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It appears that Europe has suddenly developed a conscience and decided to accommodate the current wave of refugees.  This is good.  It makes me proud to live in Europe, while Americans are screaming about putting up a wall on the Mexican border to keep out the hordes of murdering rapists.

Naguib Sawiris

However, there are a couple of points to keep in mind.  This sudden outpouring of good will and openness is largely due to one sad photograph of a dead three year old boy.  There is still a lot of resistance to immigration, xenophobia, and flat out racism in Europe and it will wax as memory of that photograph wanes, and the reality of dealing with a new minority sets in.  Europe and the U.S. are really not different in this regard.  The left/right, inclusion/exclusion split is about the same, about 50/50 in both places.

Also, although this wave of refugees will (it appears) be absorbed, there will be another wave, and another.  Peace in the Middle East is still  elusive.  So, what can be done?

Enter Naguib Sawiris.  He is an Egyptian billionaire who has offered to buy an island from either Greece or Italy (which he would name Hope) just to house the refugees.  On this island, he would provide refugees with jobs building a new community – homes, schools, hospitals, a port, etc… He has said that there is no  limit to what he will spend on this.  There are a couple of snags in his plan.  First, even though he’s said there is no limit to what he will spend, there obviously is.  If he has 10 billion euros, for instance, then the limit is 10 billion euros.  Also, most uninhabited islands are uninhabited for a reason, such as uninhabitability.  Third, any island is going to eventually reach capacity, and what then?

Still, I think it’s a noble plan.  As to the financial limits, I hope that the governments of Greece and Italy deal with him in a spirit of co-operation.  Ditto the United Nations, and the hive mind and incredible fund raising power of the internet.

Sawiris has led.  If others follow, then his idea might work.  Land can be transformed, and made habitable.  We have the technology.  As far as what to do when that island reaches capacity, that is plan C, that is another problem, and one we will have to deal with eventually in any event.

I wish Sawiris all the luck in the world, and hope he gets support from every side.

There’s an odd similarity between the two books I’m involved with at the moment.  There’s the one I am reading, called Refusal of Silence, which is actually by somebody I know, and I Love Manchester United, which is being translated from Farsi by my friend Bubu, and I’m doing the proofreading and editing.

Both of them are really hard to understand.  I’m about 2/3rds of the way through Refusal, and after a couple of chapters I was ready to put it down but I didn’t.  I paid for it, it’s downloaded, and by golly, I’m going to finish it.  Actually, it makes a bit more sense now that I’m into it, although I’m not sure if it takes place in a dream, or if he’s supposed to be in some version of the afterlife, or just the future.  It’s got some moments of great brilliance and philosophical insight – there will be no art in heaven – but it’s still really hard to follow.

As is Manchester.  The action never follows more than one character for more than a chapter or two.  There are lots of conversations with and between ghosts, and a few passages are told from the point of view of inanimate objects – a communist placard with a picture of Stalin, the eye of a statue which has been knocked loose…stuff like that.

Manchester is far the bloodier of the two, although both have people dying randomly, and continuing to have conversations after they are dead.

I suppose it’s a good thing.  Not all writing needs to be straightforward, not every book needs to be easy to understand.  But I am worn out, and it’s time for sleep.

I’ll get plenty of death and insanity on the weekend.

There are three court cases I’d like to comment on today.  In one, I think the judge ruled correctly.  In one, I think the judge did not.  In the 3rd case, it hasn’t been decided yet but since I am a blogger and not a participant, I am free to give my opinion and I will.

Harris Faulkner – because she’s easier on the eyes than Kim Davis

1-1-1, so that’s about the same rate of agreement as when I watch Judge Judy.

First, the case of Harris Faulkner vs. Hasbro.  She is a reporter for Fox News, they are a toy company that produced a cute, little, plastic hamster named “Harris Faulkner.”She is suing them for $5 million.  As much as it pains me to side with someone from Fox News, this seems like a no-brainer to me.  Harris Faulkner is a unique sort of name.  The hamster doesn’t look all that much like her, but they both have big eyes.  They’re obviously using her name and image to sell their product.  They should pay.  The thing is, they should have asked her permission and offered to pay up front.  It’s probably good publicity for her.  And so is the court case.

On to case #2.  I don’t see why the Tom Brady vs. the NFL case came to court at all.  He is an employee of the New England Patriots, who are part of the NFL.  Therefore, the NFL was completely within their rights to suspend him for 4 games, which I don’t even think is a lot.  The courts have more important fish to fry.  Are there no murders?  Are there no bank robbers?

In the case of Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis vs. all the gay people of the world, I think the judge did absolutely the right thing to cite her for contempt of court and throw her hillbilly butt in the slammer.  The immediate effect was that all the other clerks in the office immediately said “Hey, we’ll issue the licenses, it was just her.”  So, problem solved.

But, I’d like to talk about a side issue.  Since she started getting so much publicity for refusing to grant  marriage licenses to gay  people, it’s been revealed that she’s been married 4 times (3 different men, she married one of them twice), and she wasn’t completely faithful during all of those marriages, either.  A lot of people have called her a hypocrite, and her defense was “Before I became a Christian in 2011, I did a lot of crazy  things.”

What was she before 2011?  Davis isn’t usually a Jewish name, and she doesn’t look Jewish.  I doubt if she was Muslim.  Pagan?  Animist?  Santeria?  None really seem to fit her profile.  My guess (and I’m not going to research this.  I don’t care that much about Kim Davis.  If I’m wrong, somebody let me know and I’ll  print a retraction) is that she meant “Before I became a Jesus lovin’, born again, starry eyed evangelical nut case kind of Christian.”

Because that is a whole, separate breed.

The other day one of my Christian wackadoodle facebook friends (sorry, if you say creationism should be taught in science classes as if this had some supportable basis in reality, then you’re going to be called wackadoodle.  That’s just plain nuts) started in with this false equivalency nonsense, you have your opinion and I have mine, and you all treat science like it’s a religion.  I wanted to write a column saying of course we don’t, we don’t go to a church of science, we don’t pray to science, science doesn’t work that way, and then I thought about it a bit more.  Is science my religion?  One could do worse. To some, football is a religion.  To others, organic gardening is.

Here’s how I see it, though:  Along about a million or two years ago (scientists keep  changing the date on this with fresh evidence), about the time that homo sapiens started to come down  from the trees, people must have felt the changes in the air with the seasons, and noticed the sun  by day and the stars by night, and wondered what the hell was going on.

So, they started to make up stories about people who lived in the sky, and in the rocks and trees, and this marked us as different from the other animals.  Viewed one way, this was the dawn of intellectual curiosity.  Viewed another, this was the beginning of religion – and science – and magic – and art.

Like the primary colors, like the periodic table of elements, these four mix and match  in  various ways to create a vast range of ways to perceive the universe.

Of course there is a science  of religion.  It’s called theology.  There is the science of magic and the art of magic.  I’m sure magicians have philosophical debates about that among themselves all the time. There is certainly a magic to art, if it’s any good. When a musician hits the  right notes, it can be as powerful as any love potion brewed by a voodoo witch (speaking of religion).

There is magic in science, both in the Arthur C. Clarke sense of ‘any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic, and also in the very real sense of what it does. Science creates machines that fly through the air.  Science creates telescopes which can see to the  edge of the universe.  I am able to type these words, and people on the other side of the world, maybe even  people centuries from now, may see them, and be affected by them.  They take on a life of their own.  That is magic.

There is certainly an art to science.  Sure, a lot of it is boring examination and testing of hypotheses, but coming up with those hypotheses, that takes an artist.  Or, in religious terms, a leap of faith. Einstein was an artist.  Tesla was an artist.  Scientists with a bit of flair.

So, maybe science is a sort of religion.  That  doesn’t mean you should be able to teach creationism in public schools.  Because that’s just nonsense.

Dear Czech people:  Franz Kafka  was being SARCASTIC.  He didn’t actually mean for his books to be taken as a guide for how to run your society.  It’s like the Star Trek episode where Kirk  and Spock beam down to the planet that’s like Chicago during prohibition because they’d found some kind of a book about it which, when  you thinkabout it , is really a stupid plot.

Franz Kafka

I went to the  bank this  morning.  I went  directly after dropping Isabel off for the first day of school (4th grade – I find  it really hard to believe), so I was there when the doors opened.  My mission was to deposit  a check  into our account.  Pretty standard stuff, I would have thought.

I went up to the main counter and she said ‘Oh.  A check.  You have to  go to services,’ and she pointed the way.  There were two clerks in services.  One occupied, one unoccupied.  The unoccupied one was unoccupied because he didn’t know what to do with a check,  either.

I took a seat to wait for the other  one, and he came around his desk to straighten out the chair  I’d sat in.  Czech bank clerks  are  probably the best in the world at straightening chairs.  Not so much at anything  else.

15 minutes later, and wishing  I’d brought a book with me, I got to talk to the one  person  in the bank who’d seen a check before.  And  she looked at it funny.  You know, the kind of look the checkout woman at Albert gives a 1,000 crown note, holding it up to the light like you might be an expert forger or something.

She asked me for identification, which is no big  deal, and spent 5 minutes typing and staring at her computer screen.  I suspect she was playing Candy Crush.  Then she said “The  name on the check is different than the name on the account.”  Well, the last name isn’t.  The account  is in my wife’s name, the check was made out to me.  I was depositing it, not even trying to cash it.  Why should they care who puts money into the account.  If there are people trying to deposit checks into my account (O.K., my wife’s account), we have no objection.  Their name could be Zonkbletter T. Pukelthong.  Money’s money.

So,  I did what I usually do when Czech bureaucrats are behaving unreasonably.  I called my wife.  She talked to the lady in Czech, her tone seemed to be much more helpful, but…

The  resolution was that I could cash the check – not to get cash right away, mind you, it will still take three weeks.  Then, when we  have the cash, we can deposit that into the account.  I thought that was the stupidest thing I’d heard in a long time.  I didn’t state that out loud, but I’m sure she could see it in my expression.

So, I signed four sheets of paper, one of which was my receipt but they were all identical and, as I was leaving, she explained: “The reason it takes so long is because we have to send the check back to the United States.”

“That,” I said, “is why computers were invented.”