Garden Roundup

As September winds down the kitchen garden is winding up. This may have been one of our worst years ever. Asparagus and early salad greens were reliable and plentiful as always. Strawberries were worse and raspberries better than expected. Cold wet weather prevented any pollination for apples and pears. After a good start, eggplant and peppers just pooped out. Everyone knows what to call a man who plants 4 hills of zucchini, buried, but not this year. For some reason, probably stress the plants stayed largely male and the zucchini were actually way too few. For a month and a half the tomatoes were good, although way to many were "shared" with wildlife. Snap peas were good, but only briefly. Winter squash got off to a poor start and never recovered. Bush beans just did not germinate at all. The champion performer for certain were cucumbers that persisted and produced, avoiding bacterial wilt, until this very week, probably a new record. Some fall lettuce, spinach, and bok choi are still to come, but the garden has had better years. Heat, drought, and neglect all took their toll; what with one thing and another we were away too much for good gardening and no one was around to keep up with watering. But like all gardeners you look forward to next year. It has to be better, right?

Are you a true scientist?

Philosopher and keyboard artist Ervin Laszlo can help you answer this question. According to a recent piece at the Huffington Post:
You aren't a "true" scientist if you "confound the record of a religious experience with the meaning of that experience". Hmmm. Whose meaning?
You aren't a "true" scientist if you "judge a religion by the literal veracity of the sayings, episodes, and injunctions contained in its doctrines". Hmmm. OK, we aren't to pay any attention to what the religion teaches.
A "true" scientist would be "reasonably certain...that there are aspects and planes of human experience that far transcend the limits of everyday experience, and they ["true" scientists] would seek to understand that experience". Ah, at last. Yes, the biology of hallucinations is fascinating and explains why hallucinogenic plants are involved with so many of the world's religions. In a pre-scientific world such experiences would be taken as absolute proof of the supernatural, but now we know it's brain chemistry. And have these experiences provided any profound insights into human nature and the natural world? Alas, no.
Well, by now you get the idea, you are not a "true" or "genuine" scientist if you don't simply accept the religious experience at face value rather than saying "your brain was deprived of oxygen".
But this is what really rubs my rhubarb. Any scientist who doesn't agree with Laszlo in neither a "true" or "genuine" scientist. It is to laugh. Only a desperately irrelevant philosopher would use such a rhetorical device and provide us with such a slipshod, second rate contribution to the problem of sorting out the science and religion problem. Stick with the keyboard Laszlo; you're giving philosophy a bad name.