I needed that reminder

(Via Quotes of the Day.)

The first whiskey I ever drank was a Johnnie Walker Red Label. It was horrible. Burned my mouth completely. I was, as can be expected young and knew nothing about whiskey, aside form the name. And that it was apparently “cool” to drink. So I tried. After that one sip I stayed of whiskey for over two years.

The second tim eI tasted whiskey, it was a Johnnie Walker Black label. It was strong, burning, and delightful. I do not know what has changed in those two years or if something changed at all. Maybe if I had tried the black first instead of the red, I would be set right off the start. For the next three years or so I only drank Johnnie Blacks.

As my taste evolved I stated trying more whiskeys. Like most people I started to value the single malts more and more. Eventually completely abandoning the blended sorts, of which Johnnie was my darling. Nowadays I have at home a small collection of singles, out of which I drink a glass almost daily. Whiskey has definitely become my favorite strong drink. Johnnie had a lot to do with it

That is why I was so delighted to see this 6 minute film over the history of Johnnie Walker. Even if you are not a fan of the drink, or the brand, it is worth 6 minutes of your time

This I believe is exactly what happened to justice Scalia. He lost sight of the reason he is there. To serve society. Executing an innocent man does not do that in any way. Look at it from the other direction, and you can see how he reasons.

One must ask himself if someone who completely lost sight of what its all about could, or should, remain in his position.

For more information on this case read this.

These last six months I have been working with, almost exclusively, quite religious people. Since I work at the IT branch this is something that is note worthy. Most IT people I know are not religious. Some of them believe in the existence of a god, others don’t, but I would definitely not classify them as religious. However, as I stated, I found my self in a team in which I was pretty much the only non believer. Coming from Israel, religion has always been something that is there. Though I am not a believer, I always thought that there is a lot of good coming from all these people. You could say my disposition towards religious people was positive.

I now have a strong dislike towards anyone that is considering himself religious. and let me tell you why.

In the first few weeks I was completely fascinated by these people. My friends are not religious, neither are my parents. You could say I grew up with little direct influence from any sort of religion. I do realize a lot of the traditions I was raised with come from the Jewish belief, however they were, at least for me, nothing more than that. A tradition.

And here I was surrounded by this group of true believers. We talked about faith, about why they believe, about what they see and how they experience the world. All 4 of them (note: 3 Christians and 1 Muslim) renounce evolution. I got answers like “Are you a dog?” and “I do not come from an ape”. And that was about all the proof they had. That was all the proof they needed. Well that and the holy scripts. It bothered me that I could not get through with rational thoughts to these people. Yet at the time I did not know quite why I was so bothered by this. I noticed I slightly shifted from being slightly positive to getting angry with them. Here was a group of people who are capable of thinking, that at some trail of thoughts completely lost touch with logic. That transaction was making me frustrated and angry. why is this happening? Why can they be perfectly logical one minute then completely break with logic the other. They brought up their arguments, I blew them away with pure and simple logic and so we always ended up with two things:

1. God’s plan is impossible for us to understand, or Gods way are mysterious, or things that to us seem illogical or impossible are actually logical and possible to a God.

2. I just know it is, or, it says so in the bible.

And that was that. There is nothing to be brought against those arguments because they are just like “because”. No logic, no thinking, no reason, just “because”. After a few of these talks I started to see what was making me so upset. It was that these, otherwise intelligent people were CHOOSING to see it like that. For the life of me I could not understand why anyone would want to do it. Then again if I could I would probably be a religious person. That was when the last shift was starting to happen in my attitude towards them. I moved from getting angry at them to feeling sorry for them. And then it finally hit me. The difference between how they think and I think.

I look at the world, and then shape my ideas of it

They have their ideas, then shape the world so that it would fit.

And that was that. These people, and this is the worst part, by their own choice are blind to the world. They know for sure how everything is, it is for them just a matter of interpreting everything in a way that matches their idea of how the world is. I now understand how people can do all the terrible things that they do in the name of religion. They do not see it as terrible things. I am actually convinced some of them see it as a good thing. A just thing. My colleges think that being gay is a choice, and that its bad, because it says so in the holy bible. I’m serious.

So now all I do is feel pity for them. They have chosen a path that was a bad idea in the middle ages, let alone in modern time. At the same time I am growing anti-religious by the minute. Look at the conflicts we have in the world now. Look at how many of it is religious based. What’s that you say, “Religion is just an excuses given to the masses”. Maybe, possibly. However, remove that excuses and it becomes a lot harder to get so many people to do so many horrible things. Religion might be misused, but if it is, than it has been for centuries. Maybe its time we realized that the only way to stop making religion an excuse is to reduce its power so that it can’t be used as such. Think I am being to harsh, look at the world map again, think of the conflicts that are going on now in the world.

How many are not religion related?

How many are?

Exactly

I rest my case.

Last note. There is still hope. Every generation there are more of us thinking people, and less of then bling people. One day, relgion will be a marginal group. That will be a good day.

Clay Shirky’s talk on Cognitive Surplus at the Web 2.0 Expo. Something to think about.