My trivial thinking

My American Journey is Colin Powell's autobiography from 1937 to 1994, when he resigned chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Therefore this book didn't mention his address to the UN that he told the UN Security Council that Iraq had developed mobile laboratories for making biological weapon, and he was humiliated. I think he should not have served for President George W Bush with Cheney and Rumsfeld. It was his greatest fault that he accepted the Secretary of State in G. W. Bush administration. I don't know much about the African-American history or the background. Each one of them has its own history. Ms. Condoleezza Rice is the descendant of slaves taken from Africa directly. President Obama is the son of a foreign student. Powell is the son of an immigrant from Jamaica. His parents chose to emigrate to the USA for the same reason that Italians, Irish, and Hungarians did, to seek better lives for themselves and their children. That is a far different emotional and...

I dare not to mention this book but a spectrum. In this book, Richard Dawkins presented 7 milestones from 100% theist to 100% atheist. It's known as ' Dawkins Scale '. 1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung: "I do not believe, I know." 2. De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. "I don't know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there." 3. Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God." 4. Completely impartial. Exactly 50 per cent. "God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable." 5. Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. "I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be skeptical." 6. De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. ...

Edward. O. Wilson is a highly respected researcher of ants, biology and biodiversity. He is also known as an ecologist and the father of sociobiology. I haven't read ' Sociobiology ', but I read his some books, ' On Human Nature ', ' Biophilia ', ' Naturalist '. This book is DIFFICULT to read in a second language but worth reading even if it took long time to read. At the beginning of this book, knowing Einstein tried to unify physics of micro and macro, he says; I found it a wonderful feeling not just to taste the unification metaphysics but also to be released from the confinement of fundamentalist religion. ･･･ science is religion liberated and writ large. ･･･Preferring a search for objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying religious hunger. 　(Chapter 1) This words reminds me of Spinoza. The greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and humanitie...

ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. It is also known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease". This is an incurable disease for now. ALS has affected many famous people including Lou Gehrig, Stephen Hawking, Mao Zedong, and also Torao Tokuda, Hideo Shinozawa in Japan. There are more than 8,000 patients in Japan. By the end, if you are still alive, you are breathing through a tube in a hole in your throat, while your soul, perfectly awake, is imprisoned inside a limp husk, perhaps able to blink, or cluck a tongue, like something from a science fiction movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh. This takes no more than five years from the day you contract the disease. (page 10 in this book) One day, Mitch Albom happens to know it on a TV news show, that his mentor, Morrie Schwartz, contracted ALS and is dying. He decided to pay a visit soon. They meet for the first time in sixteen...

The UN assumes the important role of international conflicts and refugee aid, but I didn't know much about UN's activities and efforts. I only know it through TV news or newspapers. This book is the biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello who was killed at the Canal Hotel Bombing in 2003 while working as the Secretary-General's Special Representative in Iraq. The author is Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Sergio was born in Brazil as a son of Brazilian diplomat in 1948. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. At that time, he joined the 1968 student riots in Paris. I'm in the same generation (a little bit younger than him). In Japan many students riots broke out through the country just like in Paris as well. In 1969, he found a job in Geneve as a French editor at offices of UNHCR because of his superiority in language ability. Since then, he worked and was involved with many difficult international conflicts, in Rwanda, Lebanon, Cambodia, ...

This picture of a naked little girl who was running down a road is well-known, and made an impact all over the world during the Vietnam War. This picture taken by Nick Ut won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972. The little girl is Kim Phuc. This book "The Girl in the Picture" is her biography with Vietnamese historical background written by Denise Chong. Kim Phuc's village was mistakenly burnt by a South Vietnamese air force napalm strike instructed by American military advisers. She suffered serious burns on her back. Nick Ut and Western journalists took her to a hospital in Saigon and her life was barely saved. After the war, she was used for a propaganda as a symbol against American imperialism. She , however, wanted to be a doctor to save people like her. She also had a faith in Christ secretly. Prime minister Pham Van Dong loved her like a granddaughter, so she was allowed to go to Havana to study. In 1992, she married a Vietnamese student and went on their honeymoo...