The Mote and the Beam

I came across a rather humorous exchange today while I was listening to a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss on iTunes U from the Aurora Forum at Stanford University. Their topic of conversation was science education, meaning, of course, the teaching of evolution.

The exchange was a real hoot in light of recent complaints in America about scientists being fired for being sympathetic to and/or tolerant of the ideas of intelligent design.

Krauss said that something scary happening in America was that some teachers are feeling intimidated not to talk about the theory of evolution. He said that his daughter's biology teacher would apologize to the students whenever he talked about evolution.

Dawkins replied, "That's a major evil. What are we going to do about it? It's terrible. That's absolutely terrible that teachers are being intimidated." Then he asked the audience if there were any teachers there who had been intimidated not to talk about evolution. At least one person raised his or her hand and said that he or she was intimidated by parents to not teach evolution.

"Well, you know what . . ." Krauss said (talking like I tend to do with so many "um"s and pauses and digressions that nobody knows what he is or I am trying to say). "It's even more . . . What happened in Texas. So the school board official recommended that there was an event on evolution. A bunch of interesting speakers. And the school official sent out the notice that this was happening. And she got fired. Because she didn't present the other . . . you know, she didn't talk about the other side. Can you believe that? But that's the kind of intimidation that actually happens. And it's really scary."

An attempt at adding more pictures

Ok, this was supposed to be an entry with more baby pictures, but it will not work this time. Internet service can be a little spotty here at my house. I was able to post the other pictures and then ten minutes later couldn't post the others.

Maybe I will tell some details about the baby's delivery later. It was a really stressful time. It was wonderful that the baby was born, but several things happened that were tough to deal with. It is all in the past now, and now I have a beautiful baby. So all things considered, we are happy and blessed now.

I would like to make a couple posts later about the issue of ethics in philosophy. It seems that this is a big area about which secular philosophers are, generally speaking, pretty muddleheaded. Otherwise, maybe I am muddleheaded about it. (After all, I am pretty tired now, seeing that I have a baby to keep me up at night.) After I make my posts, then you can decide for yourselves who is confused.

Finally, I would like to share with you my grief with a popular concept regarding the will of God. The idea I am thinking about is confusing, unhelpful and unbiblical. Further, there are no precise words used to describe this idea--it is more of an attitude--so it is a little hard to talk about. Hopefully I will not completely obfuscate the issue when I get around to writing about it.

Baby Pictures

My son was born at the beginning of May. Here are some pictures of my wife, my baby and my wife's parents.

More Pics

Here my wife is getting some practice on caring for a baby.

Assorted Pictures

Bogus Batts

Here in the town where I live, there are a lot of fake products. Of course there are always the imitation Armani shirts and the unlicensed DVDs and CDs, which you can buy just about anywhere here. Sometimes though, a fake product could be dangerous. For example, once I bought a fake bottled tea, which was a very close copy of the original brand. It even had the original brand’s web address on the back. I took one taste and returned it to the seller. I figured that if the company owner didn’t care about honesty and ethical business practice, he probably didn’t care about my health either, so I didn’t dare drink it.

A few months ago, I bought some Nanfu batteries for my digital camera. Nanfu is a respected brand here that makes good reliable batteries. I was surprised though that when I got the batteries into my camera, it wouldn’t turn on. I went across the street and bought the same brand of batteries from a different store, and my camera worked. The first set of batteries was bogus. Here is a picture of two fake batteries and two real ones. Can you see the difference?

Drinking Pu'erh with my Brothers

Recently J.J. and D.M. came over to my house for a talk. I asked if they would like some tea, and they seemed interested. I took down my canister of Yixing black tea but tarried a moment trying to decide if I was really in the mood for black tea. Then I remembered my Yellow-mark Zhongcha brand Pu'erh tea cake. That was the one that M. had given me as a gift when he had come to visit China.

When I had received it, I had done a little research about it to determine its age and value. Nevertheless, I learned very little about it. The reason is that all of the packaging in this particular series of tea cake looks exactly the same. There is no difference in external appearance between a valuable cake and an inexpensive cake. Only an expert could tell the difference by smelling and examining the leaves. So from what I could determine from the package, it could have been made any time from as recently as last year to the 1970s. It could have been wet aged, a process that involves storing the cake in a moist environment to make it change its color and taste rapidly but producing a substandard product that looks valuable. Or it could have been aged meticulously in optimum conditions for 10 to 20 years. It could be worth 70 to 100 RMB, or it could be worth 7,000 to 10,000 RMB ($945 to $1350). I'm not an expert, so I cannot determine the true value of the cake. I can only say, "I like it" or "I don't like it." I asked M. how much he paid for it because I was just too curious. He said that actually it was a re-gift. A student of his gave it to him, but he decided to pass it on to me since he knew I enjoyed Pu’erh. M. didn’t know how much the student had paid for the tea, but he said that the student was pretty rich and was now studying in an ivy league school in America.

So after thinking for a moment about this tea yet untasted, I decided, in the spirit of the WSJ Wine column's "Open That Bottle Night," to break open my old Yellow-mark tea cake. I opened the box and smelled it deeply. There was something familiar in the fragrance. It had a rich smell, unlike most Pu'erh tea which has a faint dusty smell. If I have to compare the smell to something I would say that it is like the smell of a musty basement. I know that doesn’t sound very appetizing, but the funny thing is that J.J. and I both thought it was smelled heavenly.

I selected some leaves from the cake and noticed immediately that this one was different from my other black Pu’erhs. This one had large leaves, not just leaf pieces. The leaves looked like those of the high quality fresh green tea cakes that I had bought recently, which will not be drinkable for about another nine years. This cake really seemed to have been produced as a green Pu’erh and then aged. How it was aged and how long it was aged are the 10,000 RMB questions.

I placed the leaves in my small brewing cup and boiled some water. Then I rinsed the leaves once very quickly, poured out the rinse water into my pitcher and then went into the kitchen to discard the water. However, I was overcome with the temptation to have a little taste, so I sipped a little bit and then spit it out into the sink.

I was ecstatic. This was the very flavor that I had been looking for. Four years ago my first sample of Pu’erh was a pretty high quality, and since then I had been looking for a similar tasting tea. For four years I had been visiting various tea stores and sniffing all the Pu’erh teas to find this flavor. And now, finally I had found it in my own tea collection.

By this time J.J. was excited too, but D.M., having never tasted Pu’erh before, was curious. To him it looked like mulch, smelled like dirt and was probably going to taste like a mud puddle.

I waited one minute before filling the brewing cup with hot water again. I let it brew for 20 seconds before pouring it out through a strainer into the brewing pitcher, using the lid of the cup to keep the tea leaves from falling out.

The color of the brew was a golden brown. Then I poured out the pitcher into three small teacups, and the tea shone in the teacups as if they were filled with rubies.

We lifted the cups to our mouths and had a taste. I was boiling over with excitement. J.J. was impressed. “This is really good,” he said. D.M. on the other hand had a thoughtful look on his face. “It must be an acquired taste,” he said.

It is hard to explain taste, but it tasted smoky and dry but very rich. The second brew should have been 10 seconds. However, I let it brew too long, resulting in an overly strong brew. Nevertheless, it wasn’t bitter at all; it was completely smooth and gentle. The third brew was not as strong and seemed a little bit wet, not as pleasant. After the initial brews, the smoky flavor disappeared, but it started to come back around by the sixth brew. We were still drinking tea at ten o’clock and after about 10 brews.