God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time -- life and death -- stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

Съездил вчера покатался на лыжах на Stratton Mnt, VT. Погода была изумительной (глобоко-синее небо, ни ветерка, температура 28F ~ -3C, Солнце сияет), снега много, хотя и несвежий, могулы - большие и крутые.. очередей на подъёмниках не было вообще (Пятница же). Короче - получил массу удовльствий как всегда (для тех кто не никогда могулы не проходил - испытываешь такое же оргазмическое чувство, это тоже ритмическое движение :-) могулы делать).. И похоже, что я окажусь в меньшистве радуясь зиме и совершенно не ожидая весну.

А столько всего произошло в миру пока я облизывал бугры и проходил GS gates.

Ну во-первых, НОЧНАЯ ТОСКА вернулась с острова откуда не возвращаются и озарила собой приход весны. Хотя я и не сторонник весны как времени года, я согласен на весну с НОЧНОЙ ТОСКОЙ :-)

Во-вторых, оставил Рысёнокa с одной синей звездой, получил его обратно с тремя (это видимо потому, что спорил долго он по поводу надоел ли он дествительно или надоест когда до пяти зелёных дойдёт? :-))

А уж сколько спамов с subj "Свадьбы ONLINE" у меня в mailbox'e появилось...

Из того, что не изменилось:

Приятно осозновать, что hi_tara по-прежнему не внемлет голосу здравого смысла и ратует за женскую независимость путём истребления того, от чего эта зависимость имела место быть - мужчин и их начала :-).

И как обычно в дни зарящего общечеловеского идиотизма, вагон глупостей, серости, ненависти и откровенной тупизны с доставкой на дом.

вчера откапывал свой автомобиль, наверное тонну снега перекидал. Хорошо что в gym хожу, спина хоть не болит сегодня. Только чувствую, что зря пыхтел - снег снова идёт, наверное еще пару дюймов на борт примем.

Только теперь мне ехать никуда нельзя. Мой parking spot теперь чистый, как только уеду, его тут же займут, а припарковаться больше нигде не получиться - все завалено, по обеим сторонам drivewау. Как в New York'e: машины покупают только за тем, что бы держать стояночное место...

Народ на Jeep'ah пытался куда-то проехать - вязли.. Приехал snowplow (4х4 Chevy).. заткнулся... Приехал другой, покрупнее, вытащил первого, и завалил оконачательно какую-то малолитражку.. Весело.. Приехала девица на Jeep Cherokee.. в driveway въехать не может, у неё только задние - ведущие... вытащил я свою Subaru из очищеного места и пропилил ей колею.. дело было в час ночи...

ИМХО, не в многонационаьности дело per se, а в интерпретации её. Америка - melting pot, наверное самая многонациональная страна и по большому счету никто никого не раздражает. Потому что дано: Есть закон, и если закона не уважаешь - поплатишься рано или поздно...

Расизм? да, есть. Единичные случаи межнациональной ненависти - да, есть. Но в таких штучных количествах, что это скорее исключение из правил.

ДА, несколько сотен ни в чем не виноватых арабов-американцев и студентов загребли в бутырки после 9/11, но СМИ из этого такой шум сделали, что никому сладко не показалось.. А теперь подумайте что происходит в России.. зачистки.. про суть которых большинство российских граждан и не ведают (типа, сажай кого угодно, только что бы мне хорошо было)... Вместе с тем отмечу, что мне хотелось бы ещё большей открытости от правительства США.

Вы когда-нибудь видели что бы иммигранты из Сомали поднимали американскии флаг на доме? И гордились страной, которая их приютила? Я - видел. А теперь подумайте о такой же ситуации в России.... Кто из россиян поднимал флаг над своим домом в день независимости России? А?

Дело в ощущении принадлежхости к стране, обществу, соседям, друзям и т. д. и национальность тут я думаю ни причем. маргиналы и ура-патриоты кричат что мы продали и предали Россию за кусок хлеба и длинный доллар. Nope. Я (за других говорить не стану) - не чувствовал принадлежности к России; мне быи отвратны методы которыми мои же соотечественники (в независимости от национальности) деиствовавли в отношение им подобных... Я уехал не от России, а от человеческой мерзости, низости и озлобленности.

В америке учишься не разделять людей по национальному признаку - низко это. Учишься принимать людеи за то что они есть - умные/глупые, добрые/злые и т. д. И потому у меня есть друзья арабы, евреи, японцы, китаицы с тайванцами (которые, кстати, друзья между собой).. индийцы с пакинстанцами (тоже друзья), бангладеш...список можно продолжать... И никто никому национальность в укор не ставит... Здесь все - Люди.

Have you ever had this surreal experience: you get up in the middle of the night, you go to the bathroom, and God misteriously turns lights on for you. Equally misteriously He turns then off after you're done. And in the morning you dicover that you had been peeing in the refrigerator?

Valentine's Day is out of control. It's been around at least since the 1800s and, like most festivals that have been around for a long time, it has lost its original focus.

Valentine's Day began as a special day for lovers, would-be lovers, and sometimes ex-lovers. The original Valentines were hand made and hand written. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Mr. J.C.Hall of Hallmark, and a couple of other companies, began mass-producing Valentines. Naturally this entailed a certain loss of personality. The sentiments and the poems were churned out en masse by hack writers, so that the typical Valentine became about as personal as an electricity bill.

However for long years Valentines remained the special province of romantic lovers. The most fun thing about them was their prescribed anonymity. You were not supposed to write your name on the card or cards. If you wanted to play the game seriously you might type the address of the recipient, and mail the cards from a different town. The idea was to create a sense of secrecy and surprise. It was a very transparent secrecy in most cases. But there was always the possibility of getting a card from a genuinely unknown admirer, and trying to guess who he or she was. That's the very essence of romance - mystery. From the sender's point of view, it was a safe yet exciting way of approaching someone previously admired from afar. Would she or he guess the identity of their admirer? It was always possible to drop hints.

Of course we can still play this harmless game, but has lost its point because Valentine's Day itself has lost its point. In the domestic 1950s the card companies decided that romantic lovers were just too small a market to be profitable. They began to sell Valentine's Day as a family thing. In this they were aided and abetted by the schools that (for reasons that still escape me) encouraged small children to send Valentines to one another. The market exploded. Now the local card store has Valentines for children, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles,dogs and goldfish, and even teachers. I suppose the last romantic attachment is just remotely imaginable, but the others are not - or shouldn't be.

The debasement of the Valentine parallels the debasement of its key word, "love," which is now used indiscriminately to cover the extremes of emotion all the way from passionate attachment to absolute loathing. At one end of the scale is the madness of true romantic love. At the other is (for example) the airline's claim that "You will Love Our Service." Same word, opposite meanings.

The verses in these mass-produced Valentines are truly appalling. For example, to someone's wife:

"You pick up after me

And arrange things in their place

You turn my frown upside down

And put a smile on my face."

A verse like this could and should precipitate instant divorce, with a hefty settlement for mental cruelty. It's a shame that love - which is very fine and very rare - should be dragged so low by these pitiless purveyors of bad poetry. Why poetry, anyway, when most of us in Long Island and Connecticut speak in prose, even when we are in love? And the cards are only the tip of this scarlet, heart-shaped iceberg. There are online cards, and videos, and "animated sexual greetings" to send to your beloved, or your teacher, to make your feelings entirely clear.

David Bouchier

I came to see Valentine's Day for what it is: a third-rate marketing holiday (after Christmas and Halloween) — a cheap, commercial parody of romance designed to foster greed and disappointment (in women) and guilt and resentment (in men).

Crankiness in Decline, Says the Old Guy
Time Magazine, August 19, 2002

There's a new survey out saying that people who take a positive view of aging actually live longer than those who grouse and grumble, which is hogwash and I am paying no attention to it. I turned 60 last week and it's no picnic and anybody who says so is whistling in the dark. Maybe this doesn't sound life-affirming to you . So---- shoot me.

I didn't want a 60th birthday party but agreed to it under pressure lest I be thought a sorehead and so all my jowly friends with thin dead hair sang "Happy Birthday" in their horrible ruined voices and we sat eating aged beef and heirloom tomatoes with a dry but experienced Chardonnay and old pals woofed about how happy and busy they are in retirement and gave me dumb birthday cards ("Welcome to the Incontinence Hotline...Can you hold, please?") and a cake blazed up like the Hindenburg and some people I knew back when they were fun told me how good I look.

Back in the 1960s, birthday parties were major fun. The Grateful Dead was on the hi-fi and you danced and took powerful drugs and swam naked in the lake and lay on the sand talking about what you were feeling. But I can't do that anymore for fear of embarrassing my children.

This week, as a gift to myself, I'm going to Scotland.

Turning 60 is darned awkward in America. We glorify carefree youth and feel sheepish if our abdomen is not hard enough to crack walnuts on and our hearts are not smiley. Geezers and geezerettes go around in juvenile clothes, shorts and flip-flops and jokey T-shirts ("My Goal Is To Live Forever. So Far, So Good."). Embarrassing. A man my age should not aim for boyishness. He should wear an old tweed jacket and trousers and a silk vest with a great belly under it and have wild eyebrows the size of rats and carry a knobby walking-stick and smoke cigars and sit around kicking the bejabbers out of the government. A guy can do that in Scotland.

In Scotland, old codgers like me don't buy into the fairy tale that these are the Best Years of Our Life. They know better. If life is a journey, then your 60s are the homeward leg when you're hung up in an airport and thinking bad thoughts about your travel agent. Your shoes have been x-rayed, your flight is delayed, you're trapped in a lounge full of idiots with those dangly cellphones and voices like chainsaws. You'd like to tell them to get lost. But in America, we've seen a serious erosion of the right to be cranky. That's why all these bozos cruising around in trucks though they're hauling nothing but a briefcase: they know nobody's going to squawk at them for it. Oprah is to blame for this, and the whole Onward & Upward, Little Engine That Could industry that has made smiliness obligatory. Look at the Clintons.

Here are two folks who spent eight years being attacked by midgets and now have fat contracts to write memoirs in which they could pound on their enemies and throw gravel at them, and will they? Will it be Pay Back Time? No, it will not be. They will say that those eight years of persecution only deepened their faith and drew them closer as a couple and made them realize how terribly lucky they really are.

In Scotland, memoirists would be expected to lacerate their enemies and rain garbage on them, and if you raked in $18 million doing it --- bingo! more power to you. A wonderful dour tribe, the Scots, and the right to piss and moan is sacred there. Here, we've been duped out of it by the people who gave us aromatherapy and seaweed wraps.

Face it: a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality. And a man who turns 60 and tells you he never felt better is delusional. He's forgotten how it was when your whole being leaped and bounded, before you turned into a lumbering galoot. Nature is relentless; it programs degeneration into our DNA. Even if you're positive-thinking, hopped up on Viagra, and your face has been lifted and stapled to make you look like a feral lemur, nonetheless one day you'll look like something from the lost lagoon and have the sex drive of a potted plant. Nature doesn't care about your golden years, it's aiming for turnover.

You don't get to be old by putting on a happy face. What keeps you going is stubbornness and righteous anger: at ugly buildings, lousy service, hip hop, the eminence of non-entities, at cravenness and cruelty in general, and the shamelessness of this government ---- leading the lynch mob against a few corporate scapegoats ---- the naked hypocrisy of it! If you're not brave enough to have morals when you're 72% popular, what hope is there for you? Give the bastards a hard time: that's how you get to be old. But why am I telling you, bubby? Grow up and come back when you know something.

Paired off Parrots

A lady approaches her rabbi and tells him, "Rabbi, I have a problem. I have two female talking parrots, but they only know how to say one thing."

"What do they say?" the rabbi inquired.

"They only know how to say, 'Hi, we're prostitutes. Want to have some fun?'"

"That's terrible!" the rabbi exclaimed, "but I have a solution to your problem. Bring your two female parrots over to my house and I will put them with my two male talking parrots whom I taught to pray and read Hebrew. My parrots will teach your parrots to stop saying that terrible phrase and your female parrots will learn to praise and worship."

"Thank you!" the woman responded.

The next day the woman brings her female parrots to the rabbi's house. His two male parrots are wearing tiny yamulkes and praying in their cage. The lady puts her two female parrots in with the male parrots and the female parrots say, "Hi, we're prostitutes, want to have some fun?"

One male parrot looks over at the other male parrot and exclaims, "Put away the siddurs! Our prayers have been answered!"

Jews Joke #1`

Frenchman, German and a Jew walked into the bar after they have been out in the desert all day, and the Frenchman says:
"I'm tired and I'm thirsty, and I must have wine"
German says:
"I'm tired and I'm thirsty, and I must have beer"
and the Jew says
"I'm tired and I'm thirsty, I must have diabetes!"

Jews Joke #2

When does life begin... A great question. Different traditions have different answers to this question. But in te jewish tradition hte embrio is not considered viable until it graduates from the medical school.

Jews Joke #3

Cruise shipo sinks and three men make it to the desert island. And the first man, a catholic, he kneels down and prays to the Lord to be saved from the island, and the second man, a lutheran, he also kneels and prays to the Lord to be saved from the island, and the third man, a Jew, says:
"Hey, two years ago I have donated $1M to the Jewish Federation, last year I contributed $2M, this year I pledged $3M, Don't worry, they'll find me!"

Olie saw Lars riding down the street on a bike that was a little small for him. He asked him where he got it.
Lars said,
"Well ya know I was working out in the field when the boss's daughter came riding up, took her shirt off and said 'Lars you can have any thing you want.'
So I took the bike."
Olie though for a moment then said,
"I think you did the right thing there Lars. That shirt wouldn't have fit you."



Sven was talking to Ole on the cell phone in his car.
"Ole, did you hear the news report, there's a person out there driving on the wrong side of the road."
Ole said,
"There's not one person, there hundreds of them!"

Bad Religious Joke #1

So the drug queen walks in the catholic church as the priest is coming down the isle swinging the incesnse pot. And she says to the priest:
"Oh, honey, I love your dress, but did you know that your handbag is on fire!"

Bad Religious Joke #2

So this jewish guy went to his rabbi, and he said:
"I have a trouble with my son - he run away and came back a christian"
Rabbi said,
"You know, it's funny you should ask, my son, too, run away and came back christian".
They decided to pray about it, anf the God said,
"You know, guys, it's funny you should ask, but my son......"

Bad Religious Joke #3

So, the priest and rabbi were sitting next to each other at the after-brit dinner, when the priest asked:
"I know you're an orthodox, so you're not supposed to eat pork, but have you ever tasted it?".
Rabbi says:
"Well, yes I have, a couple of times."
And then asks the priest:
"And I know you're supposed to be celibate... have you ever, you know.."
Priest says:
"Yes, actually I have, a couple of times"
Rabbi says,
"Better than pork, isn't it?"

Bad Religious Joke #4

So, two babtist ministers are talking about the immorality of the country today, and one of them says:
"I didn't sleep with my wife before I was married. How about you?"
The second answers:
"I don't know, what was her maiden name?"


A Sex Joke

Sex.....Sex.......is not the answer..... Sex is the question, the answer is YES!

Bad Political Joke

President Bush and Colin Powell are sitting in a bar. A guy walks in and asks the barman,
"Isn't that Bush and Powell sitting over there?"
The barman says,
"Yep, that's them."
So the guy walks over and says,
"Wow, this is a real honor. What are you guys doing in here?"
Bush says,
"We're planning WW III."
And the guy says,
"Really? What's going to happen?"
Bush says,
"Well, we're going to kill 140 million Iraqis, and one bicycle repairman."
The guy exclaimed,
"A bicycle repairman? Why kill a bicycle repairman?"
Bush turns to Powell, punches him on the shoulder and says,
"See?! I told you no one would worry about the 140 million Iraqis!"

Недавно получили мы новый MR scanner Siemens Trio (3 Tesla).. В фотоальбоме выложены картинки уникального события...

by the way, this girl is rather heavy.. 27 tons of metal, wires and liquid helium..