BBC documentary: SCIENCE AND ISLAM (1/3)

The Hunger Games; stupid movie that should be banned globally...



I waited with pleasant anticipation for days, and then I saw on MBC 2 that The Hunger Games would be shown on Saturday, January 12. Unfortunately, I was on duty. I saw the last half, but it was enough. Although I heard a lot about the movie’s promotions and people discussing it on social networks, I had no idea what it’s all about. My response at the end was, “What a stupid movie.”

They crowned the winner like a prom queen. It is a reality show where the very young, barely out of puberty, are trained like athletes in the art of the kill and then let loose in the forest to kill each other. There are no heroes and there are no villains. Kill and survive for a prize. The theme is not new, but the players are so young, I found it absolutely irresponsible to make a movie of this kind at a time when very young people, not only in the USA but everywhere else, turn to mass murder for the smallest of reasons, as if killing is fair game, and the more you kill, the merrier.

Honestly, what was on my mind while watching the movie was Norway’s Breivik blowing away high school students whose ages were similar to those of the Hunger Games participants. He described in horrific detail how, with blazing guns, teens pleaded for their lives. He shot again those showing signs of life to make sure that everybody is dead. He killed 78; I doubt that the makers of this movie had Norway’s Breivik killing spree in their minds while making this movie. What if those youngsters had a chance to defend themselves and fight back?

Not long after Breivik, Holmes walked into a theater in Colorado and started blowing away people all for the heck, fun, and excitement, and then barely months after, Adam Lanza blew his mother away, went to a school nearby, and blew away 6 adults and 20 toddlers, 6-7 years old. If I am a parent of one of those victims, I will sue Hollywood for these kinds of stupid movies that encourage the young to go out and kill and grow up to be gun-hungry for the game of kill. The freaks and the not-so-freaks join the US military to satisfy their hunger games and a license to kill.

It would be fun, real fun if members of the US Congress choose 5 from the Democrats and 5 from the Republicans in another episode of the Hunger Games and let them loose behind enemy lines in the mountains of Afghanistan or in the heartland of Somalia or better still, to Timbuktu of the troubled Mali; places where the USA continues to commit atrocities. The one to come out alive will be crowned speaker of the house.

How about a “Hunger Games” reality show for the USA’s presidency, where Democrats and Republicans aspiring for the White House are let loose in an arena like true gladiators and fight to the death, where the winner is crowned the USA’s president? That will be fun, but not children forced to kill each other for adults’ entertainment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzht93HMqZw

Among the great miracles I ever heard…

Among the great miracles I ever heard…

One of the things I always do when writing about religion is to be mild in my criticism of others in order not to offend friends. Countless people cling to beliefs, no matter how strange they may seem, due to a miracle they believe occurred because of their faith in that object. I watched people on television say that they promised total dedication to the idol of the black Nazarene (whoever and whatever it is) because I prayed to it, and I got what I wanted. You can’t accuse these people of lacking intelligence, given that they include former Vice-President Noli de Castro and Erwin Tulfo, both household names in the Philippines.

I realized, though, that if I find other religious faiths weird because of their worship of images, they find mine likewise more bizarre than most because, without graven images, they can’t understand to whom I am praying. That's really funny; ha!

People want something tangible that they can communicate and relate to, something with substance, so to speak. People worship graven images of Jesus, some looking Chinese, Japanese, blue-eyed European, and some plainly stupid and scary like the black Nazarene and, yeah, a discarded doll, and say this is the child Jesus. They worship graven images of Jesus’ mother, Mary, and a legion of saints, the latest being Pedro Calungsod, whose graven image is modeled after the still-alive and kicking basketball player Ronald Tubid. I wonder how this guy Ronald feels about his statuettes, caricatures, and pictures being worshipped by millions. More than a billion worship the images of Buddha and a million human and animal Hindu gods, like elephants and monkeys. Sorry…I just find it mind-bogglingly crazy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gr54pYc3Ak

PHOTOGRAPHY; an inexpensive hobby…

Every night, I would walk around this block a few times to stretch my legs, which takes a mere five minutes each. If I go further, that will take me to the shops, which will take about 10 minutes. Last night, during one of those walks, I noticed a flower growing out of a cement crack. I thought I would come back the following day and take a shot. The sun was directly above, a bit to my right, which blinded my sight of the cell phone screen. My Nokia, although not the latest touchscreen smartphone, has a 5 MP camera, which is not bad. I held my cell phone camera close to the wall and took several blind shots. This one came out nicely; I didn't have to crop it. The building, by the way, is the back side of our clinic.

With digital technology, photography has become an affordable hobby that anyone can enjoy, requiring only a smartphone and/or digital camera, along with free photo editing programs that can make you look like a pro. If you get a few perfect shots out of a thousand, it would not have burdened you with additional costs if you deleted all but the few good ones. I've noticed that some people on Facebook upload all the contents of their digital camera, regardless of how bad some of the pictures are. A few bad takes can spoil the whole lot. To make an impression, always choose the best photos, crop them, and edit before you upload to Facebook.

I took this photo last Friday, January 4, 2013, while waiting for a friend to pick us up on the way to Khamis City, 175 km away. I wanted to buy a 29’ LED/LCD TV on sale at Hyperpanda; unfortunately, it was all sold out when I got there. I ended up buying something better, a 32’ LED/LCD TV of a better brand, alhamdullillah. What's great about these latest hi-tech gadgets is their multi-tasking functions. I don’t only have a wide-screen television, but I also have a 32-inch computer monitor; it’s impossible not to be amused by it. With HD satellite receivers, even movies you have watched many times over become more entertaining :-)

 MORE PHOTOS

Is NASA Lost in Space...?

I wonder why NASA is obsessed with landing humans on a stupid asteroid. What benefit will humanity gain from such an expensive and dangerous mission/maneuver, other than satisfying a megalomaniac engineer at NASA at the expense of the people? Money on such a costly mission would be better spent on a mission to Mars or a moon of a planet other than Earth. Moreover, if the mission is unsuccessful or an accident occurs, it would delay any plan for a Mars-bound human journey.

Is NASA Lost in Space or Aimed at Asteroid?: Scientific American:

Is NASA Lost in Space or Aimed at Asteroid?

Experts weigh in on NASA's direction and its goal to send astronauts into deep space

By Leonard David and SPACE.com

A report this month from the National Research Council (NRC) has called NASA’s overall trajectory into question. It pointed out the national disagreement over the U.S. space agency’s goals and objectives, a disparity detrimental to the organization’s planning and budgeting efforts.

The 12-person blue-ribbon study group observed that the White House should take the lead in forging "a new consensus" onNASA's future in order to more closely align the agency’s budget and objectives and remove restrictions impeding NASA's efficient operations.

 SNIP

"Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. And by 2025, we expect newspacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space. So we’ll start…we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it." [How NASA Will Explore Asteroids (Gallery)]

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-nasa-lost-in-space-or-aimed-at-asteroid

'via Blog this'

World's Biggest Crocodile Tries To Escape:

If you are a Pinoy and haven't heard of or seen a picture of Lolong, you might be an OFW on an alien planet. Even a monster enthusiast might not have seen this 1 ½ minute video of Lolong trying to break free. It reminds me of King Kong and Godzilla trying to break chains, but this one is for real. Lolong, the world’s most enormous crocodile ever caught alive, is no fiction.

2012: The Year We Did Our Best To Abandon The Natural World

2012 was the wake-up year or the year that should have been a steel baton that hit our leaders’ heads. How can anyone forget those hundreds of tons of garbage washed along Manila’s shoreline that is supposed to be Manila’s showcase to the world? It is not new; we know we are killing the planet in our little corner of the third rock from the sun. Whatever I write here will only be redundant.

Philippine lies in the path of no less than 12 typhoons a year but we unfortunately have not learned our lesson in a hundred years. We simply hoard people in evacuation centers, feed them for sometimes until the storm has passed, collect the dead bodies and bury them in mass graves. We virtually sit and wait for the next storm to strike and do it all over again. It is our fate; our nation’s fate but while we can neither tell the storm to stop nor lessen its fury…we can certainly devise ways to lessen its impact.

The government spends billion trying to solve this perennial problem with very little if at all positive result. While we can squeeze cigarette and wine makers to pay more taxes to pay for the harm it causes to people; why can’t we squeeze manufacturers of plastics and other environmentally unfriendly products to pay for the destruction their products wreck on the environment? We either squeeze them out of business or compel them to buy back the plastic garbage and dispose of it properly. Buying back plastic litter at a reasonable price will provide the scavengers with a better income. The government must set and guarantee prices. Plastic litter will vanish in weeks if students and pupils will spend their free time picking up plastics. Homes and establishments will in fact religiously separate their plastic garbage if they can get reasonable cash for it. If government matches whatever amount manufacturers can afford to pay for it; it will be a double whammy that will encourage everyone to keep his/her own dirt for money. It is an indirect bribery of people to keep them disciplined but for a good cause being my yeah; thoughts for the New Year. 

2012: The Year We Did Our Best To Abandon The Natural World

2012: The Year We Did Our Best To Abandon The Natural World

Emissions are rising, ice is melting and yet the response of governments is simply to pretend that none of it is happening

By George Monbiot 

January 01, 2013 "The Guardian" - - It was the year of living dangerously. In 2012 governments turned their backs on the living planet, demonstrating that no chronic problem, however grave, will take priority over an immediate concern, however trivial. I believe there has been no worse year for the natural world in the past half-century.

Three weeks before the minimum occurred, the melting of the Arctic's sea ice broke the previous record. Remnants of the global megafauna – such as rhinos and bluefin tuna – were shoved violently towards extinction. Novel tree diseases raged across continents. Bird and insect numbers continued to plummet, coral reefs retreated, marine life dwindled. And those charged with protecting us and the world in which we live pretended that none of it was happening.

Their indifference was distilled into a great collective shrug at the Earth Summit in June. The first summit, 20 years before, was supposed to have heralded a new age of environmental responsibility. During that time, thanks largely to the empowerment of corporations and the ultra-rich, the square root of nothing has been achieved. Far from mobilising to address this, in 2012 the leaders of some of the world's most powerful governments – the US, the UK, Germany and Russia – didn't even bother to turn up.

But they did send their representatives to sabotage it. 

Please read full article:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33494.htm