Plain Speaking and Metaphor

The preacher on television said that some one's heart was "full of the holy spirit". It was beautiful how he said it. You could tell why he's on television and I'm not.

The thing is: what does it mean?

Since religious people deal in the greater mysteries of our existence, they rely pretty heavily on metaphor to try and make sense of things that don't make much sense. The bible itself is full of metaphor in a thousand different varieties.

Metaphor can be a crutch though, and over-used it can get in the way of people understanding what it is we're trying to say instead of illuminating it.

I don't know what "full of the holy spirit" means. Hearts aren't full of the holy spirit, they're full of blood. As far as I know, the holy spirit doesn't actually infest our bodies, and even if it did, since we don't have a really specific idea of what the holy spirit is, how would you know?

In the example from television above, "full of the holy spirit" was a metaphor for someone taking action in the real world based on their religious faith and teaching. If the preacher wants to teach us listeners that this is good to do, then he should have spoken plainly rather than rely on a metaphor like "full of the holy spirit".

Jesus used metaphor, like when he asked peter to be a "fisher of men", but he also spoke very plainly too.

Some men came to Jesus. They said, "Teacher, what should we do if someone hits us on the side of the face?" Jesus said, "Turn your face and offer them the other side to hit as well."

That's pretty plain speaking. Jesus leaves us no question about what he means and "turn the other cheek" became one of Christ's most remarkable and memorable lessons.

It's important for religious people to remember that when we teach about our faith, it's more important to be understood than it is to use flowery code words or phrases and a lot of times, plain speaking is a much better choice than metaphor.

Penn Jillette Doesn't Know About The Weather

The earth is dying and we're killing it. Any reasonable person knows this.

Never mind that scientists can't make an accurate 24-hour weather forecast.

Never mind that anyone who saw the 2000 presidential debates knows that Al Gore is bat-shit crazy.

The logical path is laid out for us, and if we don't follow that path, then we're all gonna die!

At the most recent skeptics convention hosted by The Amazing Randi, Penn Jillette was asked about global warming--to which he replied: "I don't know". It took him about a thousand words to say "I don't know". If you've ever seen his act then you know a thousand words is conservative for Jillette. His normally silent partner's response was maybe five hundred words.

Penn & Teller are among America's greatest thinkers. I say this because I agree with them about half the time. They have a great program on television called "Bullshit" where they expand on just how insane and illogical most of us are.

After the skeptics conference, Newsweek's Sharon Begley wrote an article dismissing Jillette's comments on climate change (in her best Post hoc ergo propter hoc manner) because he dislikes Al Gore. You can read her article here.

In his reply to Begley, Jillette was again terse (only about a thousand words).

The deal is: we don't know as much as we think we know about climate change. We suspect many things, and a lot of them may be accurate, but a lot of it we just can't posit as a scientific fact yet.

Jillette's response was reasonable. He doesn't know. I don't know either. Begley is pretty sure she knows but she doesn't. As a race, we will do our best to rectify the climate change problem, but that doesn't mean we should be sanctimonious about it all, because quite frankly, we don't know.

Watermelon Viagra

Scientists in England or somewhere have made the astonishing discovery that eating watermelon has basically the same effect as Viagra. You can read more about it here.

I gotta call bull-crap on this one. I've eaten more than my fair share of watermelon since early childhood and if it had an effect like Viagra, I would have noticed by now. Maybe you have to eat the whole melon, seeds and all for it to take effect.

Of course, this does give a whole new meaning to the phrase "melon balls". . .

How Big is Big: The Blue Whale

The The Blue Whale (balaenoptera musculus) is generally considered the largest animal that ever lived. It can reach lengths of over 110 feet long and weights of over 200 tons.

It's hard to imagine what that is in real terms. 110 feet is over 1/3 the length of a football field. To give an even better conception of how big that is, I've included a photograph of the life-size blue whale model from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.


The Blue Whale is a carnivore. He hunts large shoals of tiny shrimp called krill. The whale will swim through the krill with his cavernous mouth open taking in as much water and krill as he can, then he closes his mouth and uses his tongue to push the water back out letting his feather-like teeth called baleen strain out the shrimp which he then swallows.

The throat of the Blue whale is pleated so it can expand like an accordion when he takes in water. The image above shows his throat about half expanded. For a long time, scientists thought the whales throat was always partially expanded because they only time anyone go to see the underside of the whale was when one beached itself or was harvested by whalers.

Compare the images below of a free swimming blue whale with his throat deflated and another image of the whale with his throat full of water and krill.