im sorry..for abbreviating..your words..but;.regard
the most bit..[of reply]..as the least bit to respond to
[the bigger point..was what..i replied]..

david..you know how hard..i strive..to fit it..all in..as it is..but now find im..replying..the least..of your points..instead of..the big ones

[like i love linus..but his lies..re taxonomy..have sent me..to jail]..this was done/arranged..by spirit..to shape my thinking..[a life lesson..that shades..all i do..helped me see..beyond that others can see

but linus..is as nothing..compared to oliver mendal..[the priest who sorted out..mendelic inheritors..that was revolutionary..from a science priest..[why he..only gets mention..here/now..is of itself revealing]

anyhow..my memory..expires..so cut/paste
hopefully without..needing to..point out..its not in full context..but..means..to reply..[THAT specific point]

<<..By leaving out..part of..the sentence..you changed..the meaning>>

i presume others..to go read..your
own words..in..your context..and my own..as in my context..

i do/it poorly..but..in spirit..there is..no accident/nothing..is left to chance.but with materialists..it may be different..[i write to the spirit..in..the word]..you own..your own context.

<<..Most humans do..not..regard all/life..as equal.>>

me either..[on the surface level..we each,,are unique
[own/face..own/finger prints..own/dna..own/voice print..even..our own smell..our own/life..our own/mind..own/thoughts..owned/ignorance's..

each UNIQUE

never the/less..some come..from..high birth
[or higher..prior incarnation/thus..higher possibility/incarnation
others from..low like/me..we..are far from equally/uniquely..unequal..in near everything else]

<<However,..in the broad scheme of things..there is..no criterion by which we can..consider a human life...as more worthwhile than the life..of a bacterium.>>

disagree strongly
in and on our body;;we EACH sustain..between 3..to..7 TRILLION..bacteria/mould.micro-bneasts bugs grubs worms virus etc..

[in fact..our bodies are mostly made..of foreign dna..without which we would soon die..we need them..to breakdown food slough-off dead cells etc..etc

all..life is far from equal..

recall jesus as saying..the more blessed
is lion/become meat for man..than..man become meat for beast..

thing is EVEN,..seeds are life..[we need kill..life to live
[just our daily/bread..we MURDER millions of seeds..multitudes of bacteria..killed in boiling waters[little wonder..the wise..prey over..their food

i will/let my..jewish inner/guide speak

he says..

<<what..i cant ask..a question?>

<<..It is a human judgment..that all life..is not equal.
It is not..objectively valid...Life forms have different capabilities>>..[oh dear..i..dun it again]

ok..we agree

but so..much more..i wanted to reply..its no use..replying at that other forum..cause no one reads that either

we regard..each new writing..as having its..own soul'..like steps..either..going too..or away..

ODE..to..Gregor_Johann-Mendel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_inheritance

<<..Mendelian inheritance..was initially..derived..from the work of Gregor Johann Mendel..He became..a monk..because it enabled him to obtain..an education..without having to pay..for it..himself

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel

<,.published in 1865.and 1866..which was re-discovered in 1900...It was initially..very controversial...When Mendel's theories were integrated..with the Chromosome Theory..of Inheritance..by Thomas Hunt Morgan in..1915,.they became..*the core..of classical genetics.*

<<..Mendel summarized..his findings..in two laws:
the Law of Segregation..and the Law of..Independent Assortment.

<<..Mendel stated..that each individual..has two factors for each trait,..one from each parent...The two factors may..or may not contain..the same information.

If the two factors..are identical,
the individual is called..homo-zygous..for the trait.

If the two factors..have different information,
the individual..is called hetero-zygous.

The alternative forms..of a factor are called..alleles.

The genotype of an individual..is made up of..the many alleles it possesses...An individual's physical appearance,..or phenotype, is determined by its alleles..as well as by its environment.

An individual possesses two alleles..for each trait;
one allele is given..by the female parent..and the other by the male parent...They are passed on..when an individual matures..and produces gametes:..egg and sperm.

When gametes form,..the paired alleles
separate..randomly so that each gamete..receives a copy..of one of the two alleles...The presence of an allele..does not mean that the trait..will be expressed in the individual..that possesses it.

In heterozygous individuals,..the allele that is expressed is the dominant...The recessive allele is present..but its expression is hidden..(the exception is co-dominance).

In genetics,.co-dominance is a phenomenon..in which a single gene has more..than one dominant allele...An individual who is heterozygous for two co-dominant alleles..will express..the phenotypes associated with both alleles...[eg tortoise shell cats//pied and grizzle pigeons]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punnett_square

Confirmation bias ..also called confirmatory bias..or myside bias)
is a tendency of people..to favor information..that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

People display..this bias when they gather..or remember information selectively,..or when they interpret it in a biased way...The effect is stronger for emotionally..charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs..>>

and we all..do it
[eg aj's..science pet theories thesis..theory..in academia][by my/own summation]

A Mendelian error..in the genetic analysis..of a species,..
describes an allele..in an individual..which could not have been received from either..of its biological parents..by Mendelian inheritance.

http://bioinf.wehi.edu.au/folders/melanie/statgenhowto.html
http://www.inra.fr/mia/T/degivry/Schiex05a.pdf

ps..garden..ideas..see pages..59-64
http://new-birth.net/booklet/Subaltern_Spirit_Land.pdf

Dear david f,

Thanks again for the elaboration. I think I have to accept your explanation that for a Jew “religious” means practice, or “cultural and historical experience”, irrespective of the possible worldview-underlying beliefs, attached to it.

I wonder whether this influenced Durkheim to define religion by rituals rather than belief in God(s), an approach preferred by my favorite Rodney Stark, who is critical of Durkheim’s contention that “rites and rituals are the fundamental stuff of religion”, and instead stresses that “variations on how God or Gods are conceived is the crucial difference among faiths and cultures” (c.f. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5580#154255).

>>It is a human judgment that all life is not equal. It is not objectively valid.<<

What judgement is not human? How can you tell whether a (non-human) judgement is objectively valid?

>>Since Linnaeus most people recognise that humans are beasts.<<

I am a “beast” to a biologist and a material object weighing about 90 kg on this planet to a physicist. As I like to say I do not mind sharing 95% of my DNA with a chimpanzee as long as one does not want to conclude that the remaining 5% are negligible. One speaks of emergent properties, life is one, consciousness is another, and so far no scientist has succeeded in explaining away these emergents as a smooth transit.

>>I think it’s healthier to recognise that we are just another animal … than to make up stories about … supernatural manifestations<<

I think it is rather subjective what one calls “healthier”. There are people who maintain that it is healthier to aim at satisfying only human needs you described above rather than spending millions on CERN, the Higgs bosom or on speculative superstring theories. And until computers, many people considered also number theory only as a time wasting eccentric hobby.

Nevertheless, I agree that in some situations it would have been “healthier” if people did not try to interpret their belief in the Spiritual in a way detrimental to many individuals as well as the society as such.

.

Edith Piaf,

.

Today, the 10th October 2013, is the 50th anniversary of the death of France’s most popular ever music-hall singer, Edith Piaf.

She was born in the 20th arrondissement of Paris and abandoned by her mother at birth. Her father, a street acrobat performer, gave her to his mother who ran a brothel in Normandy to raise.

She contracted keratitus and was blind from the age of three to seven. In 1929, at 14, she joined her father in his acrobatic street performances all over France, where she first sang in public. A year later she split-up with her father and earned a living as a street singer in Pigalle and Ménilmontant in Paris.

Her real name was Edith Giovanna Gassion - Edith after the World War I British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity - she was given the nickname “Piaf” (sparrow) when she was about 20.

Her first performance in the US was a complete flop. The Americans expected a glamorous young French star but Piaf was exactly the opposite. She stood in the centre of the stage, small (4 ft 8 in), unattractive, no make-up, no jewellery, just a plain black dress and black flat-heeled shoes, a poker face, her arms motionless along her legs, as lifeless as a statue, about a metre behind a microphone, her eyes staring straight in front of her.

It was only when she finally got a glowing review by a prominent New York critic that people started to see her in a different light and all the celebrities of New York flocked to see the peculiar French music-hall phenomenon. She appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show eight times and at Carnegie Hall twice (1956 and 1957).

.

(Continued) ...

.

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(Continued) ...

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The love of Piaf's life, the married boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a plane crash in October 1949, while flying from Paris to New York City to meet her. He was due to take the boat but Edith insisted he take the plane because she couldn’t wait to see him. Cerdan was the middleweight world champion at the time and a legend in France in his own right.

Edith died of liver cancer at age 47 at her villa in Plascassier (Grasse), on the French Riviera, on the 10th October 1963. Her corpse was transported clandestinely and illegally by road to Paris where she was officially declared dead the following day, 11th October, the same day as the death of her good friend, Jean Cocteau, a well known French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker.

My wife was a journalist at the time and her newspaper, France’s largest circulation daily, sent her to spend some time beside Edith’s open coffin as the celebrities passed to pay their last respects. She also had another reason to feel close to Edith Piaf because when she started her career as a journalist she often used Edith’s songs as a model for writing her articles on some of the tragic situations she encountered as a reporter.

Like many Parisians still today, we feel that Edith Piaf remains part of our lives, particularly those of us who live in what are known as the “popular” (poor) “quartiers” as we do, in the 18th arrondissement, near Montmartre.

Here are some of our favourites:

http://www.ooltra.net/Lyrics.php?a=EdithPiaf&s=LesAmantsDUnJour&t=en
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0oMQu2id6I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFYYgmpuffU
http://video.muzika.fr/clip/018547
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOTj0jCtwpA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqMz1zPS_aw

... just thought you might be interested in a slice of life from Paris ...

.

Dear George,

We all are informed by our culture including what religious background we have. That includes Durkheim and my son. My anthropologist son has lived with two Brazilian tribal people and has written about them including their religions. He has lived with the Xikrin whose home is along the Xingu River and the Canela who live in northeast Brazil.

We are so informed by our religious background that I doubt all of us could even agree on a definition of religion. I have heard educated people deny that Buddhism is a religion. They call it a philosophy rather than a religion. That seems to be because it does not have elements that exist in their religion. Secular philosophies may have religious elements. Marxism incorporates a millennial narrative which seems essentially religious to me. It also incorporates a fellowship similar to that found in religious faiths. Expulsion from the Party is more like excommunication than being dismissed from an organisation or a job.

<>>It is a human judgment that all life is not equal. It is not objectively valid.<<>

< What judgement is not human? How can you tell whether a (non-human) judgement is objectively valid?>

I should have used the word, subjective, rather than human as the adjective.

< I think it is rather subjective what one calls “healthier”. There are people who maintain that it is healthier to aim at satisfying only human needs you described above rather than spending millions on CERN, the Higgs bosom or on speculative superstring theories. And until computers, many people considered also number theory only as a time wasting eccentric hobby.>

It is subjective, and physicists nestle in the Higgs bosom. A man told me he had seen a program on “Higgins’ Ocean’ on TV. It was a malapropism for the Higgs boson.

Spending millions on CERN, the Higgs bosom (sic) or on speculative superstring theories satisfies a human need. In some ways Paul Erdös was a most unsatisfactory human being. Number theory gave his life meaning and the respect of some of his fellow beings.