Francis Mont's Blog, page 10
November 8, 2016
On US election
Before:
Reason has to fight
hate, fear and ugliness.
Tipping point reached.
After:
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain" - Friedrich Schiller
"Human stupidity is a bottomless pit" - Francis Mont
Reason has to fight
hate, fear and ugliness.
Tipping point reached.
After:
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain" - Friedrich Schiller
"Human stupidity is a bottomless pit" - Francis Mont
November 2, 2016
Haikus
As time goes by, I have less and less patience for too many words. That is why I started writing Haikus recently. Here are few:
“Wildlife is dying
Soon we will be all alone,
Last to leave the Earth”
“I'm watching the news
observing the asylum
Inmates run the show.”
“Winter’s white monster
peers over the horizon
ready for the leap.”
"Big holes in my brain
full of missing words and names.
Need a fishing rod!"
"Winter is coming.
Frost has settled on the ground
and in voters' minds."
Cheerful, as always. :(
“Wildlife is dying
Soon we will be all alone,
Last to leave the Earth”
“I'm watching the news
observing the asylum
Inmates run the show.”
“Winter’s white monster
peers over the horizon
ready for the leap.”
"Big holes in my brain
full of missing words and names.
Need a fishing rod!"
"Winter is coming.
Frost has settled on the ground
and in voters' minds."
Cheerful, as always. :(
October 4, 2016
To bullies everywhere
He started with pebbles,
throwing them at little girls
in the sandbox,
and had a great thrill,
hearing them squeal
with true fright and pain.
Then he became older,
bolder and more ambitious,
so he joined the marines
to throw bigger things,
faster things,
like bullets,
and be thrilled with the effect:
instead of the squeal, now he had screams
and often the bodies collapsed and stayed quiet.
Then he became better and better,
so he could start throwing shells
from cannons and tanks and
have even more reaction:
buildings collapse on top of
screaming people,
children and their stupid parents
trying to protect them,
with useless bodies,
crumpling to mangled flesh.
Then, as a reward, for his heroism,
he became a pilot, where he could throw
even bigger things, like bombs and rockets
and the result was most satisfying:
he could demolish whole blocks
by pushing one button on his flight deck.
But even that wasn’t enough,
because he had to go to the ultimate thrill:
to have his finger on the nuclear button
and throw the biggest thing he could lay his hands on:
a weapon of mass destruction
that could annihilate a whole city
with millions of screaming people
all cringing from the little boy from the sandbox
who could finally throw
the biggest thing
in the entire
insane
universe.
PS. It was Melania Trump's 'defense' of her husband that prompted this last poem I wrote. She said: "it was only boys talk".
throwing them at little girls
in the sandbox,
and had a great thrill,
hearing them squeal
with true fright and pain.
Then he became older,
bolder and more ambitious,
so he joined the marines
to throw bigger things,
faster things,
like bullets,
and be thrilled with the effect:
instead of the squeal, now he had screams
and often the bodies collapsed and stayed quiet.
Then he became better and better,
so he could start throwing shells
from cannons and tanks and
have even more reaction:
buildings collapse on top of
screaming people,
children and their stupid parents
trying to protect them,
with useless bodies,
crumpling to mangled flesh.
Then, as a reward, for his heroism,
he became a pilot, where he could throw
even bigger things, like bombs and rockets
and the result was most satisfying:
he could demolish whole blocks
by pushing one button on his flight deck.
But even that wasn’t enough,
because he had to go to the ultimate thrill:
to have his finger on the nuclear button
and throw the biggest thing he could lay his hands on:
a weapon of mass destruction
that could annihilate a whole city
with millions of screaming people
all cringing from the little boy from the sandbox
who could finally throw
the biggest thing
in the entire
insane
universe.
PS. It was Melania Trump's 'defense' of her husband that prompted this last poem I wrote. She said: "it was only boys talk".
July 26, 2016
Humane Physics
I have already had good reviews both here and on Amazon, but none, until now, from an actual science teacher who commented on the quality of the book from the teacher’s perspective. That is why this review is so important to me.
John Hlynialuk, a retired science teacher, is not a Goodreads member, but he has read my book: "Humane Physics" and asked me to post his review anywhere I wished, so here it comes
"Francis Mont has done an impressive amount of research for this book ferreting out the interesting stories associated with the names in physics we all recognize: Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Faraday are all there. Not only does he cover the physics discoveries of these individuals, but he also relates some of the interesting anecdotes of their personal lives or of the times in which they worked.
In my teaching of physics concepts, I have always found that an interesting anecdote always made the physics more palatable. And it is always important to present physics as a human endeavour rather than as an activity disconnected from the real world. No one drops a glass and thinks as it falls, “hmmm, the force of gravity is accelerating this mass at 9.8 m/s/s and it will hit the floor at about 10 m/s and probably shatter because the cohesive forces of the glass molecules will not be able to withstand the...etc. etc.” . But everyone appreciates how a falling object and the Earth’s Moon are connected by the same force of gravity.
What the majority of physics students who do not go on to work in the field will remember is not the Laws of Physics they may have memorized, but hopefully the concepts embodied by those laws in general and the efforts of physicists to understand the natural world as they struggled to sort out phenomena like force, light, gravity, electricity and magnetism. Mont does an admirable job of relating those struggles and elucidating them in language that non-physicists can understand. The lessons taught here are how physics fits into our everyday lives.
Though the book is touted as “painless physics”, it is after all a book on PHYSICS (the very word sends shivers down the spines of many...). But Mont does not sacrifice giving a thorough explanation of the subject. The mathematical development of various laws is there complete with the equations and where the going is beyond the level of the students towards which the book is aimed, Mont provides full mathematical derivations in a special section called “The Next Level”. He also has a chapter called “Your Math Toolkit” for those wishing to brush up on their math skills and delve more deeply into the mathematical aspects of physical laws. Therefore the book is useful for physics students and a valuable reference to any physics teacher at the high school or college level.
I highly recommend it."
John Hlynialuk, a retired science teacher, is not a Goodreads member, but he has read my book: "Humane Physics" and asked me to post his review anywhere I wished, so here it comes
"Francis Mont has done an impressive amount of research for this book ferreting out the interesting stories associated with the names in physics we all recognize: Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Faraday are all there. Not only does he cover the physics discoveries of these individuals, but he also relates some of the interesting anecdotes of their personal lives or of the times in which they worked.
In my teaching of physics concepts, I have always found that an interesting anecdote always made the physics more palatable. And it is always important to present physics as a human endeavour rather than as an activity disconnected from the real world. No one drops a glass and thinks as it falls, “hmmm, the force of gravity is accelerating this mass at 9.8 m/s/s and it will hit the floor at about 10 m/s and probably shatter because the cohesive forces of the glass molecules will not be able to withstand the...etc. etc.” . But everyone appreciates how a falling object and the Earth’s Moon are connected by the same force of gravity.
What the majority of physics students who do not go on to work in the field will remember is not the Laws of Physics they may have memorized, but hopefully the concepts embodied by those laws in general and the efforts of physicists to understand the natural world as they struggled to sort out phenomena like force, light, gravity, electricity and magnetism. Mont does an admirable job of relating those struggles and elucidating them in language that non-physicists can understand. The lessons taught here are how physics fits into our everyday lives.
Though the book is touted as “painless physics”, it is after all a book on PHYSICS (the very word sends shivers down the spines of many...). But Mont does not sacrifice giving a thorough explanation of the subject. The mathematical development of various laws is there complete with the equations and where the going is beyond the level of the students towards which the book is aimed, Mont provides full mathematical derivations in a special section called “The Next Level”. He also has a chapter called “Your Math Toolkit” for those wishing to brush up on their math skills and delve more deeply into the mathematical aspects of physical laws. Therefore the book is useful for physics students and a valuable reference to any physics teacher at the high school or college level.
I highly recommend it."
July 22, 2016
How to solve the problem of terrorism?
Imagine that you are a doctor, and a patient comes to you with a horrible skin disease, asking you for help. What do you do? Cover his body with bandages to hide and suppress the boils and welts? Try to push them back under the skin? Or you try to find the causes that contributed to the beginning of the disease process?
It is always a process that starts somewhere and, through a cause-and-effect chain, reaches the point when it breaks through the skin and becomes visible.
Nobody is born to be a terrorist.
There is a long chain of causes and effects that will lead him to the stage when he is willing to massacre innocent bystanders.
What makes a person do that?
Something happened, sometime in the past, and then the process started. Find out what, where, when, how and why?
Then deal with the underlying causes that turn people into terrorists.
Deal with the social, geo-political, psychological, economical, religious causes that give rise to desperate people wanting to kill others who never did them any harm.
Of course, the powers that be (PTB) do not want to deal with imperialist wars, massive exploitation of third-world nations, economical inequality at home, deliberate fueling of religious and racial tensions. It would not be profitable.
Watching the image of the police and soldiers running around, trying to hunt down terrorists, gave me the impression of watching a patient on a hospital bed, fighting a deadly infection, and then seeing the white cells inside, swarming around the invading microbes, viruses and bacteria that is eating the victim – the human species – alive, from the inside out.
If we don’t deal with the entire cause-and-effect chain, we will be forever doomed to trying to suppress the symptoms instead of curing the patient.
Either we think in terms of the cause-and-effect chain, or we will, eventually, die out.
It is always a process that starts somewhere and, through a cause-and-effect chain, reaches the point when it breaks through the skin and becomes visible.
Nobody is born to be a terrorist.
There is a long chain of causes and effects that will lead him to the stage when he is willing to massacre innocent bystanders.
What makes a person do that?
Something happened, sometime in the past, and then the process started. Find out what, where, when, how and why?
Then deal with the underlying causes that turn people into terrorists.
Deal with the social, geo-political, psychological, economical, religious causes that give rise to desperate people wanting to kill others who never did them any harm.
Of course, the powers that be (PTB) do not want to deal with imperialist wars, massive exploitation of third-world nations, economical inequality at home, deliberate fueling of religious and racial tensions. It would not be profitable.
Watching the image of the police and soldiers running around, trying to hunt down terrorists, gave me the impression of watching a patient on a hospital bed, fighting a deadly infection, and then seeing the white cells inside, swarming around the invading microbes, viruses and bacteria that is eating the victim – the human species – alive, from the inside out.
If we don’t deal with the entire cause-and-effect chain, we will be forever doomed to trying to suppress the symptoms instead of curing the patient.
Either we think in terms of the cause-and-effect chain, or we will, eventually, die out.
June 26, 2016
Brexit
I hate it when evolution works backward. The only sane thing for our species is to move towards the ideal of a unified planet and we just made one giant step in the opposite direction.
It is so telling: every new astronaut who goes up to space comments on it: “you can’t see the borders”! As is it were a major revelation – as for most of humanity it needs to be.
The primitive tribalism, nationalism and parochialism belongs to the past when our science and technology could not provide plenty for all, so groups of humans had to fight over limited resources. Now this fight is what is using up most of our plentiful resources in wars, destruction, waste and unnecessary competition.
Unfortunately the mentally ill (afflicted with power lust and insatiable appetite for material possession) are running the asylum and the rest of us are dragged along from one disaster to another.
However, pretty soon we will be forced to make an existential choice: climate change and our accelerating and modernizing nuclear arms production will decide for us, even if we are too stupid to decide for ourselves.
The famous quote from Einstein comes to mind: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
It is so telling: every new astronaut who goes up to space comments on it: “you can’t see the borders”! As is it were a major revelation – as for most of humanity it needs to be.
The primitive tribalism, nationalism and parochialism belongs to the past when our science and technology could not provide plenty for all, so groups of humans had to fight over limited resources. Now this fight is what is using up most of our plentiful resources in wars, destruction, waste and unnecessary competition.
Unfortunately the mentally ill (afflicted with power lust and insatiable appetite for material possession) are running the asylum and the rest of us are dragged along from one disaster to another.
However, pretty soon we will be forced to make an existential choice: climate change and our accelerating and modernizing nuclear arms production will decide for us, even if we are too stupid to decide for ourselves.
The famous quote from Einstein comes to mind: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
March 26, 2016
Dark and Stormy Knight
Introduction
One day, back in June, 2013, ALF was on his favourite forum, Secular Café. He had been posting poems and other writings on the “Creative Writing” thread for over a year and enjoyed reading the work of other posters, but recently nothing interesting showed up and he was bored.
So he addressed his favourite writer on the board, Shadowfox:
ALF: A while ago, you posted a challenge ("The Last Man on Earth") that I found very enjoyable. Fox, any more of those challenges?
To which he received an immediate reply:
SF: Well, here's one to begin a tale, “He was a dark and stormy knight”. Any style, prose or poetry, any genre, each person to contribute a few lines.
Over the course of three weeks it grew into a collaborative story by four members: ALF, Shadowfox, mood2 and Peanut. It was enormous fun to write and to read, and that is where it stayed for years. Then ALF started his publishing company, Montland Books, and decided to revisit it.
The problem was style. A story told in four different voices, by people who never met, didn’t know one another and had no idea where they were going with it. Each added new twists, new characters, new directions, new settings. Though the plot lines eventually came together, there was very little detail and the story had serious flaws and even contradictions.
Vera Mont, senior editor, took on the challenge to expand and organize this patchwork tale into an integrated story. Thus it became a new novella in its own right.
I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as all of us here, at Montland Books, enjoyed working with it.
See paperback edition at:
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Stormy-Kni...
or the Kindle edition at
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Stormy-Kni...
One day, back in June, 2013, ALF was on his favourite forum, Secular Café. He had been posting poems and other writings on the “Creative Writing” thread for over a year and enjoyed reading the work of other posters, but recently nothing interesting showed up and he was bored.
So he addressed his favourite writer on the board, Shadowfox:
ALF: A while ago, you posted a challenge ("The Last Man on Earth") that I found very enjoyable. Fox, any more of those challenges?
To which he received an immediate reply:
SF: Well, here's one to begin a tale, “He was a dark and stormy knight”. Any style, prose or poetry, any genre, each person to contribute a few lines.
Over the course of three weeks it grew into a collaborative story by four members: ALF, Shadowfox, mood2 and Peanut. It was enormous fun to write and to read, and that is where it stayed for years. Then ALF started his publishing company, Montland Books, and decided to revisit it.
The problem was style. A story told in four different voices, by people who never met, didn’t know one another and had no idea where they were going with it. Each added new twists, new characters, new directions, new settings. Though the plot lines eventually came together, there was very little detail and the story had serious flaws and even contradictions.
Vera Mont, senior editor, took on the challenge to expand and organize this patchwork tale into an integrated story. Thus it became a new novella in its own right.
I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as all of us here, at Montland Books, enjoyed working with it.
See paperback edition at:
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Stormy-Kni...
or the Kindle edition at
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Stormy-Kni...
February 27, 2016
Business or Government?
My newest book will have the title: “Solutions – Too Simple, Too Sane” -- an essay collection of mine going back 15 years, trying to answer all the ‘unanswerable’ problems of the 'Human Condition', as we know it.
I think most thinkers today, even clear-thinking ones, are stuck in a groove of limited imagination.
The debate I keep hearing, all the time, is that it has to be the government, or it has to be business to organize our lives.
Without a question we need to be organized in some way – the alternative is living off the land each individual fending for himself.
Even in the smallest human tribe chances of survival for the individual are closely tied to the survival of the tribe.
Division of labour makes it possible to provide for not just basic necessities, but also some level of security and comfort.
So, this division of labour needs to be organized, because it can not be spontaneous.
The question of government, or business, creates a false dichotomy: in both cases, it is individual human beings (of whatever stripe) who do the organizing.
These individuals can be competent or incompetent, honest or corrupt, intelligent or stupid – both in business and in government.
Thinkers need to get past that obsession of “business or government” and they have to start thinking about fundamental principles.
Matters of survival are very simple: we have fundamental unalterable needs of survival: food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, communication, transportation.
Everything else is luxury.
If a civilization allows billions to be deprived of basic needs in order to provide luxuries for some, that civilization is fundamentally stupid, short-sighted and self-destructive.
So, regardless whoever is doing the organizing, we need two things: production and distribution.
Without production, we die.
Without distribution we die.
So, instead of wrangling with the totally misleading question of business versus government, we need to think in terms of basic principles.
If we don’t we will continue going around the same circle, for ever, until we run out of time and destroy ourselves.
This is what I am trying to convince people about in my new book.
I think most thinkers today, even clear-thinking ones, are stuck in a groove of limited imagination.
The debate I keep hearing, all the time, is that it has to be the government, or it has to be business to organize our lives.
Without a question we need to be organized in some way – the alternative is living off the land each individual fending for himself.
Even in the smallest human tribe chances of survival for the individual are closely tied to the survival of the tribe.
Division of labour makes it possible to provide for not just basic necessities, but also some level of security and comfort.
So, this division of labour needs to be organized, because it can not be spontaneous.
The question of government, or business, creates a false dichotomy: in both cases, it is individual human beings (of whatever stripe) who do the organizing.
These individuals can be competent or incompetent, honest or corrupt, intelligent or stupid – both in business and in government.
Thinkers need to get past that obsession of “business or government” and they have to start thinking about fundamental principles.
Matters of survival are very simple: we have fundamental unalterable needs of survival: food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, communication, transportation.
Everything else is luxury.
If a civilization allows billions to be deprived of basic needs in order to provide luxuries for some, that civilization is fundamentally stupid, short-sighted and self-destructive.
So, regardless whoever is doing the organizing, we need two things: production and distribution.
Without production, we die.
Without distribution we die.
So, instead of wrangling with the totally misleading question of business versus government, we need to think in terms of basic principles.
If we don’t we will continue going around the same circle, for ever, until we run out of time and destroy ourselves.
This is what I am trying to convince people about in my new book.
January 31, 2016
The trouble with Watchamacallits
The day has finally arrived: our children's book, published by our company: Montland Books: "The trouble with Watchamacallits" is published and available at Amazon.com.
More venues will be available soon.
Daina has done a magnificent job illustrating it, and we are so happy with her work that we just hired her to illustrate our next book to be published in May: "A Dark and Stormy Knight" .
Take a look:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0994...
More venues will be available soon.
Daina has done a magnificent job illustrating it, and we are so happy with her work that we just hired her to illustrate our next book to be published in May: "A Dark and Stormy Knight" .
Take a look:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0994...
October 29, 2015
Our Publishing Service
After having 3 books successfully self-published (a fourth one is soon available), we are confident enough to offer publishing services to first time authors who need help to get started.
A link to this publishing service can be found at our website at the following address: www.montland.ca/publishing.htm
A link to this publishing service can be found at our website at the following address: www.montland.ca/publishing.htm
