International Hits on "Piracy on the High Seas"

Capt. Richard Phillips was freed by US Navy Seals after days on the lifeboat with four pirates, three of whom were killed in the rescue. Great work by the Capt. and the Seals. The precedent of not paying ransom for US-flagged ships and personnel has been preserved.

The 10 April 2009 Blog posting Piracy on the High Seas has generated lots of hits, many of them international. South Africa, Pakistan, China, Croatia, Nigeria, India, ... and even Massachusetts! (How many flags did you recognize? Can you match them to the countries listed?)

To see which topics have garnered interest over the past few days, scroll down the right-hand column and look for the Live Traffic Feed, then go to the bottom of that box and click Watch in Real Time. Joel's Is PowerPoint Anti-Intellectual?, and my Where Have All the Sunspots Gone? and Female Mind vs Male Mind and others continue to attract readers.

I find it interesting to look at the wide variety of national and international lurkers we have reading our stuff!

Here are the folks following the Piracy posting, and, in some cases, you can click the hypertext and see the Google search they did to learn of the posting:


Johannesburg, Gauteng arrived from blogsearch.google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas" by searching for blogsearch.google.com.
Islamabad arrived from blogsearch.google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas" by searching for blogsearch.google.com.
Chengdu, Sichuan arrived on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas".
Sandwich, Massachusetts arrived from google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club" by searching for moral and phylisphocal problems with paying ransom demands.
New York arrived on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas".
Rokovci, Vukovarsko-Srijemska arrived from blogsearch.google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas" by searching for blogsearch.google.com.
San Diego, California arrived from blogsearch.google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas" by searching for blogsearch.google.com.
Bénin, Edo arrived from blogsearch.google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas" by searching for blogsearch.google.com.
Gary, Indiana arrived from blogsearch.google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas" by searching for blogsearch.google.com.
Sandwich, Massachusetts arrived from google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club" by searching for moral and phylisphocal problems with paying ransom demands.
Kochi, Kerala arrived from blogsearch.google.com on "The Virtual Philosophy Club: Piracy on the High Seas" by searching for blogsearch.google.com.

I take this as proof the Earth has developed a central nervous system. The stuff you and I write on this Blog is distributed and alerts are sent in real-time to interested people all over the world.

IMHO, this develpment has wide-ranging implications for the development of an international conscousness and unprecedented shared values and civilization over the coming decades!

Ira Glickstein

Local Development Raises Temperature Readings

According to Florida Trend and Watts Up, some of the "global warming" we've been reading about is based on local temperature readings that have been biased by local development.

In a previous posting on this Blog I reported possible biases due to NOAA-GISS reporting stations that may have been properly located in the past but have been artifically warmed by encroaching civilization, such as asphalt roads, buildings spewing air conditioner heat, sewage treatment plants, and, in one case, a poorly located barbeque! A distance of at least 100 ft (30 meters) from artificial heat sources is recommended, with 100 meters considered ideal.

The above map shows the results of some new research here in Florida. As you all know, every summer we have a hot season with days over 80 degrees. Well, that hot season has been getting longer in some parts of Florida and shorter in others!

The blue areas on the map show where the hot season has been getting shorter since 1950. The red, yellow, and green areas show where it has been getting longer. I'm in the big blue area in the center where the number of 80 degree days per year have decreased by 18 days. The red spot just below us is Orlando where major development has increased the number of 80 degree days by 9 to 25 days! In over-developed Miami-Ft. Lauderdale near the tip of Florida, the number of over 80 degree days has increased by 33 to 45 days!

Bottom Line:

Accepted worldwide global warming data claims an average increase of about 0.6 degrees C (1.1 degrees F) since 1950. How then could large areas of Florida (and many other places) have experienced a reduction in very hot 80 degree days over the same time period? At least part of that 1.1 degree measured average global increase must be due to temperature reporting stations that have been encroached by artificial heat islands. Thus, part of reported global warming appears to be due to local biases in reporting stations due to development in those locations.

I hasten to add that the increased ice melts in polar areas are clear evidence that at least part of the reported average global warming is real. We still have to take action on increased human-caused CO2, but we can do that in a more considered way because global warming is not as dire as originally thought.

Ira Glickstein

god is not Great

god is not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens is an easy read - that man can really write! I found it interesting but full of irrelevant information and cheap argumentative tricks.

I know the scriptures are the writings of humans without the benefit of modern scientific educations. I know they have been translated and edited by humans for thousands of years. I am not a literal believer. Therefore, the rather obvious lack of scientifically verifiable content in holy books does not surprise me at all.
Hitchens claims (page 8) that religion has retarded development of civilization. On what evidence? None that I could find. The very fact that all societies and great civilizations of the past have been infused with what many of us judge to be irrational spiritual belief seems to argue for the benefit of religion for their survival and spread. If religion retards civilization, one would expect non-believing societies, free from religious retardation, to have been most successful. Can anyone cite an example? History proves the opposite!
Hitchens relates how he was asked by Dennis Prager if, approached by a bunch of men on a dark evening in a strange neighborhood, he would be less worried about his safety if he knew they were coming out of a prayer meeting. He spouts (page 18) a litany of cities (Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, ... "and that is only the B's") where, during certain times in recent and ancient history he would be less confortable if confronted by men exiting a religious meeting. Hitchens lives in Washington, DC and spends most of his time away from home in New York, London, Los Angeles, and so on. What would any honest person's answer be to that question?
He goes out of his way to trash both Mother Teresa (page 145+) and Ghandi (page 182+).
Hitchens was a Marxist before he lost his faith in that hopeless cause. He supported Trotsky who was exiled and later murdered by Stalin. One wonders if Hitchens would still be a Marxist had Trotsky turned the tables and eliminated Stalin.
Based on experience of loss of faith in Marxism, he laments (page 153) the pain he knows his book is inflicting on the religious faithful. I wonder if he is simply jealous of their faith? Like a kid whose balloon has popped, he savors the experience of popping everyone else's balloon.
He misquotes Rabbi Hillel, one of our most influential Jewish scholars, claiming Hillel stated the Golden Rule in the postitive version (page 213): "Treat others as you wish to be treated." In fact, even the slightest research would have shown that Hillel used the negative version favored by most Jewish scholars. Hillel wrote: "That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it."
He has an entire chapter entitled "Is Religion Child Abuse?" and concludes it is much worse (page 217) "'Child abuse' is really a silly and pathetic euphemism for what has been going on; the systematic rape and torture of children ..." He cites cases where children have indeeed been abused by priests of various religions, but that is an argumentative trick. If some Englishmen rape and torture children would it be right to say English civilization is all about rape and torture of children?

In a Comment to a previous Topic I noted Hitchens's reaction to what he calls "Hannukah" (he can't even spell it wrong the "right" way "Hanukkah" as major media do :-(

"Hannukah" is, in his words, a "vapid and annoying" holiday where "the Jews borrow shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope of a celebration that coincides with 'Christmas'".

Sorry it annoys Hitchens, but our grandchildren and children and fellow Jews northwest of Boston were anything but "pathetic" a couple weeks ago as we joyously lit the Chanukah candles and consumed more than our share of latkes. In a multi-generational recognition, Vi and I and our family had the honor of lighting one of the candles at a multi-congregation event in Chelmsford, MA.

The Maccabees, the heros of our Chanukah story of religious freedom, were, according to Hitchens, "forcibly restoring Mosaic fundamenalism against the many Jews .. attracted by Hellenism." In doing so, they sired "the stench of Calvin and Torquemada and bin Laden ... a poisonous branch that should have been snapped off long ago."

Hitchens apparantly believes it would have been better for monothesim to have been wiped out by Hellenists in 165 BC because that would have prevented the excesses of Christianity and Islam!

Again, on what historical basis can that claim be founded? The Maccabee revolt was in response to the Syrian Greek effort to replace our monotheistic God with their pantheon of gods. To that end, the Temple in Jerusalem was forceably Hellenized. The success of the Maccabees restored a more traditional Judaism to that area, made the Greeks and later the Romans more tolerant of religious diversity in their empires, and set the stage for the later development of Christianity.
Would western civilization have been better off with a pantheon of Greek gods?
I think the case is clear that western civilization is an amalgam of Judeo-Christian and Greek/Roman civilizations and each of those components makes it strong. Had the Judeo-Christian element been left out, I think eastern civilization and religion (i.e., Ghengis Khan) might have wiped us out. Would the world have been better off? I don't know. However, Hitchens seems to hate western civilization so much that he might prefer whatever would have followed from a Mongol success.

On the positive side (at least for me as a Pantheist) he notes Leslie Orgel's comment (page 84): "... evolution is smarter than you are." (Orgel was an associate of Francis Crick, DNA pioneer.)

He also writes (page 165) "... people can be better off believing in something than in nothing, however untrue that something may be."

Ira Glickstein