First post

I don't know what I'm going to write about here. I guess I'll start with simply whatever thoughts happen to be swirling in my mind right now.

I know that I'm reasonably healthy and happy, having adjusted to chronic pain and the idea that I cannot do whatever I would like to, so I don't have any angst to iron out. Maybe this will be completely boring.

Right now I'm reading a book about apostasy in Islam, called Leaving Islam, by Ibn Warraq. Curious about why people would be so mad as to want to kill others who disagree with their point of view, I first read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's books, Infidel and the recent Nomad. Yikes! People actually do that to their own kind? Of course, history is rife with it, but I'm protected from it by a veneer of civility in my democratic country, so I wanted to learn more. Tarek Fatah's Chasing A Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State was pretty encouraging. While Ali says that anyone who claims to be Muslim cannot but toe the line of the literal Quran, Fatah says basically that, as with everything written by humans, nothing should be set in stone and everyone should decide for themselves what is best. The problem seems to be that once one is trapped in a sect, especially if the sect both discourages independent thought and enforces conformity to a dogma, and most importantly, if it's beaten into one from childhood, one doesn't then have the wherewithal to decide for oneself, let alone be able to see that there could be another way of seeing things.

Whew! Enough of that. What else?

Always lots of reading, mostly related to boats and boat design, a constant fascination and, dare I say, addiction. I have a design I'm working on that I will soon make a model of. When I've caught up on my reading and writing!

I'll let you know how it goes.