in the Roman Empire´s dying years, and the subsequent defeat of the  Arian Visigoth  kingdom in Spain by Muslim invaders did a number on them.  By the time the Catholics finished cleaning out the Iberian peninsula the last of the Arian Christians was either dead or a firm believer in Catholicism. 

Go ahead,  search the word  Arian, and most of the time you´ll see it linked to the words heretic and heresy. If one didn´t know Christian history it would be easy to think they were a small bunch of nuts, when instead they may have been the Christian majority prior to the 4^th century.

I'm no expert on the subject, but I'm quite inquisitive, and I read the Bible (well, the interesting parts), and I think the nature of Jesus will continue to be a topic of debate for a long, very long, time. 

Further reading: 

The Bible 

The monkey selfie legal battle

The famous monkey selfie photograph has caused a legal battle between the camera´s owner, David J Slater, and Wikimedia. Wiki management claims the photo is available for free distribution because the monkey pressed the shutter. Mr Slater claims he owns the copyright because it was his camera, and he was taking monkey pictures.

The monkey selfie Photo: David J Slater/Caters

I tend to agree with Mr Slater. If he loses his legal battle all indy photographers are screwed if they allow their camera to be used by monkeys.  

This Australian  photographer  now faces $15 thousand* in legal bills as he tries to secure his rights to the monkey selfie. Popular opinion on this matter seems to be divided, with 43 % thinking the copyright belongs to Mr. Slater, while 41 % think it belongs to the monkey.  

Poll results from The Telegraph, 

(to  vote: Telegraph Poll is here)

By the way, the monkey is an Indonesian macaque. From the looks of it, I think it may be a crested macaque, but I didn´t research its family tree. If we go by the poll results that macaque owns almost  half the copyright for its selfie. This means the macaque would be the richest monkey in the world. Like they say in New Zealand, that´s a lot of kiwis.

*10000  british pounds, 10800 euros, 90000 yuan

References:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11015672/Wikipedia-refuses-to-delete-photo-as-monkey-owns-it.html

http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/crested_black_macaque

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/06/wikipedia-monkey-selfie-copyright-artists