In case anyone was wondering about the cute little bear that I use as my image in my profile, it's "Relax Bear" from the San-X company in Japan. リラックマ in Japanese phonetically translates to rirakkuma, (a compound word, literally リラックス, "relax", and クマ(熊), "bear").

 

Basically, he's the laziest bear you've ever seen. I can really feel this bear and I have so much in common...

 

 

If you can't figure out what this bear character is all about from the link in the first paragraph to the Japanese product page, you can read about it in English on Wikipedia. And yes, I think this probably does prove that Wikipedia really does have a lot more arcane knowledge than people might expect. Heck, I have 3 Wikipedia links on this article alone!

 

Oh yeah, I'm really an adult, and I'm not supposed to know so much about cute kiddy stuff, but hey, I yam what I yam, and that's all I yam, as Popeye was so fond of proclaiming. (Or as God said to Moses, but that's a whole other story, and I'm really not wanting to turn this into a religious blog!)

Last night, whilst driving home, my iPod hookup wasn't working temporarily (loose connection) so I had NPR on the radio. They were talking about a new Discovery Channel documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" which is set to air on March 4th. I read more about it online this morning, and it seems to be stirring up the usual hornets' nest of criticism and support from all sides. Basically the claim is that this is the actual tomb of Jesus Christ, that it also contains the bodies of Mary and Mary Magdalene, and Jesus' son.

 

I'd like to share with you a couple of my opinions on this.

 

The first point is the fact that the tomb itself was discovered in 1980, some 27 years ago. And for all the attention this new documentary might be getting at the moment, the BBC beat them to it in a documentary they released in 1996. That's 11 years ago. So although I haven't seen this new documentary yet, this seems to be really old news. I have to believe that all the arguments for and against the claim that this is really the final resting place of Jesus Christ have already been exhausted. It shows that people never tire of regurgitating the same old clichéd arguments. But then that's old news too. It's difficult for me to believe that the creators of this new documentary weren't primarily motivated by a desire to ride the coat-tails of the attention Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code (and the 2006 film of the same name) received.

 

Which brings me to my second point, one of statistical probability. I'm a big fan of statistical probability, and this is ultimately a conflict between religious faith and probability. In the absense of both faith and absolute proof, people will very likely believe that which is most probable. Let's digress for a moment and take the old story about the moon being made of cheese. Sure, it would be cool if the moon was really cheesy, but it's just not very probable, is it? The statistical probability of the moon being made of cheese is so low that nobody except very young children would seriously entertain the idea for more than a minute or two. Most adults would logically think "I may not know what the moon is really made of, but it's probably not gorgonzola". Which brings me back to the alleged tomb of Jesus. There is no absolute proof here. All there really is, is an argument of statistical probability. The Christian establishment, with faith on their side, is arguing against the skeptics who seek to disprove their faith. This is an argument you simply cannot win with probability. Faith cannot be overthrown by a claim which is merely probable. It's quite simply a waste of time. Unless, that is, you just love a good argument.

 

Next installment: the world is round flat!

 

 

As my first post in this new blog, I though I would share with you some images of Japan. I have been lucky enough to visit there around 8 times for work. Since I chose Japan as my first blog post, it must be obvious that I am a big fan of Japan!

I took these photographs on various trips to Japan, and all of them are taken within a short distance of Tokyo. You can see images from Tokyo, Yokohama, Kamakura and Hakone in this slide show. Enjoy!