A dirty poem

" There once was a lesbian from Cancun
Who took a young man up to her room
where they argued all night as to
who had the right to do what and how much to whom"

Credits: Life of David Gale

Life of David Gale

I watched the movie " The Life of David Gale" starring Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslet last week. I thought the movie was very entertaining with good suspense and kept me guessing until the end. I liked this quote by Kevin Spacey about Lacans philosophy

" Lacan’s point is that fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second – that you get what you seek, you don’t you cant want it any more.In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. Its not the “it” that you want, It’s the fantasy of “it” So desire supports crazy fantasie.

This is what pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill.

Or be careful what you wish for, not because you will get it but because, you are doomed to not to want it once you do. So the lesson of lacan is living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you have attained in terms of your desires, but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others. "

Meet Robert Fisk this week

The Middle East Children's Alliance presents
ROBERT FISK

Iraq and Lebanon: Pointing the Finger of Guilt

Thursday, December 14, 2006, 7pm
First Presbyterian Church, 2619 Broadway in Oakland
Tickets: $20, no one turned away for lack of funds

Journalist and author Robert Fisk has lived in and written about the Middle East for more than thirty years. He is the Middle East Correspondent for The Independent of London and the winner of numerous journalism and human rights awards, including the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Lannan Foundation.

SPECIAL RECEPTION with Robert Fisk
Thursday, December 14, 2006, 9pm
Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street in Oakland (across from the lecture)
$50, includes priority seating at lecture

Buy tickets online at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/8705, call 1-800-838-3006 or send a check to MECA, 901 Parker Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

This event will be wheelchair accessible and ASL interpreted.

Co-sponsored by the Armenian National Committee

For info: 510-548-0542 or events@mecaforpeace.org

God in the words of an athiest

Richard Dawkins, is a celebrated biologist and is well know for his war against fundamentalism in religions. Here is a small video of him describing God in the old testament.

Warning : The following might be offensive for some. So read at your own risk


Richard Dawkins: The God of the old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it, apathy, unjust, unforgiving, control freak, a vindictive blood thirsty ethnic cleanser, a masogenistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, philicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasachistic, capriciously melovalent bully.

Here is the video

The pleasure of finding things out

This video is an excellent 40 min interview with Nobel laurete and physicist Richard Feynman. I liked his answer to the question whether he considered his work worthy enough to win a nobel prize. Here is the text transcript of his answer.

Richard Feynman:

I don’t know . I don’t know anything about the nobel prize and whats worth what. If the people in the Swedish academy decide that x y or z wins a nobel prize, then so be it

I don’t have anything to do with the Nobel prize, It’s a pain in the neck. I don’t like honours. I am appreciated for the work I did and the people who appreciated and I noted other physicists who used my work, I don’t need anything else. I don’t think there is any sense to anything else. I don’t see that it makes a point that some one in the Swedish academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize. I already got the prize, the prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out. The kick in a discovery. The observation of other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors. That bothers me . Honors bothers me. Honors are epaulets, honors are uniforms, My Pop brought me up this way. I cant stand it. It hurts me.

When I was in High school, one of the first honors I got was to be a member of the arista, which is a group of kids, who got good grades. And everybody wanted to be a member of the Arista. When I got into the arista I discovered is that what they did in their meetings was to sit around to discuss who else was worthy to join the wonderful group we are. This kind of thing bothers me psychologically for one or another reason, I don’t understand myself. Honors from that date to now always bothered me.


Here is the video