Nisses blogg

Today I've been sifting through some videos on the internet concerning the heated debate in the USA about Creationism VS. Evolution and I am in shock...
 
Let me just summarise the ideas behind creationism for you: The exact age of the Earth and the Universe isn't known but claimed to be less than 10000 years old. God created heaven and earth in six days and so on and so forth. Here Adam was made in God's image, and so was all the other animals (although not in god's image... hey! how do we know god wasn't a cat?). At this time there was some kind of watery layer (clouds anybody?) in the sky which enabled people to live to be roughly 900 years old. Eve was made and I think the rest of the story tells it's self.
 
Anyhow, Noah made an ark where he put two of each animal so as to save them from the coming flood. He actually went out and got two of every species known to man (this is strange since we don't really know of all the species). They are all, of course, infants so they will fit inside the ark. Fish live in the water anyway and bugs can make it on their own apparently. Noah didn't have to bring every sort of animal, but every kind of animal. Apparently two dogs were enough to be able to breed a whole bunch of races. The Great Dane and the Chihuahua are just variations of the original dog Noah had on his ark. The same goes for all animals; horses, cows, bears, cats, lizards, birds, the list goes on and on.
 
The watery layer that was in the sky before is now gone since it was that same water that caused the great flood. That water is gone now though.
 
So this is it really. God created heaven and earth and everything on it in six days. Lots of years passed, there was a flood, and only Noah, his family and two of each animal survived and repopulated the earth.
 
This is all great! Nice and cosy and all printed in the Bible for you to read at your convenience at the nearest church, library or maybe even in your own bookcase. It's all there and probably in much greater detail than what I've just written. So why am I so upset by all this? Well, it's simple really... They want to replace science with religion, and when I say they I mean people like Kent Hovind (now in jail for tax reasons I am told). He is a very skilled public speaker who easily appeals to crowds. Even though I disagree with just about everything he says I must admit I still enjoy listening to him. But I think he, as well as many others have got some things all wrong.
 
I know I can't disprove the existence of a god. I believe there was a man called Jesus who lived a couple of thousand years ago. I believe he was a very nice man who stood for some nice things like equality and fairness and lots of other good things. But I don't believe he could walk on water. Anyway, I think I'm straying from the point a bit now. I can't disprove god in the same way Creationists can't disprove evolution. It is staggering that I even have to say so since god has nothing to do with evolution. According to Creationists there is no such thing. All there is is just a variation of species. In other words you can eventually get a Labrador if you breed enough of the right kind of Bulldog since a dog is always just a dog. It seems Creationists are counting on the fact that dogs have always been kept as pets and that they haven't evolved into the way they look now. Their appearance is just a result of what the owners have wanted them to look like. If this is true, kill me now because this is just silly and I won't be having silliness in my science-books.
 
An argument for Creationism I want to bring up now involves vertically standing petrified trees found in sediments. Kent Hovind argues that sediments are layers which form over many years. So why is there suddenly a vertical tree going through all these layers. This is probably just something put there by god or something like that. It is obvious here that he is not a man of science, since he knows next to nothing about sediments or petrified trees. Trees are very rigid structures. A layer of mud, sand or silt won't affect them much. Many layers over time will just fix the tree in position even more and if the right conditions are met it will petrify. This is all very basic stuff. They even knew how to petrify humans in ancient Egypt (yes that's right... mummies).
 
I'm not going to go through all of his arguments since they are so many, so silly and so removed from what is actually science that it is frightening.
 
Okay... so this is Creationism. But what are the arguments for evolution anyway? you may ask if you are silly enough to believe in this creationistic codswallop. Well, the thing with evolution is that it was actually found to be more likely than Creationism long ago in Darwinian (for those of you who don't know; the father of Evolution is called Charles Darwin) times. This is an old battle. Evolution won hands down and is continuing to prove its victory every day with every dug up fossil and every animal that is born since it is a VERY slow and ongoing process. This doesn't mean that Evolution is a fact. We can't be sure of it. As a matter of fact, we can't be sure of anything at all. But it is very likely that it is true. It's true right now, except for some people. Creationists don't believe in evolution at all (as you may have gathered) and skilled speakers and thinkers like Kent Hovind exploit the gaps in the theory of Evolution to try to disprove it. He want's proof of evolution; direct proof of something which in actual fact can't be proved to 100%. Where this proof is absent he resents what is more scientifically likely and pronounces it an act of god and then proceeds, instantly, to joke about how silly scientists are when everything they need to know is all in the Bible.
 
It's all in the Bible eh? A work of fiction many hundreds of pages long, written by an untold amount of authors very long ago. Historically the Bible is very inaccurate source material. Nobody has signed the Bible saying: I wrote it. Neither has anybody any knowledge of how old the Bible is. It's probably varied since it is made up of many different parts telling lots of different stories. Looking for science in the Bible is a bit like looking for fossils in concrete. There is nothing there and if there is it's probably just a shoe or a helmet or something like that. In other words: NOT what we were looking for.
 
Creationists don't accept Evolution and I don't want to force it on them if they don't want it. They can claim that everything they don't understand or cannot grasp is an act of God. They can go ahead and believe that we were created out of nothing by a divine being rather than from bacteria in the primordial soup or whatever (or as Kent Hovind says: "Created from a rock"). But don't change the text in my science-books into religious mumbo jumbo. If I want to learn how God supposedly created the world I will read a Bible. Thank God (eh? don't worry, it's just an expression!) I live in Sweden and not in the USA.

 
But anyway! Enough of me. I'm not very interesting. Let's get down to what I wanted to write about. This is something that has upset me a lot.
 
My lovely girlfriend Maria (who doesn't have anything to do with the moon, she hasn't even been there) kindly let me borrow a book during my long weekend in England. I read about half on the way there and some more on the way back only to finish it a couple of hours ago. The book is titled "Flickan och skulden", which will mean codswallop to anybody who doesn't speak swedish. In any case it is a very serious book about a very serious subject: rape, written by a swedish journalist to highlight how far the swedish justice system has progressed since the dawn of man (OK, not exatly but I guess you could say so). The truth is that when it comes to judging cases of rape in Sweden the system is very out of date.
 
In the book Katarina Wennstam (the book's author) illustrates just how badly cases of rape are treated by the justice system. I won't go into any of the cases but I will try to illustrate the flaws with an example. A young girl of 16 is out with some friends at a houseparty. There is alcohol to drink there and she has some. She becomes quite drunk but is still conscious and able to stand and talk. The guy who owns the flat where the party is is 22 and he has some of his friends there aswell. The 16 year old girl and the 22 year old guy get talking and this eventually leads to snuggling. They move into a the bedroom where they start to kiss.
 
(So far so good eh?)
 
The girl does not want to go any further than this but the guy does. He tells her he wants her to take off her clothes. When she refuses he gets angry with her and says he will hurt her if she doesn't and pulls a knife out if his trouser pocket and puts it on the bedside table. The girl is afraid now and does what he says. She takes her clothes of. He then unzips his pants and pushes her down toward his penis and forces it toward her face and mouth and tells het to take it and suck it. She does as he says. After a little while he grabs her and flings her onto the bed. Her legs are then forced apart and he enters her. She doesn't fight back or say anything out of fear for him. When he is done he zips up, takes his knife and leaves the room. Seconds later he is back with his two friends. They both have sex with the girl in turn in both vagina and anus followed by the 22 year old who once again takes her by force.
 
The 22 year old now has the knife out again and this time it is pressed to her throat. He tells her that if she tells anybody about this he will kill her. He tells her she is a whore many times and then tells her to get dressed and leave. Her friends have already gone without her.
 
The young girl does as he says. She gets dressed and goes home, alone, chocked, hurting, limping because of the severe pain in her crotch.
 
She doesn't tell anybody about what happened untill about six months later when she tells her best friend who convinces her to go to the police with this and she does. This is when what the author calls, the second rape, takes place. Once at the police station she is asked questions about what happened like: What time did this take place? Where did it take place? What did they do to you and where? Who did this? Were you drunk at the time? What were you wearing? (hang on!?)
 
If there is a case they can take it to court. Here they will most likely ask her questions about her sexual history, has she had sex before? What was it like? Have more than two people been part of the act? What were you wearing at the party? Did you bahave flirtaciously? Why didn't you call for help? Did you really say no? Are you sure you didn't really want this?
 
Allright... what's wrong here? I'll tell you! What on earth does her clothes or her sexual history have to do with the fact that three guys have forcefully taken her in every hole big enough for their pricks?! Would she be pressing charges if she had wanted them to do this? Her sexual history does not have anything to do with what happened. Neither does her clothing, her behaviour or how much she had had to drink. If she has said no that should be enough. The girl was totally concious at the time of the rape and she did clearly tell the 22 year old she did not want to do more than kiss. They may tell her that she should have been more carefull. That she shouldn't have gone to the flat or into the bedroom with the guy she had just met.
 
How do you think it feels to sit in court after telling the whole story in front of a panel of strangers and with the three rapists in the same room and then be questioned by the defence about you maybe actually wanting to have sex with three strange men, about your past sexual experiences, your clothes, etc. Another thing is that you have to tell the truth whilst the defendant can lie as much as he likes without consequence. If you lie, however, you can be charged with obstructing justice. Does anybody else find this strange?
 
That was just one aspect of this. Another is that when judging rape cases the defendant is presumed innocent untill proven guilty rather than guilty untill proven innocent (the latter is the method for judging all other crimes as far as I know). So it is the girl and her lawyer who has to prove the rapists guilt rather than the rapist having to prove his innocence. The reason for this baffles me since there are paragraphs in the law that states that it should not be so. I guess the problem then lies in the people who decide who is guilty, what for and how much. In my oppinion they are judging the wrong person. I just don't understand why rape cases are judged differently to other cases.
 
Let me illustrate how wierd this is with an example: A man has just been robbed of his watch, his wallet and jewlery. Eventually he finds the watch and jewlery in a pawn shop. He reports this to the police who manage to trace the robber and find him. Lets skip straight to court shall we? Allright! In court it would be silly for the one pressing charges to be asked questions like: Do you normally wear expensive watches and jewlery? Were you flashing your wallet around saying how much money you had? Is this something you regularly do? Did you make it clear that you did not want to have these items taken from you? Why did you go through that alley if you didn't want to be robbed? They would also not tell him to be more carefull and partly blame him for the robbery by posessing a watch and jewlery. Am I making my point here?
 
The robber is guilty untill proven innocent. The rapist should be guilty untill proven innocent. Making up a rape case is no small matter. The author of the book brings up one made up case but this did not even get into court. The police find out if it is true before they let it go on to the judge. They would not let liars onto court. This does not seem to be the oppinion of the judges and juries of Sweden who seem to think the entire Swedish police force is incompetent and way to trusting.
 
It is safe to say that some changes have to be made. The dinosaurs charged with deciding who is guilty and who isn't need to realise that they are actually extinct and should be in a museum or under ground in the sediments.
 
Anyway! Enough of my rant about this, it's time for a little rant about something else!
 
One of my favorite expressions is to "take the bull bý the horns"... Maybe I should write another post about just this or you are going to fall aslee... *whack* OY! Wake up!

"Jerry, have you ever taken a bath in the dark?"

I certainly have not taken any baths in the dark. Nor have I bathed for what must be at least six months now. This is something I am quite proud of. Not me being a filthy sod but switching from baths to showers. So even if I could take baths in the dark I wouldn?t. Nowadays I couldn?t even if I would since I don?t have a bathtub in my flat.

Anyway, I wanted to discuss something here and I think I might never get to doing it if I don?t start now:

I just don't know sometimes. From time to time I can get this feeling of remembering something but not actually being sure whether or not it actually happened. If you have had this feeling you will know exactly what I am talking about.

It?s not as if my memory of this particular event is unclear. Quite the opposite in fact; crystal clear. I remember it as if it was yesterday (and as a matter of fact this is not very far from the truth). Despite my clarity on this, the memory still feels unreal. Maybe it didn?t actually happen. Maybe it was just a very vivid dream that has now burned itself into my retina. Maybe I am just being silly.

The definition of what is ?real? is quite vague in my opinion. We can only experience things through our five senses, and most of the time only a couple of them are doing the work. Memories of events and things are all based on the senses. Hence we can only remember what we can perceive. If memory is limited to perception I have a feeling (pun not intended) that we are missing out on a WHOLE LOT.

Whilst writing this I realized that this event, of which I am unsure yet sure that it actually happened, might have been one of the most real experiences I have had. By this I mean that it was so real that it seemed unreal due to me not being used to this degree of realism. Perhaps, during that very moment, all my senses were up and running at the best of their capacity. This may be what happened. Whether what happened then or not my memory of it would still be the same and I won?t be in a hurry to let it fall into the pit of forgetfulness.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

"It is well known that stone can think, because the whole world of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they?ve got the time-span all wrong. From stone?s point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backwards and forwards in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring little skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well."

- Terry Pratchet

It just struck me today whilst cruising through the internet, visiting my regular blogs, that people who just use their blogs to write about themselves, what they have done and what they think generally don't produce anything worth reading. It may be fun to glance at it. In particular if you know the person who wrote it. But as I just said: It's generally not worth reading. People are boring. What they do every day is of nearly no consequence to me or people around me.

Having said this I must now begin scrutinizing myself a bit since my blog contains entries describing what I have done, what I want to do and so on. People don't want to read this dribble. Or do they? It is as I pointed out different if you personally know the person behind the blog. But what are we looking for when we read the blog of a perfect stranger? This is a very good question.

I personally look for interesting thoughts about things in general. Philosophical debates, discussions about the environment, reviews, previews, poetry, stories, riddles... the list goes on. But you get what I am aiming at I hope.

In this blog there will be no more descriptions of how many carrots I had with my dinner or how long it took for me to process them internally before finally excreting them and flushing them down the toilet (pay attention to my use of sarcasm here). This being said, I will of course have an opinion to express and a personal touch that will remain. This is what sets blogs apart from each other (except if somebody has two or more of them).

You may also have noticed (pay attention to the sarcastic tone here too) that I am now writing in English instead of Swedish. Honestly, I don't know why I have switched. My skills in both languages are, at the moment, equal but I still feel I have greater freedom with English. Oh! That must be the reason! Yes it certainly must! I guess it also opens up my blog to most of the world outside of Sweden too since English is a very commonly spoken language.

Anyway, enough of this. I am writing this at work and I am not being paid to write blog entries.