Rumble in the Jungle

After a fierce fight - The Winner! The Greatest Of All Time!

phenoMenon says...

There is such a thing as a free snack

phenoMenon says...

The most enjoyable thing about work is not doing it.

Fool's Gold

The Alchemist was a bit of a letdown.

Yes, I just read The Alchemist. Finally!

Was getting rather fed up people asking me increduously "You haven't read The Alchemist???" while I was busy going through the fishy reports of the man in havana, being retrenched by the pointy haired boss or peeking into the personal life of Iacocca.

Like i said, the Midas touch of the alchemist left me cold.

One of my nominations for the type of book that everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read.

Perhaps it's because my expectations were too high. Perhaps,like the Englishman, I too was looking for the Master Work.

Perhaps.

It begins pretty well with the wanderings of Santiago, the shepherd. The simple , uncomplicated lives of the sheep analogous to that of the baker gives you quite a lot of food for thought.

But then there enters into Santiago's life the feeling that is the single most driving force of human progress. Want. Necessity. Ambition. Lust. It's all the same.

"And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

(I want a million dollars. I am waiting.)

This refrain is the life blood of the novel. And to me , the deathknell.

The book requires you to have Belief, Faith. In Him. In Destiny.

I don't.

Hence my mind always parses 'Soul of the World', 'Omens','Listening to your Heart" to a four letter word. Crap.

Things can get pretty tedious if all that you can read over a hundred pages is Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.

The book does have it's plus points though.

For one, it's got me interested in Alchemy. Where there is easy money I am always game.

Melchizedek, the King of Salem was an interesting character especially when a chink in his gold breastplate shows a brief flash of vanity.

Santiago's brief stint at the crystal shop appealed to my marketing instincts.

The ending was presented rather well.

And most importantly, I now have the right to exclaim "You haven't read The Alchemist???"


PS: I hope that when I hit back at "You haven't read The Life of Pi???", I will have a better experience.

My cigarette smoke mixed with the smoke of my .38.
If business was as good as my aim, I'd be on Easy Street.
Instead, I've got an office on 49th Street
and a nasty relationship with a string of collection agents.
Yeah, that's me, Tracer Bullet.
I've got eight slugs in me.
One's lead, and the rest are bourbon.
The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver.
I'm a private eye.
Suddenly my door swung open,
and in walked trouble.
Brunette, as usual.

- Calvin as Tracer Bullet

Devil's Advocate

Just got this email as a forward. It has a little story that rather effectively defends the God - Evil paradox. Of course, this too is based on the assumption that God exists in the first place. But let's leave that Big Argument out of this.

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut
and his beard trimmed.

As the barber began to work, they began to have
a good conversation.

They talked about so many things and various
subjects. When they eventually touched on the
subject of God,

The barber said: "I don't believe that God exists."
"Why do you say that?"
asked the customer.
"Well, you just have to go out in the street to
realize that God doesn't exist.

Tell me, if God exists, would there be so
many sick people?

Would there be abandoned children? If God existed,
there would be neither suffering nor pain.

I can't imagine a loving God who would allow all of
these things."

The customer thought for a moment,
but didn't respond because he didn't want to
start an argument.

The barber finished his job and the customer
left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop,
he saw a man in the street with long, stringy,
dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty
and unkempt.

The customer turned back and entered
the barber shop again and he said to the
barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist."
"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber.

"I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on
you!" "No!" the customer exclaimed.

"Barbers don't exist because if they
did, there would be no people with dirty long hair
and untrimmed beards, like that man outside."

"Ah, but barbers DO exist! " answered
the barber. " What happens, is, people do not come to me. "

"Exactly!"- affirmed the customer. "That's the
point! God, too, DOES exist! What happens,
is, PEOPLE DON'T GO TO HIM AND DO NOT LOOK FOR HIM...
That's why there's so much pain and suffering in
the world."

This reminded me of a similar story that presents a logical defnce of the existense of evil.

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists?
A student bravely replied yes, he did!"
"God created everything?" The professor asked.
"Yes, sir," the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil."
The student became quiet before such an answer.

The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?" "Of course", replied the professor. The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Everybody and every object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (- 460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have too little heat.

The student continued. "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does".

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor. "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. "These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love, that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

An Ancient Egyptian Mystery Solved

This is how the Egyptians built the pyramids.