Using French Cuisine to Teach French: Crème brûlée Recipe

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Aya Katz

The very best way to learn a new language is by total immersion. When someone is forced to conduct all business and all pleasure in the new language, it is much more likely to sink in and be absorbed at a very deep level. One of the hallmarks of people who have studied a language only in an academic settings, no matter how well it was taught or how talented the scholar,  is a kind of superficiality, where the student knows all about the language and yet struggles to use it.

However, realistically speaking, not everyone will have the opportunity for total immersion. Many students in the United States do not have language classes in the primary grades, and when they do finally take a language course in high school or college, the person teaching them may not be a native speaker of the language and may be struggling with fluency issues of his own. Under these circumstances, how do we motivate students to attain fluency in spoken comprehension and production? One way is to use the cuisine of the country and YouTube cooking demonstrations to supplement ordinary lessons in grammar, vocabulary and literature.

I know two young ladies who were getting a little tired of French lessons, but who perked right up when they anticipated learning how to make crème brûlée. However, in order to keep this a French lesson and not merely a cooking lesson, all instruction in cooking should take place in French. As a teacher, you may not be up to this both from the linguistic and the culinary perspective, but do not worry! There are experts on both French and French cuisine available on YouTube who can help.

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Before allowing the students to watch the video of Chef Pierre-Dominique Cécillon explaining the process, it would be a good idea to hand out the written recipe and to ask the students to familiarize themselves with the vocabulary and grammatical forms that the recipe uses. That way when they hear the fluent discourse from the chef’s own mouth, while they may not be able to catch every word, they will be able to recognize many words and phrases in context in real time.

Crème brûlée handout

Source: http://cuisine.larousse.fr/

Once the cooking demonstration has been viewed and the recipe thoroughly parsed, it is time for the students to become teachers. Let them give their own demonstration in French of how to make crème brûlée, just as the students in the video below did.

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This exercise does not solve every language pedagogy problem. It does not relieve issues with accent and grammar, but it does help to motivate students to work on their fluency. Since motivation plays a big part in language acquisition, it may well be worth taking a culinary detour every so often in your foreign language classes.

© 2011 Aya Katz

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If you enjoyed this pub, you may also want to read:

http://aya-katz.hubpages.com/hub/Learning-Traditional-Chinese-Characters-through-the-Television-Series-AVATAR

and

http://aya-katz.hubpages.com/hub/Learning-Mandarin–through-Song

If you are looking for some of the rarer ingredients in this recipe, the following products may help:

 

Posted in Education: Teaching and Learning, Food, Eating and Cooking, Language | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saltwater Fishing Tips for Atlantic Spadefish

Posted on August 25, 2011 by habee

How to catch spadefish

This article provides saltwater fishing tips for catching Atlantic spadefish, which are sometimes called “angelfish.” The fish’s elongated anal and dorsal fins, along with the black vertical bars, give the fish the appearance similar to an angelfish. Spadefish can be found in the Gulf of Mexico, along the southeast coast of the United States, and in the Caribbean. The fish usually school and might be caught in inshore waters, nearshore waters, and offshore waters. Spadefish are numerous, fun to catch, and good on the table.

Saltwater Fishing Tips: Location

Spadefish, like other fish species, can be found near food sources. For these fish, that means algae, sponges, sea squirts, soft corals, small crustaceans, and crustacean larvae. Most of these can be found growing on or living near structure, so that’s the best place to fish for spades. Try bottom structure like rubble, reefs, rocks, and wrecks. Spadefish can often be found around bridge supports and pier pilings. In clear water, I’ve often seen them around fishing piers in Florida.

Saltwater Fishing Tips: The Right Fishing Gear

When I fish for spadefish, I use ten-pound line. I also use a section of wire leader to avoid my line being broken. Once a spadefish is hooked, it will often try to wrap the line around a piling or other structure, and most of these are encrusted with barnacles that have sharp edges. A wire leader will often save your line and your fish. You’ll also need a small circle hook, as spadefish have tiny mouths.

Spadefish put up a great fight when hooked, in part due to their shape. The fish can reach weights of almost fifteen pounds, but it’s extremely rare to catch one that large. The ones you catch around fishing piers will most likely weigh from one to four pounds. The heftiest spadefish I ever landed tipped the scales at around five pounds, and I thought I had hooked a monster! Larger specimens are often found in deeper offshore waters.

Saltwater Fishing Tips: The Right Bait

Many experienced spadefishermen will tell you to use pieces of ball jellyfish, but I never have. I always use small pieces of fresh dead shrimp, and the spades love it. Sometimes I fish right on the bottom, usually under a pier. If I don’t get a bite pretty quickly, I’ll bob the bait around the pier pilings

Posted in Recreation & Outdoors | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Covenant Between the Pieces

Posted on August 17, 2011 by crocodil

Crocodil:

 

Covenant Between the Pieces

 

Look up toward the heavens

And count  the stars:

Six million too many.

 

And lo, a smoking furnace…

 

(Genesis 15,5;  17)

 

 

L’Alliance d’Abraham

 

Leve les yeux au ciel

Et  denombre les etoiles:

Six millions de trop.

 

Et voici qu’un four fumant…

 

(cf. Genese 15: 5, 17, Tr. Bible de Jerusalem)

Tr.: Collette Salem

 

 

 

 

Bund Zwischen den Stuecken

 

Siehe gen Himmel

Und zaehle die Sterne:

Sechs Millionen ueberzaelig.

 

Da war ein Rauchender Ofen…

 

(Genesis 15:5, 17)

 

Tr. Eva Aviona

 

ברית בין הבתרים

 

הַבֵּט נָא הַשָּׁמַיְמָה

וּסְפֹר הַכּוֹכָבִים:

שִׁשָּׁה מִילְיוֹן

יוֹתֵר מִדֵּי.

 

… וְהִנֵּה תַּנּוּר עָשָׁן…

 

(בראשית ט”ו, 5. 17)

© אסי דגני, ירושלים אוגוסט 2011

ראה אור ב”הדואר” במאי 1989, ניו יורק

Posted in Language, Opinion Pieces and Editorials | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Rubber Ducky has had plenty of media coverage

Posted on August 17, 2011 by bardofely

Rubber Ducky is a song of mine that proved to be so popular back in the early ’70s that it had a cult following, although I personally hated it. Rubber Ducky is a really silly song and not the sort of serious singer-songwriter material I wanted to be known for but audiences appreciated its quirkiness, eccentricity and surreal humour.

Rubber Ducky started life at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff at the Heresy Folk Club. A friend of mine called Simon Goss, who was a brilliant guitarist used to back me, and with his skills we were able to turn out new versions of my songs. So I could suggest we tried a blues version and Simon would play a bluesy backing. If I said I wanted to try it as rock ´n´roll or country, or any genre I could think of, he would sort it out. Basically though the song began with the idea I had had that latex could be extracted from a rubber ducky. The original title was Extracting The Latex From A Rubber Ducky.

I had a little blue rubber duck toy that I used to squeak. It was a crazy gimmick and people thought it was brilliant. It was a far cry from the sort of musical mentors I was hoping to follow though. You see I wanted to be another Bob Dylan or Neil Young but was getting known for doing a song about a toy duck!

I managed to hassle my way into getting a short set at the infamous Windsor Pop Festival in 1971, and was actually on after Hawkwind. I had a beat-up Spanish guitar and two friends helped me out with some kazoo playing and squeaking the Rubber Ducky. The thousands of hippies out there in the festival grounds went wild about it and I was given an encore. I should have been delighted but I wasn’t. I was an idealistic young man then and so wanted to be known as a poet or a gifted songwriter.

Months later, I was in London to see Van Morrison in concert at the Rainbow Theatre. I had gone in a backstreet pub for a beer before I made my way to the main venue in Finsbury Park, and as soon as I entered the place, some guy came up raving on about how he had seen me at Windsor. He had told all his friends about me and wanted me to meet some of them that were there in the pub. I should have been delighted but wasn’t!

Some weeks after that I decided to stop playing the song and came up with the final version for it – the Death of the Rubber Ducky – that would finish it for good! We made a coffin out of a shoe-box and after I had stamped on the toy duck I announced it was no more. The Rubber Ducky was now deceased. A friend played the Funeral March on a bamboo flute and it was a very theatrical in a silly way. There were even a couple of girls crying.

But even after all that people kept asking for the Resurrection of the Rubber Ducky at Easter and the Second Coming of the Rubber Ducky. Eventually people stopped going on about the song.

The years rolled by and it was now in the 1990s. I had by then changed my views about Rubber Ducky and a songwriter and performer’s role as an artist. I could see that the function of an entertainer was to entertain, and so if audiences enjoyed my song then it was a success whether I was happy with it as a piece of writing or not.

My good friend C.J. Stone, who had a column in The Guardian newspaper, wrote about my appearance at the Windsor Pop Festival all those years before and about my crazy song. He followed on from this by mentioning it too in his book The Last of the Hippies, published by Faber and Faber. With all this new publicity it was getting I decided to make a recording of the song so got together with some friends and did so. The song ended up being chosen to be part of a Various Artists compilation album entitled Take It To The Bridge Volume 3.

From there Rubber Ducky found its way into being used as part of the soundtrack for an episode from the Welsh TV drama series Y Ty (The House) on S4C.
So Rubber Ducky has had its fair share of media coverage and use. Not bad for a song that features a squeaking toy duck!

Right now Rubber Ducky is entered in the current heat of the YouBloom Music Awards, a song contest judged by Bob Geldof.
Please listen to and vote for Rubber Ducky here: http://www.youbloom.com/ybsc/entry/2647/

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Spain, tourism, and flamenco

Posted on August 16, 2011 by John Moore

Spain often is marketed as the land of passion, bullfights, flamenco, sun, and sand.  Blurring significant regional diversity, an almost comic-book version of its southern region, Andalucía, has been promoted as the public face of Spain – it has all the right elements: bulls, flamenco, beaches, …

Ironically, then, most travellers to Spain visit Castilian Madrid and Catalán Barcelona, neither in Andalucía.  However, both cities have significant Andalucian communities and the tourist industries in both emphasize an ‘Andalucized’ image of Spain (except Barcelona also capitalizes on its ‘more European’ status and Catalunya has recently banned bullfights).  If time permits, travellers do head south to Andalucía – generally to Sevilla and Granada.  Many travellers – particularly from Europe – spend time at a costal resort.

If you are in Spain for a limited time, and particularly if you don’t speak Spanish, it can be difficult to get past the made-for-tourists packaging.  As a result, some travellers feel almost a sense of shame for participating in what appears to be a staged event and want to find the ‘real’ Spain.  But let’s be clear – there is no shame in travelling and even the most touristy establishments are run by real people, making a living and selling aspects of the local culture, albeit in a stylized manner.  Nevertheless, a bit of knowledge can significantly enrich one’s experience – the more you know about the culture going in, the more you will be able to learn while there.

Take flamenco as an example.  Typically, a traveller will see flamenco in venues that cater to tourists – perhaps a flamenco tablao in a larger city, the Gypsy caves in Granada, or a nightclub in a costal resort.  Often the tickets are sold at the hotel and transportation is arranged – one is shipped in and shipped out – the audience is 100% foreign.  Is this the real thing?  Yes and no.  These are real flamenco artists, and sometimes very good ones.  These venues provide employment in a tight market, so the jobs are coveted.  Thus, the performers will usually have a fairly good technical level.  On the other hand, flamenco is a delicate thing, and performing night after night for hordes of uncomprehending tourists (some of whom sleep through the show due to the grueling pace of their packaged tour), takes its toll – the result can be a rather lack-luster display.

But the audience usually loves these shows – there is color, movement, rhythm, impressive technical ability, and something resembling passion.   But it is hard to get more than this – the dancer stamps and twirls with great precision, the guitarists play with amazing technique, and the singers wail in a vaguely Middle-Eastern manner.   Without some knowledge of flamenco, the traveller won’t realize that this is an Andalucian oral tradition, where each member of the group communicates with the others according to a set of unwritten signals: the dancer calls in the singer, and then follows the song; the guitarist follows both the dancer and the singer; the rest of the ensemble provide a rhythm section through intricate hand claps; each ‘song’ is actually an instantiation of an abstract song-form, each with its particular rhythm and melodic structure; while there may be little or no rehearsal, everyone seems to know just when to speed-up, come to a stop, etc.

So – a bit of knowledge about flamenco would enrich the experience.  It might also inspire a traveller to seek out venues that are not on the tourist trail, such as local festivals and performances in flamenco peñas (‘social clubs’).  This requires a bit of digging and it helps to know enough Spanish to search the web, but it really shouldn’t be beyond the reach of most travelers.

The easiest way to learn about flamenco is to read up on it.  There are several English-language books and websites that cover the basics – descriptions of flamenco history, song forms, and aspects of song, dance, and guitar.   Many of these tend towards the exotic, however – written by foreign aficionados, some of whom harbor romanticized notions of what flamenco should be, and their well-meaning exoticization of flamenco actually ends up reinforcing the tourist’s image of Spain – passion, duende (roughly ‘feeling’ – a term I have rarely heard Spanish flamencos use), …  This is not to say flamenco doesn’t involve strong emotions and trance-like states – it can and does.  Nevertheless, one should avoid the comic-book caricatures and try to dig a bit deeper.

For the past several years I’ve lead a study abroad program in Cádiz – a small Andalucian city on the Atlantic coast.  My students study the history of Spanish, Spanish dialectology, and flamenco – they don’t learn to do flamenco – rather they study its structure, history, and culture.  Cádiz is one of the cradles of flamenco and once had an important and unique flamenco community (it still has one, but it has been eclipsed by Jerez and Sevilla).  Cádiz is also famous for its liberalism (the site of Spain’s 1812 liberal constitution), its Gay community, and Carnival.  During Carnival, costumed singing groups satirize anything and everything.  Related to Carnival is Cádiz’s famous gracia – a unique brand of humor.  Cádiz is outside the main tourist route – while there are miles of beaches, it caters more to Spanish vacationers than to foreigners.  Hence, the gracia and lore of Cádiz, while very much at the heart of what flamenco is about, is largely ignored by the rest of the world – this makes it a perfect vehicle for understanding flamenco.

English speakers have two windows into the history and culture of Cádiz flamenco: one written in English and another soon to be available in English.

British guitarist Gerald Howson travelled to Cádiz in the 1950s and wrote a beautiful memoir of his experiences (The flamencos of Cádiz Bay, The Bold Strummer Ltd.; boldstrummer.com).  In this book, readers meet several important artists from the waning flamenco scene in a desperately impoverished Cádiz.  Howson does a masterful job portraying the artists, their relationship with wealthy señoritos, from whose largess the artists lived, and the near third-world conditions that existed in the mist of the Franco dictatorship.

The other book has been available only in Spanish; however, I have recently completed an annotated English translation; it will become available from Inverted-A Press  (inverteda.com) sometime in 2012.  This marvelous book – Mil y un historias de Pericón de Cádiz (‘A thousand and one stories of Pericón de Cádiz’) – is s a collection of witty stories by the famed singer and storyteller (see video) – it takes the reader to the streets of Cádiz during the early 20th century and chronicles the gracia, fiestas, hunger, and terror of a period that spanned the end of Alfonso XIII’s reign, the second republic, the civil war, and the Franco dictatorship – all through the eyes of a street-wise flamenco singer. There is history, culture, flamenco history, and lots of Cádiz’s famous gracia – the book is a jewel on many different levels!  Collected and arranged by José Luis Ortiz Nuevo, it was published in 1975, out of print for years, and re-edited in 2008, when it won Deflamenco.com’s  ‘best flamenco book’ award.

In translating the book, I found the stories themselves are fairly straightforward; however, there is a wealth of historical and cultural information that most outside Spain (and many in Spain) might not be aware of.  Hence, I bolstered the translation with copious footnotes and appendices, explaining these references, short bios, and a glossary describing flamenco terms and places.  In this way, the translation can serve as an introduction to flamenco.

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As with everything, travel can be experienced on many different levels – cultural awareness is the key to delving beneath the surface and getting beyond the pre-packaged tours.  Again, one can certainly enjoy even the most tourist-oriented itinerary, but if you are looking for more, arm yourself with knowledge; justa little effort – e.g. reading a few books – will make the experience all the more enriching.

Posted in Language, Music, Vocalists | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

A Thousand and One Stories of Pericón de Cádiz: English Translation

Posted on August 16, 2011 by admin

Inverted-A Press has entered into an agreement with José Luis Ortiz Nuevo and John Moore to publish Moore’s English translation of Ortiz Nuevo’s book Las mil y una historias de Pericón de Cádiz: A Thousand and One Stories of Pericón de Cádiz.

But what is that? Who was Pericón de Cádiz and why should we care about his thousand and one stories? And who is José Luis Ortiz Nuevo? What qualifies him to write these stories?

Pericón de Cádiz was the artistic name of Juan Martínez Vílchez. He was born in Cádiz in 1901 and died in 1980. He is famous for flamenco music, and if you would like to see a video that features him, one is embedded below.

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José Luis Ortiz Nuevo has served as the director of the Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla for fifteen years and is currently Advisor to the Museum of Dance “Cristina Hoyos”. He is a flamenco historian who has kept a record of oral tradition, as well as someone who is very much involved in the flamenco scene today. You can see him in the video embedded below.

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John Moore, who translated Ortiz Nuevo’s book into English, is a professor of linguistics at the University of California at San Diego. He is also an expert on flamenco and has led groups of students to explore Spanish culture and subcultures, including flamenco, in study abroad programs. Moore is also a talented guitarist, as the video embedded below demonstrates.

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Translator John Moore with the son of Pericón de Cadiz, Antonio Martínez Nieto

A Thousand and One Stories of Pericón de Cádiz will be of interest not only to those who are knowledgeable in flamenco lore, but to anyone who wants to learn more about Spain, its history and its culture and subcultures. The book covers a very interesting period of the history of Spain, including the end of Alfonso XIII’s reign, the second republic, the civil war, and the Franco dictatorship. The stories, told by Pericón and recorded and transcribed by Ortiz Nuevo, are from the point of view of a worldly flamenco singer and show how historical events affect the man on the street. John Moore’s translation includes copious notes that will explain and contextualize otherwise obscure references.

Inverted-A Press will publish the book in 2012. In the meanwhile, if you would like to learn more about flamenco music, Pericón de Cádiz, Ortiz Nuevo or John Moore, you may wish to look at the titles listed below.

Posted in Musical Styles, Musicians, Vocalists | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Maximizing Your Hiking Workout

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Tom Rubenoff

Here are some tips to help maximize the health benefits of hiking while minimizing the risks.

  • Use trekking poles. Trekking poles minimize the risk of falls and twisted ankles while helping to reduce impact on your leg joints.  They also extend the workout to your upper body.
  • Hydrate adequately. Besides helping you avoid dehydration, drinking plenty of water helps your muscles rid themselves of waste and maximize the benefit of your workout.Also, carrying plenty of water increases the resistance in the beginning of the hike and gradually reduces that load as you drink the water.   You might also consider a sports drink to replace electrolytes lost in sweat.
  • Maximize your backpack with snacks and safety and first aid supplies.  Carrying the extra weight will enhance your workout as long as your backpack fits you and is adjusted properly.  Check your backpack fit with a qualified outfitter to avoid back problems associated with a poorly fitting backpack.A basic safety kit that includes a space blanket, waterproof matches, an LED flashlight, a knife and a short length of rope can help you avoid health problems relating to exposure to cold should you be forced to inadvertently spend the night outdoors.A first aid kit that includes a cold pack, bandages, Benadryl, and ace bandage and a pain reliever can help you if you should be injured, thereby minimizing damage.
  • Maximize your snacks. For snacks on the trail, choose high protein supplement bars or trail mix that is light on sugar and heavy on nuts and dried fruit.  The more proteins and omega 3 fatty acids you consume and the more starches and sugars you avoid, the more you train your body to burn fat and build muscle.
  • Place each footstep mindfully. As you’re stepping on and over those rocks and roots, think about where you are putting your feet.  When climbing a rocky trail up a mountain, you can choose to reach higher with your leading foot and take bigger vertical steps to maximize the workout for your buttocks and thighs.By closely observing where you place your feet you can minimize your risk of losing your footing on slippery rocks or mud.  As nature forces you to change the angle of your foot and the weight distribution over the area of your sole, you maximize your workout by utilizing all your leg muscles.

Use these simple methods to maximize the benefits of your good time out hiking in nature while minimizing the associated risks.

And have fun!

Posted in Health, Recreation & Outdoors | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Johnny Rotten’s Still My Hero is in the YouBloom Music Awards

Posted on August 8, 2011 by bardofely

Johnny Rotten’s Still My Hero is currently entered in the YouBloom Music Awards song contest but it was originally recorded back in 2002. It is a tribute song to John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, and his former band The Sex Pistols. The song also mentions David Icke and his conspiracy theory that alien Reptilian shape-shifters run the world. Icke claims that the Royal Family and many political leaders are actually reptile beings who only appear as humans. The Sex Pistols song God Save The Queen has the line “She ain’t no human being” with reference to the British monarch.

I recorded the song backed by a new girl group called The Somethings. They had met me at a gig I played in Aldershot and had become my fans and were inspired to start their own group. I decided it would be a good idea to have them as my backing musicians for a recording of my new song that had been written to take advantage of the publicity afforded by it being 25 years since the Jubilee, which was when the Sex Pistols had their controversial hit God Save The Queen. Their song was thought to be so offensive that it was banned by the BBC and independent radio stations throughout the UK. Although it should have been a number one hit it was not recognised as this and Top of The Pops would not include the song.
Earlier this year I got as far as the Semi Finals of the YouBloom Song Contest, as it was then known, but didn’t get any further. I thought I would try again and this time Johnny Rotten’s Still My Hero is my entry.
Like with my past entries in this prestigious Internet music competition, for which Bob Geldof heads up the panel of judges, I need your votes. The song pages at YouBloom allow people to post comments and to ‘Like’ a song but it is only the votes that carry any weight when it comes to deciding who qualifies as a winner. Please vote for my song here: http://www.youbloom.com/ybsc/entry/2591/
If you are already a member who voted for me in a past round of the YouBloom Music Awards then you just need to log-in and vote, but otherwise you will need to join first and get a verification email before you can do so.
Come on everybody, please vote for Johnny Rotten’s Still My Hero, even if really he isn’t!

Posted in PubWages Staff | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Greater than Ourselves by Amnon Katz

Posted on August 5, 2011 by admin

Amnon Katz was a physicist, aerospace engineer, pilot, publisher, thinker, poet and essayist. At the time of his death in October of the year 2000, he held an endowed chair in aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama. For more biographical information about him, follow this link. For his CV, click here.

At the request of one of his friends, I made his article “Greater than Ourselves” available in the form of two image files from the Inverted-A Horn on our sister site, Inverted-A.com. There I posted a perfectly legible copy that is made available to the public free of charge and without advertising. But those who want a searchable  text, I provide it here on PubWages, accompanied by advertising.

The Original First Page of the Article

GREATER THAN OURSELVES

by Amnon Katz

1. Duality of cause and purpose

Since time immemorial, there have been two ways of understanding the world around us and predicting what will happen next. One is in terms of the forces at play and what they cause. The other is in terms of some “purpose” being served. A falling pebble increases its speed because it is acted upon by the force of gravity. Or, the pebble increases its speed so that its kinetic energy makes up for the loss of potential energy, the “purpose” being to keep the total energy unchanged. A ray of light is reflected off a mirror in accordance with Snell’s law, which states that the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection must be equal. Or, a ray of light picks the shortest distance to the mirror and back…

Most laws of nature can be derived from a variational principle, i.e., nature contrives to make some function as small as it can be. Two or three hundred years ago, philosophers tried to read a great deal into this. They thought they recognized in it divine purposes, that the laws of physics worked to make our universe “the best of all possible worlds.” Contemporary science views these variational principles merely as powerful and elegant mathematical tools.

There seems to be a measure of confusion about cause versus purpose when it comes to more complex issues, such as the evolution of species, of societies and of nations.

2. “God’s Utility Function”

A friend called my attention to the publications of one Richard Dawkins, who made a career of explaining Darwin’s theory of evolution to the masses. As a sample, my friend gave me an article entitled “God’s Utility Function” (Richard Dawkins, “God’s Utility Function”, Scientific American, 1995, pp.62-67.) My first reaction was wonder. More than a hundred years after Darwin, is there still room for drawing new implications from the facts, which, by now, are well established and generally understood?

Dawkins appears intent on settling an argument with certain anti-scientific religious quarters, and that is what my friend mainly liked. Dawkins proceeds by championing the “Causes” point of view of evolution and denying the dual point of view of “Purpose”.

“God’s Utility Function” concentrates on cheetahs and gazelles. Dawkins writes: “Cheetahs … [are] well designed to kill gazelles. [They] … are… precisely what we would expect if God’s purpose was to maximize deaths among gazelles. Conversely, [gazelles are designed] for precisely the opposite end: the survival of gazelles and starvation among cheetahs. It is as though cheetahs are designed by one deity, gazelles by a rival deity. Alternatively, if there is only one creator of the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is he playing at?”

“Maximize deaths among gazelles”? Really! If deaths among gazelles were maximized, they would all die, and the cheetahs would have nothing to eat. True, a common purpose in the evolution of cheetahs and gazelles is difficult to find along the lines of the wishy-washy, politically correct morality that is prevalent today. To find this common purpose, one must look beyond the individual cheetah and the individual gazelle and consider the best interests of cheetahs and gazelles as species.

 

Obviously, the cheetah is not doing any favors to the individual gazelle that it hunts down and kills. But it is doing a great service to the gazelle species collectively. It is ridding the species of a weaker member and making sure that only the most fit gazelles will reproduce. In passing, it also preempts the need for nursing home, hospital and undertaker. The gazelles reciprocate. By making themselves difficult to catch, they eliminate all but the fittest cheetahs. They also make sure that a stable population of gazelles is maintained to feed future generations of cheetahs. The process is cruel to individual animals, but preempts the suffering of the multitude of defective offspring, who in the animal kingdom are never born.

3. Beyond the individual

Dawkins refuses to look beyond the individual, and this may be what his admirers want to justify. It does not take a great leap of imagination to recognize that a lot goes on in the world over and above the selfish. All animals sacrifice in favor of their young. Many exhibit loyalty to a group far larger than the basic family. Worker ants will readily sacrifice themselves for their queen. I have seen on television how a wolf, the head of his pack, exposed himself to attract pursuers, while the rest of the pack, including mothers and cubs, went the other way. This was in Russia, and the hunters were using a helicopter. The phenomenon of risking one’s life for a cause ranges all the way from insects, to mammals to man.

Dedication to values greater than the individual is rewarded and perpetuated by the classical mechanism of natural selection. Groups, species, societies and nations that don’t practice such values succumb to those that do. It is immaterial whether the group loyalty traits are propagated by genes that pass from body to body or by ideas that leap from mind to mind. Natural selection works either way. The most useful physical traits propagate genetically and survive long after the individual in whom they originated perished. Social structures that uphold the most potent ideas and ideals survive long after the individuals who practiced them are gone. The ideas themselves persist even after the societies that they helped establish become corrupted and are swept away. It is thus that we practice today many of the ideals of justice and of the valor of the long gone Roman Empire.

4. God and Country

Before Monotheism, major gods reigned over territorial domains. National wars were conflicts between competing gods, whose anointed servants guided the fortunes of nations. Individuals could distill an image of the object of their loyalty in the form of a deity. The gods demanded service in toil and blood. In return, they gave their followers meaning, identity and pride. It was a social system oriented toward serving that which is greater than the individual. It was one that natural selection favored. Individuals reaped the physical and spiritual benefits of belonging to a successful tribe or nation.

Then came Judaism. A defeated Israel despaired of victory and traded the vision of national triumph for the fantasy of individual reward beyond the grave. Judaism’s off-shoot of Christianity catered to the weak, the meek, the losers. Religion was diverted towards the small. It still calls upon individuals to sacrifice, not for something larger than themselves, but for that which is smaller, the ones less fortunate or less capable.

There is room for charity, and so much of it is for the better. But there must be limits. If everybody sold his livelihood and distributed the proceeds to the poor, as Jesus advocated, the economy would collapse, and all would starve. Besides, as the good senator said: “If you subsidize poverty, you’ll have more of it.”

The same goes for easing individual suffering. Measures such as the filling of decayed teeth and the fitting of near-sighted eyes with corrective lenses have the effect of proliferating bad teeth and poor vision. Reduced infant mortality, even when accompanied by reduced birth rate, neutralizes the mechanism of natural selection. Obviously, we will not forgo some level of individual care, but here, too, there must be limits.

Regardless of how much charity and compassion is enough, individuals and nations both have a need for the old style devotion to that which is greater than the individual. Jesus, who, in effect, destroyed the national deities, was also the one to point to a possible reprieve. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12, 17). This may have been the earliest hint of the principle of separation of church and state. God was now constrained to deal in the small, but Caesar could still take care of the large.

In our days, “Caesar” is the nation. The nation as whole and its well-being, as distinct from the welfare of every individual within it, remain a vital ingredient in our mix of ideals. The laws of nature can neither be repealed nor circumvented. Nations that lose this ideal will succumb, some sooner, some later.

 

© 2000, 2011 Estate of Amnon Katz



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iPod Touch- Free Text and Call App

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Peppergum01

For the iPod Touch there is an app called: Textfree and if you get the voice version then you can not only text free and unlimited but you can also call free with minutes. If you go to the App Store and type in: Textfree and install it then you will get these features. First of all when you first get this app they will ask you for your area code so that they can give you a number in your area, and it will be easier to call people in your area. You can text any number in the USA and maybe also Canada as much as you want without having to pay. You can call any number as long as it’s in the United States. You start out with a few free minutes. But when your minutes end, if you still want to call someone then you need to either earn more free minutes or buy free minutes for $1.99 but I recommend earning them instead. When you go to “Earn Free Minutes” they will show you a bunch of free apps that you can install and the better the app is, the more minutes you get. Currently, I have 600 minutes from earning and buying free minutes on this helpful application. So when you first start out you also get to choose your own number from a list of numbers they give you to choose. If you give your number to other people you can have them call you and if the other person calls you then it won’t take up any minutes. This is probably one of the best free text and call apps out there so I recommend it.

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