Wirt cautions SETI enthusiast Jeff "Sharkman" Kell about
the dark side of "monkeying around" in Tennessee:

> 400 years ago, an astronomer/philosopher monk named
> Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for writing .....
>
> "Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve about
> these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets
> revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds."

> "In pronouncing my sentence," said Bruno, who had taught
> in Paris, Oxford, and Wittenberg, "your fear is greater than
> mine in hearing it."

I debated myself briefly;  gave in to temptation and decided
that with an "OT:" prefix I would jump in one time:

It seems that the more secure people are in their own belief
systems, the less threatened they are by beliefs that differ
significantly from their own....  Even a quick study of the late
Middle Ages and on in Europe indicates, as Bruno noted, that
fear of the slightest deviation from the accepted orthodoxy
was rampant in that area of the world at that time; on all sides
(who would have imagined Henry VIII deciding he just couldn't
do without a new wife leading to so much desperate insecurity;
and to the Inquisition versus the Protestant Reformation going
at each other tooth and nail (and pike and stake) for a couple
hundred years...)...  While I am not and do not expect ever to
be a Buddhist, one striking contrast with the wide-spread "say
we are right or burn" of Bruno's time and place that comes to
mind is the Dalai Lama:  He doesn't seem to be threatened by
anybody anywhere;  and is willing to listen to everybody even
if he disagrees with them.  I believe the late Carl Sagan and
the Dalai Lama had a number of cordial conversations...  but
they didn't debate in a public high school classroom....   :-)


> ..  the State School Board of New Mexico, in reaction to the
> Kansas vote, just days later, voted 14-0 to ban the teaching
> of Creationism in the state schools.  .....  Any form of
> curricula based merely on ignorance, superstition or dogma
> is no longer allowed in New Mexico.

There you go, Jeff:  If they run you out of Tennessee, you
can move to the high desert....  You might especially enjoy
the Plains of San Augustine in the neighborhood of Socorro,
and Los Alamos, where "bigger scopes" and huge amounts
of raw computing power can be found....  ;-)   ... If not on a
permanent basis, visits are highly recommended to all with
any scientific bent, for a slot on some "summer vacation"....

> ....
> Although the apologies are 500 years late, they are welcome
> and bode a better, more civilized future.

There are a number of encouraging signs.... jury probably still
out, though....


> ..  United States Supreme Court's 1987 decision, knocking
> down Louisiana's "Creationism Act." .....

> The Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts' thesis that the
> Act was crafted so as to promote the propagation of a
> particular religious movement's point of view in the public
> school system.

"particular point of view" is key:  Any reasonable interpretation
of the U.S. Constitution means that IF you were going to allow
some kind of "acknowledgement" during regular class hours
of a particular religion's belief on how the world was "created"
(& etc. pretty much guaranteed to follow), surely you would
have to include "creation views" according to..  let's see:
Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Native American,
and (to avoid offending any and all that slip my mind) etc...
Somehow taking the "average" of all those religions doesn't
seem to work very well.... well, how about "equal time" for any
and all...  hmmm..:  "All" takes in rather a lot...  yup:  Looks
like the Supreme Court got it about right on this one....

My last word today:  Ruthlessly honest and objective pursuit
of scientific knowledge by observation, experimentation, and
analysis isn't "against" or "versus" anybody or any religion....

I now return myself to database restructuring & etc.

Ken Sletten