Taiwan: XIII

Hehuan Mountain (Hehuan shan)

The time of the year when typhoons do not penetrate every orifice of weather (huh?!?) and that the heat is not so impregnating that it causes your flesh to shrivel and ooze sweat simultaneously is the best time to venture to the mountains. I believe this to be so, at least.
So this was the time the Ross and Lindsay came to visit. After some time in Taipei and some rambling about Hualien, eating magi and drinking Taiwan Beer, and before they took off to the grandeur of Green Island to the south, we headed into the geological abyss of the interior mountains. Unquestionable beauty. A thesaurus offers no words that could encompass the joy and ease I felt while pausing in the mountians, overlooking the craggy valley below and hearing the tropical birds vocally vying for a mate in the summer sun - it is humbling to sit on the mountainside, perched high over the river below and gaze across endless beauty, and consider the world. The whole world....the wars, the grief, the pollution, the hatred peddled by religions, and at the same time be subdued by calm. It is almost like a drug - a cognitive placebo drug to calmness.

But...before the doozies (the sunrise pics, that is), here are some plenary pic's from their time in Taiwan with us. Aside from the obvious enjoyment of seeing friends abroad, after being secluded socially for a while and immersed in the chinese culture it was refreshing to catch up and share old storeies and make new ones.

Remember the epic search for the fake glasses? And to think the ocean almost stole them....

Thanks for comming to visit - I had a time of times. Im glad we could share Taiwan for a while.

These are sorrily out of order in terms of chronology.

The day we needed glasses...and then lost them.

R and L high on a foggy cliff (well, the cliff itself wasn't foggy, but it was foggy AND they were on the cliff....).

R L and C mid hike in the fog.

R L and T at a roadway stop on the way to HeHuan. And scoters...there are two scooters.

What kind of a sale is this?!?

TienHsiang towniste; this marks the end of Taroko Gorge proper, but beyond (further into the mountains) is one of the most wonderful drives available on the island. This village has had a quite turbulent history, which I wont go into, but it is a black mark on both the chinese and japanese histories. Today, it is a prosperous place in its own right. This is taken from the TienHsiang Pagoda (see below).

This is the opposite view of the picture above. I took this from the village, looking up tio the pagoda. Nestled into the folds of the mountains, this proved to be one of the most relaxing places I visited in Taiwan. There was an earthquake in the recent past that destroyed a large portion of this buddhist momnestary and they are still actively working to rebuild and to regain their composure.

Now in Hehuan already, after a gusty hike in the mist and fog, we settle down to try and get warm in the hehuan cabins. These are Japanese styled, reflecting the Japanese influence of their occupation.

Us, while it is still sunny and warm, along the road to HeHuan.

This is actually even before we got to TienHsiang (and thus before we got to HeHuan); Ross and I are by the river trying to make the sand fall in along the weaknessess - which may sound bland but give it a try and youll be hooked! Compare the size of the boulders and the bedrock to us...quite a contrast.

This is a closer view of the TienHsiang Buddhist Monestary. I took this also from the top op the pagoda (the tall thin building from a picture above). As you can see they are still rebuilding some portions of it from the earthquake.

I would love to say that they were re-enacting some relevant process of Darwinian competition, or at least they had a horribly majestic glue accident and couldn't separate their helmets, or at very least that they were trying to squish a poisonous midge between their heads because it was at risk of harming us and they could not use their hands to cull it (due to the poison...); but no, I cannot in any sincerity say that they were dong anything other than having a mid-mountain headbutting contest. I forget who won....but does it matter? Really?

The beauty of simple symbiosis. Darwin be vindicated.

Ok, waaaaay back at the beginning of the trip; this is the entrance of the Taroko Gorge road. Under this little geological burrow you enter the majesty of rocks and the serpentine trail to the heart of the mountains.

These were the best walnuts ever! EVER!

BEST.....ACTION.....SHOT.......EVER......!

Ahh...Betel Nuts.

Left- After

Right - Before

I spared you the action shots of us spitting and spilling our slobbery drool among the tables as we hunkered down under a shady tree and devoured a bag of these in TienHsiang.

Ok, back in Hualien City. This is a shotif the local military base. Not really supposed to take, let alone publish, these, so look quickly and move along...move along....

Japanese BBQ - one of our first meals in Hualien (I think?).

Lucidiy of Lyrics

As I was going up the stairs,
I met a man,
Who was not there.

He wasn't there again today,
I wish that man,
Would go away.

As I was going down the stairs,
I met a man,
Who was not there.

He wasn't there again today,
I wish that man,
Would go away.
-Rheostatics ("As I was going down the stairs")

A Quote

As reported today (from a previous statement made by the government of AB) on CBC in a discussion about solar and alternative energies:

"the Alberta government does not yet know what to do with solar energy because they have not figured out how to tax it."

THAT is where their priorities are.

THAT is where their ideological principles are comming from.

THAT is why we still have a stifled sustainable energy sector.

And THAT is why the oil patch is so fecund and clean energy so bastardized by governments.

And THAT is all. For now.

News this morning...

"She doesn't want her children exposed to other beliefs"

...a quote from a christian parent in BC who was angry that her child was doing yoga in class at school. She did not care about the health benefits, the stress relief, or anything biological, but was angry and concerned that her child would be witness to another way of thinking and another way of understanding other than that of the opression of christianity.

I repeat - she was worried that her children would hear something other than that wich is espoused at their church. How is this liberal intelligence?How is this not oppression?

BAH!

Morality

Why is it that a priest is given more stature than anyone else. Why, when all they do is flog hate, irrationality and credulity. A person who travels across the globe to destroy a culture, a way of life, all to spread a fable (one of many, many, many, many, many fables...) that is inherently hate based. When I see a priest I do not give unchecked admiration. But our culture does, and it shows that although a strong majority are atheist, they, or we as a culture, still maintain a foundation on religion and mythological sotries to guide our lives. It is disturbing to realize this, really. How can grown, cognitively developed people maintain a glorious and blindly devoted belief in a fairy tale. If I suggested that the tooth fairy was a real entity that actually came to my pillow, or if my neightbour suggested that the boogie man attacked her and her pets last night (and the only way to satisfy the boogie man was to kill three virgins....that is why I did it officer) we would both be seen as (clinically) insane. Yet, because their tooth fairy or boogy man is dubbed god, jesus, holy spirit, whatever, it is allowed and promoted to be a sane belief. It blows my mind that people dont realize this, but I guess it lies in thei ability to have free thought. Science and nature promotes this, religion defies this. Here are some thoughts on morality, as it suggests one link these ideas.
It is well written that people inclined to pious ideologies confer upon themselves the foundation of morality - without god there is no morality, without an omnipotent creator to follow there is no need for social order.How is it, then, that it is actually religion itself that brings upon us immorality, and it is atheism that brings us to the highest order of morality? Morality in this case ceases to be a construct of anthropocentric designation and spreads to be a construct of nature - everything. For it is that 'everything' that evolved in a systematic ecological structure that today allows us, moral humans, to survive. Morality is not a construct of a religion, a religious person, a religious nation or a religious household. Morality is a direct consequence of understanding nature and understanding the natural place of humans, as one piece of a inexplicably complex Earthly system. This system, quite probably, is not confined to Earth at all, but is theoretically extant the universe(s?) over. The idea of multiverses thick with life, not our life or life as we understand it or as developed as we witness it, but life, chagrins the notion that we are either alone or special. Disquieting thoughts to theists and the blindly faithful. Lets move back and leave this point alone, for our tangent has taken us onto astrobiology and it was never intended to go this far. So, back to morality.Religions are bred to hate other religions - islamics hate, christians hate, catholics hate, ... hate - but atheism is never, repeat never, bred to hate. Quite the opposite. Incredulous people are never founded on hate of any other belief system, but forced to accept and enjoy them as theories. It is when these theories cause hate to spread, such as religions, and to cause murder, environmental rape and abuse, political corruption and myriad other ailments, that understanding atheists take a stand and say your wrong. Morality is founded on understanding how you can survive and how your group can survive, and said survival does not depend on how many times you pray to a wall (that presumably a mouse and a spider inhabit, and nothing else...) or how many times you give your money to a lying and culturally bastardizing priest. It beguiles me to understand how this can be thought of as important, let alone necessary, let alone the foundation of goodness. Morality is based on a ( I will say scientific, because it is the method of understanding our environment and the processes within) framework of intelligent understanding and witness to nature, all of nature, and understanding that we are nothing special. Nothing special. We are an animal, we evolved, we have genetic lineage companionship with other living species and we have simply (I am simplifying a great deal with this statement) evolved a trait that made us prosper and gave us selective advantages over other species at the time of our mutations and thus our development, our cognition, has enabled us to create a god, and to seemingly create morality. However, all animals have morality and although they are not aware of it, they are certainly enacting it. Look at a herd of anything. See how they interact - they have strict morals that enable their survival. There is no god telling them to be good. There is no god doing anything or meddling in their lives at all. Morality, then, is a construct of our cognitive development (development meaning change, not betterment, for it could be argued that our superior cognitive development will be - and is - our downfall in geological retrospect).
Morality is the antithesis of religion. The bible spreads hate for so many forms of people and animals, whereas any biologist, geologist, ...ist, or anyone well versed or well read or well experienced in nature and understanding of processes that enable nature to survive will have a higher degree of morality (true morality because pious people have certainly culled any recognition that their beliefs are not viable) than those who carry a leather-bound book around and try to destroy 'heathenistic' cultures and kill those who oppose their views.
When a scientists has a new idea, the old idea says "hmmmm...lets check this new idea out and see if we can learn something. When a religion has a new idea, the old religions says "kill".
I posit that while morality is a recognizable entity in human cultures, it is not prospered or founded in any way in religion, but quite the opposite. Atheists are truly more complex and moral individuals because they think, not blindly believe, and they choose their morality based on what they know to be correct, and not on what an outdated mythological text tells them to do.
Religion breeds not morality but rather immorality.

Fly me to a science class...

Fly me to the moon,
Let me play among the stars,
Let me see what spring is like,
On a-Jupiter and Mars

Oh, Franky.

I heard this diddy once to often again this year to let it go without comment - and this is where I can comment freely so I shal make use of the ability.

The moon, although near one star, is significantly no nearer to any star than Earth to surmise that being there would allow you to be 'among the stars'. It is similar to saying that standing in Vancouver and taking one step east allows you to see how they live in Halifax. One step would be unaccountalbly useless. So, therefore, going to the moon to reconoiter with the stars would be equally useless. You would not even be all that much closer to our star, the Sun, because you would orbit the outer path around Earth and therefore take yourself further away at points. To that end, going to the moon would distance yourself from any star. Earth is approximately 150 million km from the Sun. The moon is approximately 400 000 km from earth, equating to about 0.28% of the total Earth-Sun distance? If you were lucky you would be about 0.28% closer to 'the stars' by going to the moon, but then by equal chance you could be equal distance or 0.28% further from 'the stars' by taking the trouble of going to the moon.
If you were to try to suggest that you would be significantly closer to 'other' stars, it is an equally erroneous idea. Proxima Centauri is about 4.3 light years from the Sun (1 light year = 9.46 million million kilometers). It is actually a part of a three star multiple system - alpha, beta and proxima centauri of which Proxima is the smallest, but closest to us, of this integrated stellar package; so Frank could have meant these 'stars' but the scale difference at such great distances negates and significant closeness either from Earth or our Moon.

So, Frank, or whoever wrote your lyrics, dont bother flying to the moon. Stay home, save some money and some fuel, and buy some binoculars to get 'closer' to the stars.

...and.....who would ever care to personally witness a spring on jupiter?

Compromising the Truth for the Blindly Faithful: Again

So, the new year is here and so am I...at the keyboard...typing away and breezing through missed posts from my regular list of 'must-reads'. And, not that it is a profound thing to have found something on the Bad Astronomy that excites me or angers me, I came across a relevant and purportedly accurate dismissal of truth. There is a story, which you can read for yourself by going to http://www.badastronomy.com/, that details the power of a fake god over truth, science, knowledge and history (the real history..the one that is for animals and plants on Earth some 4.6 billion years old). From there you can link to myriad sources that carried the story (unfortunately some are from Fox News ... not the source of any resounding intelligence).

To summarize, it was told to the National Park employees of the Grand Canyon that they were not to tell tourists about the geological history of the canyon, the age of the canyon, or to delve in any way into the realm of science and sedimentology - in the fear that doing so may insult the more pious (read: stupid) and those who believe the biblical version of Earth. They were to negate their science knowledge and their geological prowess and tell people only of how beautiful the park is.

Theism is insulting.

Have a nice day. I didn't after reading about this.