Shamim Ahmed > Recent Status Updates

The essence of being human is an uncomfortable duality of “rational” technology and “irrational” belief. We are still a species in transition.
 
—DAVID LEWIS-WILLIAMS,
The Mind in the Cave (2004), CHAPTER ONE

By 1800, somewhere between 10 million and 15 million black Africans had been brought to the Americas. In all, Africa may have lost as many as 50 million human beings to death and slavery during the centuries that we call the beginnings of modern civilization.

I spend a lot of time talking to people who disagree with me—I would go so far as to say that it’s my favourite leisure activity—and repeatedly I meet individuals who are eager to share their views on science despite the fact that they have never done an experiment. They have never tested an idea for themselves, using their own hands; or seen the results of that test, using their own eyes; and they have never thought

Commander Root was sucking on a particularly noxious fungus cigar.

Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you.
May beauty surround you both in the journey ahead and through all the years.
“Apache Wedding Blessing.”

A love of all things saccharine often seems present where there is a lack of real warmth or charity

(While describing Dolores Umbridge)

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was “Arrrgh!”
—PIRATICUS13:7