Tuesday, July 16, 2019

The Blood of the Whale




When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his "flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. (Herman Melville, Moby Dick)

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The soldiers therefore came; and they broke the legs of the first, and of the other that was crucified with him. But after they were come to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water. And he that saw it, hath given testimony, and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he saith true; that you also may believe (John 19:32-35, Douay-Rheims translation).

1 comment:

  1. Dear Dr. Bardi,
    In your latest post on the Cassandra blog you wonder why we all live on the same planet but harbour different views on what is ‘true’ and fight each other over our respective truths. Because you consider it unscientific you dismissed my earlier suggestion that a way out of this dilemma could be a paradigm shift from a materialist worldview to a mental worldview. I intended to leave it at that. However, a few days ago I came across additional information from scientists on the paradigm of a mental world. Please check it out. From your position as a scientist with a materialist paradigm this may seem absurd, yes. But I believe that if we sincerely want to avoid a world-wide collapse of society the only straw that is left to us is a new definition of who/what we are as human beings. We cannot change nature but we can change our believes about what it is and what it means to be human.
    https://www.galileocommission.org/
    https://www.galileocommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Science-Beyond-A-Materialist-World-View-Digital_compressed.pdf
    https://www.galileocommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Galileo-Commission-Summary-Report-Digital.pdf

    The arguments contained in this summary Galileo Commission Report have been ignored by the science establishment, not because of their lack of merit, but because they would require a revision of the current, cherished, materialist, paradigm. I believe the main reason for this is fear.

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