RaviSez

Calling religion the root of all evil is bold in today's age: one automatically turns the majority of the world against oneself. This is a two part series in which Ricahrd Dawkins examines religion as it stands in today's deeply religious America. He travels to Israel and Palestine territories. In some segments he comes of as an evanagalist for Athiesm. I say this not in a bad way. I hold Dawkins with the highest regards but my skeptisicm( of his approach, not athiesm) is deeply rooted in the way most athiests like me view many religions: live and let live. We are unlike people in airports trying to convert you, trying to spread the word of god. We do not care if the other person believes in Jesus, Allah, Rama or the FSM. We know we are right but do not see the harm caused by people living in delusion. We think it's infringing on the rights of other people if they choose to believe it. We are uncomfortable to disclose that we are athiests in polite company -- much like gays were ( or still are in places like India). There are very few flaming athiests like flaming gays that cry out loud. In short we do not like the attention. That's what seperates Dawkins from the rest of us. He is not willing to stop at telling himself there is no god. He deeply cares about the wedge that religion drives between reason and logic. He is passionately against indoctrinating children before they are old enough to choose their own god( or not). Even when he is talking to supposed religious know-it-all leaders he is extremely calm and never agitated. There is one conversation with a man who is a passionate muslim preacher( he was born into Judaism in New York) in palestine. Dawkins tells him upfront that he is an athiest presumably trying to indicate that he has no motives against his issue. The reaction he elicits from the preacher is stunning: he hates him even more than he hates Jews. He launches into a tirade about why people like him( Dawkins) dress up their women as whores and parade them in the streets. To which Dawkins responds that they are not his women and it's upto the women to decide on how to dress. It's brave work -- watch it.

Yesterday I read this amazing incident in The New Yorker. Apparently, Steve Wynn --owner of the Wynn casino in Las Vegas, poked a hole with his elbow to La Reve, Picasso's painting of his mistress. He bought it for several million dollars and had just sold it to another art collector for $139 million. I called it an amazing incident not because of the extent of damage caused to the expensive painting; it was his reaction after the damage had been done. He had just lost several million dollars because of an accident and he was pretty cool about it. Later he took his friend's out to dinner:

A few hours later, they all met for dinner, and Wynn was in a cheerful mood. “My feeling was, It’s a picture, it’s my picture, we’ll fix it. Nobody got sick or died. It’s a picture. It took Picasso five hours to paint it.” Mary Boies ordered a six-litre bottle of Bordeaux, and when it was empty she had everyone sign the label, to commemorate the calamitous afternoon. Wynn signed it “Mary, it’s all about scale—Steve.”

That's it. He said, "Nobody got sick or died," when he had just poked a hole in a $139 million dollars painting. How cool is that? Is there a better way to handle an crises except when people are actually dying or getting sick? Isn't that the best answer for all the crises? You see what you can fix in a bad situation and then move on. I like this Steve Wynn guy.

Weather's changing: time to dust that coat
long cold nights pushing the days
this october or any for that matter
the start warm, the end frozen
summer leaves like the train you see
trying to catch it out of breath
with a big white X painted behind.