One Without Faith

The Daily Show Promotes Conspiracy Theorist

2011-05-24T23:27:00.001-07:00

I lost a lot of respect for the Daily Show after this episode in which he interviews Annie Jacobsen.

Jon Stewart generally displays a healthy skepticism (eg, the recent interview of David Barton), but he gave a woman with a history of sloppy journalism and exploiting paranoia the opportunity to promote her Area 51 book on his show.

He didn't call her on BS that can be refuted by the freakin' wikipedia article; eg, the map they showed was the Nevada Test and Training Range, of which Area 51 is only a small part. And the only real controversial new findings are confirmed only by an anonymous source that nobody else has spoken to.

The controversial finding? Joseph Mengele mutated children to look like aliens, and Stalin sent them to the U.S. in a hovercraft to create an alien scare in the U.S. Seriously.

And NPR, too? WTF, liberal media?

More on Hitchens

2009-07-11T09:25:00.001-07:00

A few more thoughts on Christopher Hitchens ...

In my previous post I failed to mention how rough he looked. He limped out to the podium, the result of a spider or insect bite on his leg. He appeared to be sweating profusely, and didn't seem quite as quick on his feet as the one time I'd seen him speak before. But he managed to stay articulate and sharp through it all.

The questions asked to him were moderated, and they were pretty much all softballs. No questions regarding the legitimacy of the Iraq war were posed.

I find him a far stronger journalist than forecaster. Not many risk their well being to sneak into North Korea to offer first-hand reporting. Fewer than that have themselves voluntarily water boarded.

The times when he simply describes the atrocities of these regimes and leaves it to the reader/listener to decide how to act are, in my opinion, his strongest moments. And in this talk he pretty much did just that - he didn't offer much in the way of recommendations on what the U.S. or the any other nation should do in response to North Korea or Iran.

But when he starts trying to extrapolate how likely a country is to develop nuclear arms, or what they will do when they get them, I just don't think he's got a better idea than anyone else.

Hitchens in Palo Alto

2009-07-10T18:50:00.000-07:00

I organized an event with a local atheist group to go see Christopher Hitchens in Palo Alto last night. The talk was hosted by the Commonwealth Club but not advertised very much - I stumbled across the event on GoldStar about 5 days earlier.

He only spoke for about an hour. The topic was "Iran, Iraq, North Korea". When I mentioned the talk to Derek he predicted Hitchens would mention that he's the only writer to have visited all 3 countries, and he did so in about the first 30 seconds. He told several interesting stories of totalitarianism in all 3. These that stand out in my mind:

Iraq - The tale of Hussein's cold-blooded rise to power (related here in an Atlantic article), noting the similarities to mafia tactics.
North Korea - The almost comical similarities to Orwell's 1984.
Iran - He was mostly hopeful in discussing Iran, noting that it is a moderate country ruled by an extreme minority, and the demographics are shifting the right way (something like half the country is under 25). He made a similar point of Palestine.

His overarching them was that any government that considers its people iis property are dispicable, and we should not shy from labeling them as evil.

Overall it was good, but short. He didn't mentioned any major ideas I hadn't read or heard before. He made the requisite joke about whiskey. But he's smart and articulate and funny and skeptical, so I dig him.

After the talk we had a lively discussion at a local pub.

Are we a Christian nation?

2009-04-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

From a 2007 poll,

Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that the nation's founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation.

From President Obama's address to the Turkish press today:

I've said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is, although as I mentioned we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

I applaud the sentiment, Mr. President, but I'm not sure who this "we" is you're talking about.

Why is science important?

2009-02-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

Via Bad Astronomy, these guys have some good answers. I've only read a few, but this is my favorite so far.

No atheists working for the state of Arkansas

2009-02-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

A friend shared this US News article on Facebook today. I'm sure these are akin to other archaic state laws banning such things as adultery and sodomy - officially ilegal, but unenforcable and just waiting for someone to challenge their constitutionality.

On the bright side, I doubt any of us were interested in moving to Arkansas anyway.

Is Christianity Good for the World?

2009-01-25T18:00:00.000-08:00

Is Christianity Good for the World? is a written debate between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson. My friend Derek bought it for me for Christmas. Needless to say, Hitchens was con and Wilson pro.

I looked forward to reading it because it's a different question from the traditional theist vs atheist debate of whether or not we have sufficient evidence for the existence of a god. It's quite possible for the Christian god not to exist, yet for Christian belief to be healthy for individuals or society. I don't happen to believe that's the case, but it is an interesting (and in some ways measurable) question.

Alas, I found the debate sorely lacking. To my surprise, I was most disappointed in Hitchens.

First off, the debate was not framed impartially. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised as it was originally published in Christianity Today. The introduction was written by a Jewish theologian who obviously favored the pro perspective. Take this section:

The yearning for a religious order is innate to mankind-even if some individual spiritual albinos find themselves missing the gene. Should Christopher succeed in burning Christianity to the ground, he will not be able to stop humanity from building a new temple in its place.

Accepting these assertions renders the argument moot, which surely qualifies it as a poor preface to the debate. If religion is innate to mankind and its institutions inevitable either (a) the pro argument wins or (b) the con argument wins but, who cares, since we can't end theism as long as there are humans?

And Hitchens is a "spiritual albino" who wants to burn Christianity to the ground? So, the only reason to argue the con side is to be flawed or militant? Nice.

On to the debate itself ...

Wilson begins with the classic creationist misperception that confuses cause with effect.

God knew that we were going to need to pick up dimes, and so He gave us fingernails. He knew that twilights displayed in blue, apricot, and battle gray would be entirely astonishing and beyond us, and so He gave us eyes that can see in color.

He continues with another half dozen or so examples where human evolution has adapted to our environment, and credits god for adapting the environment to us.

Wilson goes on to explain that atheists believe as they do because they "can not handle the Godness of God" and "do not want to thank Him". Um ... if there isn't a God, there's no Godness to handle, and nobody to thank.

Most of the debate centered on 2 topics: Christianity is responsible for bad stuff, and where do we get morality without religion? They do an awful job of sticking to the topic. They're mostly arguing pro and con on theism, not Christianity.

Christianity has been responsible for many moral atrocities.

Hitchens asserts that Christianity can not take credit for its followers' moral behavior without also accepting blame for their atrocities (e.g., the crusades, slavery, anti-semitism).

Wilson's first response is that this is like saying a professor can't accept credit for succesful students without also accepting blame for "the dope-smoking slacker that he kicked out of class in the second week". This argument is so flawed I almost don't know where to begin, and I'm disappointed that Hitchens didn't take it on.

Is the professor also in charge of the university's entrance requirements? If 90% of the class is smoking pot can we still not blame the professor? What if the professor himself is smoking pot? Do professorless classes behave worse?

This thread goes almost nowhere, as Hitchens says "look at the bad stuff Christians did" and Wilson says "those were just the bad Christians".

What is the basis of morality?

This is initially posed by Wilson as "what is truth", but the remainder of the debate focuses almost entirely on moral truth.

Hitchens asserts that the moral precepts on which Christianity prides itself, such as "love thy neighbor" and the Golden Rule, did not originate with Christianity. And further that many Christian teachings are immoral, such as vicarious redemption (i.e., our sins are absolved by Jesus' actions, not ours).

Wilson does not deny either of these assertions, but simply questions what is the basis for morality without a god. This is a bit disingenuous since the debate is specifically about Christianity - he's just arguing for theism at this point - but we'll let that go. He concedes that non-religious people behave morally (a classic circular argument of theism, giving god credit for the moral behavior of non-believers). If there is no god, he asks, why should we consider theft, murder, genocides, etc. reprehensible things, instead of simply "stuff happens".

Hitchens barely responds to this at all, which I think is the fatal flaw in his debate, for this surely is the crucial concept: do we need to believe in the supernatural to be moral? I think the answer is clearly "no", but it is the point that most needs arguing to the Christian world, and Hitchens barely makes it.

About all he does provide is "innate human solidarity"; i.e., basic morality is self-evident, and we should rely on our instincts. Lame. "It's self evident" is as weak and baseless as "it's in the bible".

He does demonstrate that Christian morality is every bit as relative as that of an atheist. He again lists many things that were considered moral by all or many Christians in various societies or points in history (e.g., genocide, slavery) that almost nobody, Christian or otherwise, would find moral today.

In the end, Hitchens pretty well demonstrates that Christianity might not be altogether bad for the world, but we get by just fine without it. Non-christians, he argues, aren't necessarily more moral than Christians, but they're just as good with less baggage. But he never provides a secular basis for morality, which is sad since many good arguments exist.

They mostly agree on what right and wrong is, but Wilson gives all credit and blame to god and those that choose not to follow him, while Hitchens gives credit to human mind and societies. Despite my admittedly biased view on the topic, I have to consider the debate a draw.

Lost [1.9-1.12]

2009-01-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

Things are picking up steam now.

SPOILER WARNING

Solitary: We gets Sayid's back story as an Iraqi interrogator who falls for a female Shiite captive. The writers also bludgeon the viewer with themes of karma. Again, they're not much for subtlety in this show.
Sayid sets out nominally to map out the island, but mainly out of guilt for torturing Sawyer. He finds the French woman (from the transmission in the Pilot episode). Her name is Danielle Rousseau, and she was part of a seafaring science expedition that crashed (I think that's now 3 separate ship/plane crashes: this, the wreckage in the cave, and the Lost flight). She killed everyone in her party, either because the island drove them or her mad (the latter seems most likely). She captures and tortures Sayid, and informs him that there are other humans on the island whom she hasn't heard (whispers in the jungle) but not heard. When Sayid escapes, he hears the voices. Or was it just the wind?

Raised by Another - Claire, the pregnant lady, was flying to LA to offer her child for adoption. She did so at the encouragement of a psychic who warned of great (and vague) danger to the child were she to do otherwise. It seems he knew the flight would crash. A member of the party (Ethan) turns out not to have been on the flight. He encounters Claire and Charlie in the jingle and ...

All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues - ... kidaps them. (side note: what a lame title) More back story on Jack, who refused to lie to save his father's job after the latter botched a surgery while drunk. It appears this drove the elder doctor into depression and alcoholism, and eventualy to his death. Jack gets his ass kicked by Ethan who ominously warns him not to keep following. They don't find Claire, but they barely save Charlie, who remembers nothing. Boone and Locke stumble upon a metal enclosure while searching for Claire.

Whatever the Case May Be: They seem remarkably unconcerned about Claire this spisode. They also don't expand on the metal enclosure, although there' s a brief scene with Boone, Locke, and an axe, immplying they're still working on busting in but haven't told anyone.
What do we have lurking in the jungle now? A huge mysterious beast, along with more pedestrian ones. A crazy French woman with guns and electricity, and the skill to set tripwires and bear traps. And a group of kidnappers. This episode begins with Kate picking fruit in the jungle by herself.
Sawyer and Kate find a couple corpses from the plane wreck in a lagoon along with the U.S. marshall's lock box. We learn that Kate was a con artist and bank robber, and this case contains a small model airplane that belonged to Kate's former lover whom she killed. She staged a bank robbery just to recover this trinket from a safe deposit box. Was this robbery the crime for which she was being taken to prison, or the murder, or both?

The big news is new people on the island. It bugs me when there's a major event one episode, and the next episode everyone seems blase about it. Why the heck is Charlie not scouring the jungle for Kate? And with all the freaky shit going on, people are still not too bothered about staying in large groups or carrying weapons.

Open issues:

What's the big beast?
Why is there a polar bear on a tropical island?
What else does Danielle Rousseau know about the island?
Did anyone in the tail section survive?
What led Kate to kill her lover?
How did Locke regain use of his legs?
How did they all survive the crash?
Did Claire's psychic know about the crash, and if so how?
Who are Ethan and the kidnappers, and what do they want with Claire? How were they able to make Charlie lose his memory?
What's in the metal enclosure?

Lost [1.5-1.8]

2009-01-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

No major revelations in this section, mostly character back story.

SPOILER ALERT

Each episode focused on the back story of one character.

White Rabbit: Dr. Jack has father issues, and the guy he saw on the beach was a hallucination of his dead father (whom he was trying to find in Australia). Whether he's going crazy or the island is messing with his mind remains to be seen, but my money's on the latter. Is the island basically a big dream machine that exposes people to their fears, helps them face their inner demons? Chasing his faux father helps Jack find a new cave home for everyone.

House of the Rising Sun: The Japanese couple (Jin and Sun) once were in puppy love, but working for his father-in-law changed the husband into a brute. Sun was planning to leave him at the airport before the ill-fated flight, but at the last minute a sappy flower reminds her of the pure love they once enjoyed, and she forgot the years of abuse and neglect to remain true to her asshole hubby. We also learn, unbeknownst to Jin and everyone else, Sun speaks English. She'll be eavesdropping on conversations soon.

The Moth: Charlie used to be in a band loosely based on Oasis as far as I can tell (led by two brothers, one's name Liam). At first it's "about the music", but the fame changes them, man. Locke ("the colonel")l helps Charlie kick his habit with a combination of Zen witticisms and tough love.

Confidence Man: Sawyer's a self-absorbed con artist, but he has a soft side - he only acts that way because he hates himself. Why? Because a con man seduced his mother and stole all their money, resulting in the murder-suicide of Sawyer's parents. But, in his revenge quest, he became a con man himself - he became exactly what he hated. This would have been an example of subtle irony if it had been subtle. Some combination of self-loathing and enjoying messing with people's heads leads us on a "slippery slope to torture" storyline that rang false for me.

All 4 episodes were quite sappy, but I actually enjoyed them for the most part. We didn't learn anything about the island, and we only answered one mystery (Jack's halluci-dad). The only new mystery introduced was speculation by Locke that they couldn't possibly have survived the crash out of mere chance.

So, we're left with:

What's the big beast?
Why is there a polar bear on a tropical island?
What is the origin of the french distress signal, and is the speaker still alive?
Did anyone in the tail section survive?
What did Kate do that led her to a life on the lam?
How did Locke regain use of his legs?
How did they all survive the crash?

A Welcome Change

2009-01-21T13:13:00.000-08:00

Lost [1.1-1.4]

2009-01-21T10:58:00.001-08:00

I know I'm way behind the times, but I just started watching the first season of Lost on DVD. The only other thing I've seen by J. J. Abrams is Cloverfield, which I liked.

I'm through the first 4 episodes. I have to admit I'm hooked, at least enough to watch the rest of season 1. But given the hype I'm not all that impressed yet.

THERE BE SPOILERS HERE

Quick intro if you haven't seen the show - a plane crashes on a deserted island and ... well, that's about it for now.

Here's what I don't like:

Wayyyyy too much cheesy melodramatic dialog. A little here and there is okay, but does every single conversation have to contain some weighty life lesson about fear, perseverance, and hope?
There's this mysterious giant thing that periodically growls and shakes the trees a few hundred feet from the beach. Everyone is terrified of it, but they still go wandering into the woods every 5 minutes. And they never go check out the trees it knocks over or the area around it - wouldn't that be the first thing you'd do? I'd want to get some idea of what it is. At first they don't even know if it's mechanical or organic, although it later appears to be an animal. It also makes exactly the same noise as boars and polar bears.
Speaking of the polar bear, they manage to kill one with the only gun on the plane. Then they just leave it to rot in the jungle. They've just spent almost all the bullets they have, and they have no sustainable food supply, yet there's not even a discussion of eating it.

The show has a good fomula though. Each episode you generally get the back story of one character (which usually includes some mystery), and the revelation of another island mystery. The acting and dialog are, as I mentioned, dripping with melodrama, but it's watchable. The directing of the scenes where new island mysteries are revealed are well done. I see just enough to pique my curiosity, but not enough to really have any idea what I saw. The characters' reactions to the mysteries seem contrived, though.

Open questions so far:

What's the big beast (it sounds an awful lot like the Cloverfield monster)?
Why is there a polar bear on a tropical island?
What is the origin of the french distress signal, and is the speaker still alive?
Who's the guy in the suit Dr. Jack briefly saw on the beach?
Did anyone in the tail section survive (I'm betting yes, and that this will be an end-of-season revelation for either season 1 or 2)?
What did Kate do that led her to a life on the lam (maybe euthanasia)?
How did "the colonel" regain use of his legs?

I'm sure by the end of season 1 there will be about three times this many new questions and maybe 2 of them will have been resolved. I don't really have any theories yet. It has the feel that they're part of some big experiment, or maybe a Most Dangerous Game scenario.

It's still on the air and has a loyal following, so I'm guessing it does better than Twin Peaks in keeping a good story going over several seasons. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

It all makes sense now ...

2008-12-23T16:33:00.000-08:00

This post from Andrew Sullivan's blog finally makes sense of Caroline Kennedy replacing Hillary Clinton as NY Senator.

The whole thing was confusing me - why would anyone want this person as their Senator?

Ah, but it's so simple. The Democrats were jealous of how close Sarah Palin came to the Vice Presidency. So, they're one-upping the Republicans. They've found someone even less qualified for public service to gift with a Senate seat.

Well played, cynical Democrats, well played.

Infidel

2008-12-20T14:16:00.000-08:00

I read the book Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali a few months ago, and just noticed I had this half-written review in my drafts folder. Unfortunately the book is not still fresh in my head so I won't do a full review, but I will offer this one point.

From the forward by Christopher Hitchens:

Here is the very encapsulation of the sado-masochosm of religion; it makes impossible demands on people and then convicts them of original sin when they fail to live up to them.

Via wikipedia, an excerpt from an Economist review:

much as she tries, the kind of problems that Ms Hirsi Ali describes in Infidel are all too human to be blamed entirely on Islam. Her book shows that her life, like those of other Muslims, is more complex than many people in the West may have realised. But the West's tendency to seek simplistic explanations is a weakness that Ms Hirsi Ali also shows she has been happy to exploit.

I'm with Hitchens, and I couldn't disagree more with the Economist review.

Ali clearly describes an array of liberal vs conservative interpretations of Islamic law. Her mother forbade the women and men of the family from praying together, but her father insisted they do pray as a family. Kenya was more liberal than Somalia, and the Islamic sub-culture in Holland was more liberal still. Some women were allowed to attend school, others not.

But in all cases, women were to be subservient to men, and were considered less valuable. And they were punished when they behaved otherwise. This culture was supported by both men and women, particularly in the older generations. The description of Ali's female circumcision is particularly harrowing. She was 5 years old, and her grandmother held her down during the procedure.

And don't even get me started on honor killings.

The only reason the issue is complex is because the Middle East is blinded by faith and the West is blinded by cultural sensitivity and moral relativism (plus, you know, all the oil they have). Muslim men treat women this way because it is tradition and because it is written in the scripture they hold sacred. And they know their neighbors will back them up.

So, I'm a closed-minded Westerner with a "tendency to seek simplistic explanations" if I violently oppose this behavior, and recognize the obvious connection with religious faith?

Fuck that shit.

Today I blog about cute baby animals

2008-12-12T17:22:00.000-08:00

I know I'm a guy but, come on, is this not the cutest thing ever? And this one is just up the road from me.

http://www.zooborns.com/ is a cool site. For those times when you want to see something adorable, but you're just sick of house cats.

The Christmas Tree Rant

2008-12-12T08:51:00.000-08:00

Following is an email message I received yesterday. It was sent to a group of about 10 of the sender's friends and family, plus me by mistake.

--------------------------------

THIS IS A CHRISTMAS TREE, NOTHING ELSE.

This is NOT a Holiday Tree

This is a Christ mas tree.

It is not a Hanukkah bush,

It is not an Allah plant,

It is not a Kawanza shrub

It is not a Holiday hedge.

It is a Christmas tree.

Say it... CHRIST mas , CHRIST mas , CHRIST mas

Yes. CHRIST mas - celebrating

The Birth of Jesus Christ!!!

Take a stand and pass this on !!

Jesus is the reason for the season... Amen!!!!!

Merry CHRISTmas to You!

--------------------------------

'tis the season for the War on Christmas. It always amazes me how a group comprising 85% of the United States can manage to consider itself maligned by the minority.

I could understand if someone were referring to a nativity scene as a "Hotel Overflow Moment". But, pine trees covered with lights, anthropomorphic snowmen, "squishy winter huggies"" - it's silly to take offense that these don't prompt a "praise Jesus" from the congregation.

Anyway, here's the response I sent. And yes, I selected "Reply All".

--------------------------------

First, I know this wasn't intended for me but I've received it and I'm going to respond. I'm not a Christian - shame on you for trying to make me and others feel like our beliefs are less compatible with this holiday than yours. I don't believe Jesus rose from the dead, but he seemed a decent fellow who never would have engaged in this type of rhetoric.

Second, [my email address] is NOT [RECIPIENT'S NAME]. Please, remove the errant entry from your address books. I'm sure she's a lovely lady who does the Tucker name proud, but I get an unwanted message intended for her about once a month. And think how sad it is that she's missing out on her share of divisive propaganda this holiday season.

Merry Christmas,
Philip

Auto-detecting gamma ray bursts

2008-12-09T15:44:00.000-08:00

Check out this bit of coolness:

That energy swept over the Earth just before sunrise on December 3. The gamma rays from the beams were detected by the Swift satellite, which promptly determined the burst’s position and sent the coordinates to Earth. Sent out via the Internet (srsly), telescopes across the planet responded to the call, and in northern California GORT swung its eye to the position of the gamma-ray burst. Within minutes of Swift’s detection of the burst, GORT began taking its images. The picture above was from just 7 minutes after Swift triggered.

To recap, a satellite detected gamma rays and sent a "hey, check this out" email to a bunch of photo-telescopes around the world, and 7 minutes later they captured the image. With no human intervention.

W. Kumau Bell Curve

2008-12-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

I attended a comedy show in San Francisco last night called the W. Kumau Bell Curve. He was named 2008 comedian of the year by SF weekly. Most of his material deals with racism in America. A sample:

The Climate Theater is a tiny venue - I doubt it sits more than 50 people. He had a laptop hooked up to a projector and worked some multi-media into the presentation - online news stories, youtube videos (he opened with the latest from O. J. Simpson). I liked the intimacy and relatively low-tech nature of the production. He even played us a voicemail he received right off his phone. He interacted with the audience, and even responded to specific comments.

I thought his strongest material was his personal stories. One moment I liked was comparing his own heritage to his white fiancee's. She's a mix of various European ethnicities, but she learned to speak Italian growing up, had visited Italy, and was particularly close to her Italian grandfather. So she described herself as Italian - to which he responded, "oh, you just get to choose ... must be nice". He juxtaposed this with his own experience as the only black kid in school, and his earliest realization that his classmates all saw him as belonging to a certain group whether he liked it or not.

The saga of getting along with his finacee's racist grandfather was well done. There's a whole segment involving his attempt to introduce their family to his culture through sweet potato pie. My mom made this every year for Thanksgiving - I always thought it was just a southern thing, not an African-American thing.

Much of the show addressed racism in current events, the bulk of which related to Barrack Obama's election. It was all funny, and most of it was insightful, but I disagreed with a couple things.

He related an experience while waiting to vote (at Starbucks - apparently they do that in some neighborhoods). A guy in front of them in line - a white guy Bell described as a stereotypical San Francisco hipster - began to accuse Bell of wearing a pro-Obama t-shirt, in violation of campaigning too near a polling station. When Bell pointed out it was actually a Richard Pryor t-shirt, the guy backed off.

Now, it's certainly funny that the guy mistook Pryor for Obama. And he was being an ass since he wasn't working for the polling station, just acting as "the hall monitor", as Bell pointed out. But I didn't hear anything in the story suggesting the hipster wouldn't have done the same thing to another white guy - I didn't get why Bell thought this was racism instead of simple asshole-ism.

He made some pretty sweeping statements, like all white people are responsible for racism (his argument is that we've all benefited from it even if we don't practice it), and white people should show appropriate pride and shame for actions of others of their race (at one point he put up a pic of Bush and asked if the white folks in the audience were ashamed of him).

First, is there an easier way to get applause than criticizing George Bush in San Francisco?

Second, I just didn't get this. I'm ashamed of much the current administration has done - I'm ashamed as an American, not as a white dude. I'm not any less ashamed of our state department's actions because it's headed by Condoleeza Rice.

I liked the show overall. Even the points with which I disagreed, I enjoyed being challenged in my thinking. As is often the case, humor is an excellent vehicle for engaging in controversial issues, and W. Kumau Bell does it better than most. Check him out if you get a chance.

They find our lack of faith ... disturbing

2008-12-05T18:27:00.001-08:00

State mottos

2008-12-04T12:02:00.001-08:00

I just read this story about an atheist group trying to change a Kentucky law that "requires Kentucky's Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge it can't keep the state safe without God's help". Some of the comments from the atheist group are laughable, the worst being:

It is one of the most egregiously and breathtakingly unconstitutional actions by a state legislature that I've ever seen".

Guys, I'm on your side, but you lost me with that one. I find the language distasteful, too, but don't equate it with state laws that tangibly impinge on civil liberties.

Part of Kentucky's defense is that the state motto refers to God (this is an example of what we like to call "begging the question"). The state actually has 2 mottos. The "Offical Motto" has been United we stand, divided we fall since 1942. In 2002 they added an "Offical Latin Motto", Deo gratiam habeamus (Let us be grateful to God). The bill was the project of a group of home schooled latin students:

The bill, HB 857, was the project of a group of Lexington homeschool Latin students. They wrote the bill with help from State Rep. Tom Riner, (D-Louisville) the bill's sponsor. Several of the students came to Frankfort once a week to meet with legislators, and guided it through the process themselves, learning about state government as they went along. The bill passed with votes of 88-0 in the House and 29-0 in the Senate with several members from each chamber not voting. Signed April 11 into Law by Governor Patton.

Not a single dissenting vote. Not surprising, I suppose, but disappointing this happened as recently as 2002. The whole thing seems pretty laughable to me (got a big Latin-speaking population there, Kentucky?). Clearly a sideways attempt to get religious language into state laws.

I don't really have much else to say about this. But it did make me curious about state mottos, so I looked them up on wikipedia. Only 6 states explicitly mention "God", Kentucky plus:

Arizona - Ditat Deus (God enriches)
Colorado - Nil sine numine (Nothing without God's will)
Florida - In God We Trust
Ohio - With God, all things are possible
South Dakota - Under God the people rule

Two others make what are apparently references to a supreme being:

Connecticut - Qui transtulit sustinet (He who transplanted sustains)
Maine - Dirigo (I direct)

I'm surprised there are so few. Of course, I found many of the ones that did not reference God more inspirational. But, it seems to me the secular ones would be just as inspirational to anybody, regardless of religious beliefs. Even when I was a Christian, I would have preferred strong sentiments like "We Dare Defend Our Rights" (Alabama) or "The people rule" (Arkansas) to the passive (and not terribly related to the role of state) "God enriches" or "In God we trust".

A few interesting ones:

Kansas - Ad astra per aspera (To the stars through adversity)
It would make a better motto for Starfleet Academy. It would be cooler if Kansas had anything to do with NASA or space exploration.
Michigan - Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice (If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you)
This one just cracked me up.
New Mexico - Crescit eundo (It grows as it goes)
Was Dr. Seuss from New Mexico? It grows as it goes, as everyone knows, from Carlsbad Caverns to Los Alamos. Probably doesn't rhyme in Latin.
Washington - Al-ki (By and by)
If brevity is wit ...
Maryland - Fatti maschi, parole femmine (Manly deeds, womanly words)
This is the worst one of all. It's clearly offensive to women, but I'm almost as offended as a man. What the heck is wrong with manly words?

My favorites:

Massachusetts - Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty)
Are you listening, G. W.?
Minnesota - Quae sursum volo videre (I long to see what is beyond)
The star of the North is the actual state motto. This is the territorial motto, but I like it better.
New York - Excelsior (Ever upward!)
To infinity, and beyond!
North Carolina - Esse quam videri (To be rather than to seem)
Both poetic and intellectually satisfying.

In the spirit of manly words that, apparently, aren't welcome in Maryland, my winner goes to ....

New Hampshire - Live Free or Die

Hell, yeah.

Let The Right One In

2008-12-01T20:10:00.000-08:00

I went to see Let The Right One In last Tuesday. I probably should have written this review when the film was fresher in my mind, but it was an interesting movie so I'll do my best with week-old impressions.

SPOILER ALERT

Some disclaimers:

It got 98% on rottentomatos.com, 192nd best movie of all time according to imdb.com, and two friends of mine highly recommended it. So, my expectations might have been unreasonably high.
The film is in Swedish with English subtitles. I found some of the dialog and acting to be weak, but some of that might be in the translation.
I must confess to an anti-vampire bias. Yeah, they're kind of cool - they get to stay up all night and live forever, they kill people but really they're just misunderstood. But how many friggin' movies do we need about them? I know this one's edgy and foreign and arthouse, but still ... again with the vampires?

Synopsis: Oskar, a 12-year-old social outcast and subject of school yard bullying, befriends his new neighbor Eli whom he sees only in their apartment's courtyard at night. She also is 12 years old, "more or less" - it turns out that's her age only insofar as she was 12 when she became a vampire. The movie focuses on the friendship between these 2 misfits.

When Eli first moves in she is in the care of an adult named Håkan. He's basically her Renfield, a loyal servant who protects her during the day and gathers fresh blood for her at night. Unfortunately he's incompetent. At first I thought this was lazy storytelling, since he couldn't have been providing for her very long acting this way. He etherizes people then hangs them upside-down to drain their blood, but fails to do so in secluded locales. Later it becomes clear he no longer has the stomach for his role in her life, so I chalked up his behavior more to weariness than incompetence.

Problem is, the other adults in the film behave as stupidly as he does. We see news reports of the killings, and on at least 2 occasions witnesses identify a young black-haired girl. But law enforcement is almost non-existent, and not until very late in the film does anyone connect her with the creepy new guy and his waifish daughter who just moved in next door. And at that point a guy marches into her apartment (which is inexplicably unlocked) toting only a pocket knife.

Eli also behaves carelessly when she takes to feeding herself. If she's really a 20-30 year old (the film is purposefully vague on this point - she could be centuries old for all we know), she'd have to be dense not to have learned better. I got the impression, though, that no matter how old she is, she's still stuck at 12. Emotionally, physically, and psychologically.

In a needless subplot, Eli bites but does not finish the kill on a woman. This, of course, turns the poor woman (subtly named "Virginia") into a vampire. We see her get attacked by a throng of cats then commit suicide by exposing herself to sunlight and bursting into flames. Both scenes had some interesting special effects, but were laughably over the top and out of sync with the rest of the film. They added nothing to the story. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to expand on the trying life of a vampire, but isn't one of the advantages of making a vampire flick that you don't have to explain all the rules?

One strength of the film was the creepy-cool special effects used on Eli. When we first meet her she jumps of the top of a jungle gym onto the ground, and I'm not sure but I think some film trickery makes her almost imperceptibly land softer than would be natural, as if she floats to the ground. Her eyes grow slightly larger when she's in vampire mode, her skin tone changes based on how well-fed she is - she is sometimes a sweet little girl and sometimes a grotesque predator. All very well done visually.

The heart of the film is the friendship arc between Eli and Oskar. They bond in part because neither has any other friends. She agrees to be his girlfriend in a scene that is sweet because neither of them really know what it means, and ironic because she's not a girl (down to the anatomical level, the film later makes graphically clear). When Oskar learns her true nature, he is at first cruel and petty, but softens when confronted with some of the suffering she must endure.

She convinces him not to judge her for her murderous ways. She kills to feed herself, while he constantly fantasizes about killing for revenge. This argument works on Oskar, but not on me. She could feed without killing (she has plenty of money she could pay folks for blood transfusions). At the very least she could drain more blood out of each victim so she doesn't have to kill so often. And she makes absolutely no attempt to choose her victims discriminantly - she could act as a vigilante if she wanted to make her kills win-win. Either she's lying to him and her behavior is cruel and selfish, or she's just too immature to see an alternative. I'd lean toward the latter.

In the film's climax, Eli saves Oskar's life from the bullies, killing 4 more victims in the process. It's clear she can stay safely in this town no longer. The film closes with Oskar taking Eli (safely encased in her daytime crate) on a train to start over somewhere else.

I basically saw the film as the completion of Eli's parasitic cycle. Not necessarily in a malicious way (although one could view it that way), but more likely as a consequence of her nature to which she willingly submits. There's a seen between Eli and Håkan early in the film where she gently caresses his cheek. This, combined with his portrayal as a man who's had the life sucked out of him, and Eli's inability to say how long she's been a vampire, had me interpreting their relationship as having started many years ago when Håkan was young, perhaps Oskar's age. Oskar and Eli's relationship is sweet when they're 12 (at least, as sweet as a pair of pre-adolescent serial killers can be), but he'll age and she won't. Someday soon he's going to have a sex drive that she can not satisfy. She's saved his life, so his guilt will never let him leave her. Eventually he'll be old enough to be her father and the whole relationship will just be awkward.

Another way of looking at it is that Oskar, as an outcast kid filled with impotent rage, has found the only lifestyle with which he can safely fulfill his homicidal fantasies. Maybe bloodlust and vampire companionship is all he'll ever need to make him happy, and that makes them a perfect match. Ah, kismet!

Either way, it's a dark tale even for a vampire flick. It was good, excellent in parts. It could have been much better with smarter writing for the adult characters. And they should have snipped the Virginia subplot. But I had fun interpreting the ending in different ways.

I recommend it, but it's over hyped. No way this is one of the best 200 films ever made.

I'm 37. Im not old.

2008-11-18T10:37:00.000-08:00

I just realized I am now the exact age referenced in one of my favorite comedy bits:

King Arthur: Old woman.
Dennis: Man.
King Arthur: Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
Dennis: I'm 37.
King Arthur: What?
Dennis: I'm 37. I'm not old.
King Arthur: Well I can't just call you "man".
Dennis: Well you could say "Dennis".
King Arthur: I didn't know you were called Dennis.
Dennis: Well you didn't bother to find out did you?

Prop 8 Protest

2008-11-16T20:43:00.000-08:00

I went to San Francisco yesterday for the Prop 8 protest at City Hall. Crowd size was estimated at 7500. It was a good-natured bunch, and the nature of the speeches was overall a positive one. Protest peacefully, we'll win because we're right, history is on our side - these themes seemed to be the main focus.

There was lots of focus on "love". It's about love, our love is just as valuable as yours, etc.. Even though it's catchy and heartwarming, I'm not sure it's the best messaging. It seems to me it's not about love, it's about rights. The state's stamp of approval will never do anything to augment any relationship I will ever have, but it does inhibit same sex couples' rights in terms of inheritence, custody, and enforcement of living wills.

One speaker championed the rights of "intersex" Americans, which I had explained to me is basically the politically correct term for hermaphrodites and others born with ambiguous sexuality. A lot of folks, both gay and straight, seemed to be shaking their heads during this, not quite sure what to make of it. But I think he made some interesting points about the blurry edges of our identities and, hence, our laws.

Some of the more entertaining signs people brought:

A life-size cardboard cut-out of Beyonce (if anyone has a clue on this one, I'd love to hear it)
Queer not gonna take it
We can't all marry Liza Minelli
Please curb your god
If you let us marry each other we'll stop marrying you
Joseph Smith had 34, Brigham Young had 56, I just want one

Civil marriages (or, why I hate America, children, and puppies)

2008-11-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

See my previous post on a proposal to do away with civil marriages. This post touches on more personal matters.

I have found that, when mentioning this idea to friends, it has oft met with visceral opposition. In general (and this is anecdotal based on my own experience with 10-12 people - please don't read this as prejudicial of either group), Christians and women have violently opposed the idea.

Christians have tended to see it as a dissolution of American values. So the argument goes - marriage is the core of a nuclear family, and that is the foundation of our society, and so the state must support and define it. I just don't get this. Marriage was originally an issue of property - the man owning the woman. That's why fathers still "give away" brides. I think clinging to tradition for tradition's sake is overrated.

If providing children with a stable home is really are the reason for civil marriages, then it should only be allowed to couples who are capable of and plan to have children,. And divorces should be a LOT harder when kids are involved.

But few would argue that a person stuck in an unhappy or abusive relationship should be further punished by the legal divorce process. And few would argue that a loving marriage between a man and a woman for 50 years should have any less weight because the union never produced offspring. That would be insulting. And the current system is just as insulting to anyone else not allowed to marry.

As far as the response I've seen from women to this idea - to be fair, a few of them I was dating at the time. This is one of those examples where I favor honesty over sensitivity, and it bites me in the ass.

One of them I even wound up marrying, and the suggestion that we postpone the civil union until we have children (you see, this would have saved us money on the license, decreased our income tax, and in retrospect a load of divorce bills) - no practical argument mattered - it just meant to her that I didn't love her enough. My commitment to her wasn't sufficient, I had to commit to the Commonwealth of Jamaica, too.

But I just don't get it. I don't get how one can value love, value marriage, be willing to proclaim love and devotion and commitment to a partner and in front of families and friends - how is any of that augmented by the seal of the state? Why is that necessary? And why can I not even speak of it without being viewed as anti-family, anti-commitment, selfish, or unloving?

Shit, the whole thing wears me out.

Civil marriages, do we need them at all?

2008-11-14T07:50:00.000-08:00

I've long been of the opinion the the state should not be in the business of issuing marriage licenses. And with Prop 8 passing, and now being protested in CA, the topic has been on my mind.

I believe marriage is a personal, communal, moral, and for most a religious endeavor. I think any steps by our legislature to define it encroaches on our liberties. I don't believe any man or woman loves their spouse any more because the state endorses it. Neither do I believe parents love their children any more.

Marriage laws permeate our legal system, so we'd have to make other adjustments to account for this.

If civil marriages go away, so do common law marriages.
Inheritance: We already have to deal with sticky inheritance issues when couples are not married, so our legal system can handle it. Wills would be more important for married couples. But, they're a good idea anyway. If they prove too expensive for some Americans, we could easily take some of the money we save by eliminating the civil marriage bureaucracy to make sure every American over 18 can have one.
Child custody: Again, we already have to deal with thorny custody battles when parents aren't married. Children should go to the parent who can best care for them - nothing else should matter.
Social Security: I believe it is unfair that married couples are allowed to leave their social security benefits to a spouse, but single (legally single, which includes those in marriages not recognized by the state) folks do not. I think the benefits should either end when you die (which would have the added benefit of decreasing the burden on an entitlement doomed to collapse), or each individual should be able to choose a beneficiary.

I'm no lawyer, and I'm sure there are more issues than these, but I think the change would simplify our legal system and make it more fair.

I'd love to hear discussion from others on this. And, please don't think I'm delusional enough to think this has any chance in reality. I just think its a good idea.

My next post will touch on the response I've seen to this idea before.

Targeted Facebook ads

2008-11-09T07:07:00.000-08:00

I've been in a relationship for a little over a year and a half, and it recently ended. I subsequently updated my Facebook status from "in a relationship" to "single". I also just had a birthday, and Facebook knows this too.

This morning, I'm going through my Facebook photos, and I notice this ad on the side:

37 and still single?

To which my inner voice replied, "Why, yes I am. And fuck you for asking."

I also got this one on a subsequent page:

10 Mistakes Guys Make: The 10 most dangerous mistakes you probably make with women and what to do about it.

I can tell you one mistake I made - using Facebook when I am in absolutely no mood to be told what's wrong with me.

I'm a capitalist at heart. I don't blame Facebook for allowing targeted ads. Google pays my bills with the same thing in search and GMail. And I certainly can't argue with the effectiveness of their targeting mechanism. Blasting the recently singled with dating advice is, I'm sure, marketing gold.

But it still pissed me off.

How should I feel about the election?

2008-11-06T15:39:00.000-08:00

So, I'm digging the "yes we can" videos and Obama's acceptance speech. I look forward to not cringing every time my nation's leader speaks. I anticipate being much less ashamed of our leadership, especially in regards to torture and civil rights. I think Obama has a real chance to improve our image overseas. And we don't have a vague open-ended occupation in Iraq ahead of us.

But, there's a lot nagging at me, too.

Let's look at all the Republicans had going against them this election:

An incumbent with one of the lowest approval ratings ever. A republican (the supposed fiscal conservatives) who's nearly doubled our national debt in 8 years.
The worst financial crisis of the last several decades, at least. Worst since the depression, if you believe the most pessimistic views.
A VP pick who - geez, I won't even go into it all. In short, the least qualified VP candidate ever. And 2nd place isn't close. Republican insiders were sniping at each other over her selection in the last few days before the election, and even more dirt is emerging now.
Republicans had no clear consistent message, divisive ads, and angry racist rhetoric at rallies that seemed to go mostly unchallenged. The democrats ran a much much cleaner and smarter campaign.

And McCain still got 46% of the popular vote. He really might have won this thing without the financial crisis.

I want to believe we've turned a corner, big step forward in race relations, crushing defeat to Rovian tactics, yadda yadda yadda. But I'm afraid we might have just gotten lucky.

2008 election, inside the numbers

2008-11-05T11:48:00.000-08:00

364

Projected electoral votes for Obama (somewhere between 349 & 375 once MO and NC are called). This article argues we shouldn't call it a landslide. Why?

525

Electoral votes for Reagan over Mondale in 1984. 525-13. Cripes, I didn't remember it was that lopsided.

64%

Highest U.S. voter turnout since 1920 (pushing 80% in CA.)

Sadly, this might have helped California's proposition 8 pass. Its success was fueled in part by a large African-American turnout (10% of voters) who were strongly in favor of marriage discrimination (70%, vs 49% for caucasian voters). I guess I'll have to stick with women if I want to get married any time soon.

# presidents who were younger than Obama will be when inaugurated (JFK, Bill Clinton, and Grant).

Worst Movie Title Ever

2008-10-31T14:28:00.000-07:00

Quantum of Solace.

As Lisa said in response to "Yahoo Serious Festival" on a marquee, "I know all those words, but that makes no sense".

Texas Education Jumps the Shark

2008-10-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Texas Board of Education has a six-member panel in charge of choosing textbooks.

You know where this is going ...

... wait for it ...

... three of them, including the chairman, are now creationists.

Local Dallas coverage here. A response from sane Texans here.

The title of this article from the Houston Chronicle is a triumph of understatement, "Board's actions could put students at a disadvantage." Could?

The chairman also believes in abstinance-only sex education.

I don't live there any more, so I don't care as much as I used to. But, damn, they're giving Kansas a run for the money on being the U.S. poster child on scientific ignorance.

Wow factor photos

2008-10-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

These are amazing.

McCain letter to Obama

2008-10-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

From 2006, this letter illustrates some of McCain's disdain for Obama. I don't know what private assurances Obama gave McCain, and the former should be held responsible if he did break his word. But the letter is dripping with sarcasm. I sure wouldn't want this sort of rhetoric coming out of the White House. Can you imagine?

Dear Mr. Putin,
Thank you SO much for invading Georgia. I can't tell you how relieved I am to be disavowed of the false notion that Russia is a responsible world power.
...
P.S. Sarah says "hi".

Comic

2008-10-17T09:07:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine from Dallas (thanks, Chad!) sent me this.

Obama and McCain do comedy

2008-10-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

Obama and McCain at a roast in NYC. Kind of bizarre, but it is funny. Apparently they do this every year, but I'd never heard of it before. Obama's is better, both in audio quality and content. They both make many of the same jokes: Joe the Senator, # of of McCain's houses, "that one", "Obama = messiah".

Obama's is stronger toward the beginning than the end. He's got good writers. A few awkward moments, though. His comment about AIG drew some awkward applause. It ends on a serious and eloquent note.

McCain spent a few moments offering praise of Obama, which drew strong applause from everyone in the room except Obama. I don't know if this was bitterness, or if he just didn't want to seem like he was applauding himself. He ended on a funny gag about setting unreasonably high expectations for Obama.

Joe the (not so much a) Plumber

2008-10-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

This is funny in many many ways:

"Joe the Plumber" ...

- is not a plumber, at least not a licensed one. He's been practicing illegally.
- is named Sam.
- asked a question about having to pay more taxes that, according to this article, Obama's plan would not require of him. And, he currently owes back taxes.

In short, he's about as qualified for the title applied to him by Senator McCain as "Sarah the Vice President".

Reason for hope

2008-10-15T13:38:00.001-07:00

This hit me today.

Barrack Obama's father is from Kenya. He's black. His first names ryhmes with Iraq. His middle is Hussein. His last rhymes with Osama.

He's running against a war hero with lots of experience, including 2 presidential runs.

And, although nothing is certain, he is by all accounts going to win by a Reagan v Modale landslide.

He's winning for many reasons, not the least of which is the extreme unpopularity of the sitting Republican regime and current economic crisis. Maybe any Democrat could have won this election.

But he had a sizable lead even before the Wall Street dive. He's winning largely because he is more charismatic, more intelligent, and cooler under pressure. He exhibited these traits against both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He's run a better campaign than either of them.

The superiority of his VP choice has been well documented.

I guess it just deflates some of my cynicism to see a candidate, who had all kinds of bad reasons to lose, winning for mostly the right ones.

Nostalgia overload

2008-10-14T23:55:00.001-07:00

Why presidential debates should be more like game shows

2008-10-08T18:09:00.001-07:00

Keri (my girlfriend) commented last night that the moderator needs a buzzer to keep the participants from continually speaking beyond the time allotted. Tom Brokaw did a poor job of enforcing this - just saying "come on guys, play by the rules" over and over again accomplished nothing. This is free national publicity, of course they will speak as long as they can. An annoying buzzer, a gong, or perhaps the Oscar-esque "get off the stage" music would help.

Other ways in which the debates would be better if they were more like a game show:

The audience votes on 5 words or phrases each participant is not allowed to use.
- McCain, you can't say "maverick", "earmark", "special interests", "pork-barrel", or "Miss Congeniality" (we'll have to add "cronyism" next week - that was a new one).
- Obama, you must do without "20th century solutions to 21st century problems", "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression", "using a hatchet where you need a scalpel", "tax cut for 95 percent of Americans", and "I agree with Senator McCain".
A candidate who uses one of these must down a shot of liquor (specific liquor to be chosen by the opponent).
Anyone using "Wall Street" and "Main Street" in the same sentence has to spend 2 minutes in a phone booth full of slugs.
Before the debate, each participant must provide to the moderator all accusations to be made - voting record, public speeches, whatever. The network will display a near-real-time summary of the straight dope on each of those accusations as they come up during the debate (I know I could look them up online myself, but I'm lazy). If you make an accusation not on that list, you must retract the statement and speak clearly these words - "perhaps my opponent deserves to be President more than I do".
Bonus points for correct pronunciation of "Ahmadinejad" and "nuclear".
If the moderator has time for, say, 20 questions, he or she will pick 40 of them and supply them to one of the candidates (chosen either randomly or based upon the winner of a thumb war). That candidate gets to split the questions into 2 piles of 20, and the other candidate gets to choose which pile of questions is used during the debate.
Live audience members get to shoot the candidates with water guns if they don't like what they're hearing. Or maybe one of these.
David Petraeus, Henry Kissinger, and Warren Buffet must be on camera during any portion of the debate in which they are mentioned, and each must either nod or shake his head disapprovingly in concert with how the candidate portrays him.

Can you think of more?

Religulous

2008-10-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

I went to see Religulous last night. Very fun movie. I was cracking up the whole time (except the last ~10 minutes - I'll get to that later).

It wasn't a good documentary. Things were edited to make most of the interviewees look as bad as possible. Comments were often followed with film clips of cartoons, famous movies, or low budget passion movies. He went for the cheap laugh too much for the film to have any journalistic integrity.

I did find it educational though. I learned some things, for example, about the myths predating Jesus from which the gospels borrowed (especially Horus).

It was more personal than I had anticipated. Bill Maher spoke of his upbringing - he was raised Catholic, but his mother was Jewish. They quit going to church when he was in Jr. high. There was a section where he interviewed his mother and sister - his mother was pretty funny. He also spoke of how he's addressed religion through comedy over the years.

Maher's skilled at calling bullshit on people while still engaging in civil conversation. Most of the film was focused on Christianity, but he also covered Judaism and Islam (no eastern religions). His general M.O. was to approach religious folk and ask them questions about their faith, then point out what he saw as inconsistency or just plain silliness. It was a good style, as he generally gave people enough rope to hang themselves.

The last 10 minutes or so got very heavy handed, focusing on the dangers of religious belief in a time of nuclear proliferation. It wasn't a bad message, but the radical switch in tone was awkward.

The main point he drove home at the end is that doubt is good. It's a much healthier state of mind than certainty in fairy tales. I could not agree more.

I don't expect the film to convert anyone. But I hope it at least spawns some meaningful debate.

But mostly, it was just damned funny.

Biden vs Palin, VP debate

2008-10-02T22:14:00.000-07:00

In short, Palin exceeded low expectations, Biden played nice but got some good shots in.

The moderator (Gwen Ifill) didn't push either candidate for clarification as much as Jim Lehrer did last week. This was disappointing, but it did mean they got to cover more topics.

Palin made a comment early on that she wouldn't necessarily answer the question of the moderator or Biden, that she was going to talk from the heart straight to the American people. This American person would prefer she just answer the dang questions of the moderated debate in which she's participating. She's a VP candidate, she can gab a mike whenever she wants to talk straight to us. She also complained later about her previous interviews being clouded by media bias. I sure hope nobody bought any of that. And I sure hope she's serious about answering direct questions from the electorate from now on.

Biden mostly hammered on how wrong McCain's been about everything. I thought his strongest moment was near they end when he called "bullshit" on McCain being a "maverick", after the 3rd or 4th time Palin used the term.

Palin called the Obama-Biden plan for pulling out of Iraq, and setting a timeframe for the pullout, is like "waving a white flag of surrender". I wish they would have expanded more on this. If leaving now equals surrender, that means we haven't won yet. And if we haven't won yet, I'd like to know what the criteria for victory is. Palin did make one comment like "we won't leave until the Iraqi government shows it can govern itself", but that's to vague.

This was about the folksiest debate I've ever seen. From the streets of Wasalia to the diners of Wilmington, we got to hear a lot about how these two were out there talking to "real people facing real problems", "average Americans", "middle class", yadda yadda yadda. Palin actually used the terms "hockey mom" (since when did hockey become such an all-American sport?) and "Joe six-pack". Biden's remarks resonated a little more with me than Palin's, but I don't much go for scripted sentimentality from anyone.

I did find it interesting that he struck emotional chords better than her - that should be her strength. Especially when he bordered on tears talking about a child struggling to survive.

My new desktop picture

2008-10-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

Star Wars actually doesn't rock any more, since Lucas spat all over it with the three prequels, but it still gives me a nostalgia fix.

Chewbacca on the drums is the best.

Heroes Season 3

2008-10-01T18:58:00.000-07:00

Spoiler warning ...

I liked Heroes Season 1, even though I thought it fizzled after Five Years Gone. It was silly, and every time Mohinder opened his mouth about evolution I wanted to claw my eyes out, but good TV with strong comic book inspiration.

Season 2 was okay, but a letdown. I was disappointed they couldn't come up with a better storyline than a new future catastrophe to avoid (season 1 was a nuke in NYC, season 2 was a virus). I forgave it, though, since the writer's strike cut it short. The main weaknesses were:

Splintering into too many storylines.
Heroes were getting too powerful, especially Sylar and Peter who absorb others' powers. It gets to the point where you can't even remember everything everyone can do, and every few minutes you wonder, "why didn't he/she just use X to avoid situation Y?"
Everyone's related to everyone else. The first few, "oh my goodness, you're actually my mother!" moments are okay, but when it happens every episode, it loses its punch. Plus, like tracking the powers, it's just a headache keeping up with the connections.

Now it's season 3, and it's pretty much the same thing. Yet another catastrophe to avoid, heroes keep getting more and more powerful (c'mon writers, you steal everything else from comics - there's a reason Kryptonite was created), still more familial ties. And characters just do things that don't make sense. Like, why didn't Sylar escape at the bank in episode 2?

And I can't stand the Mohinder storyline. It's a ripoff of the fly, he's always been a horrible portrayal of a scientist (though I will grant that this is consistent with most comic book scientists), and it's just not interesting how he stumbles onto discoveries instead of figuring them out. Now we've got the ability to give everyone in the world powers - maybe they'll do something interesting with this plot line, but I don't think so.

There is some good - I always like the Hiro storylines, and the interaction between Hiro, Ando, and speedy-girl is fun. I am curious to learn who Tracy is. I hope she's not just Jessica, that there are a dozen or so clones running around. And I look forward to Claire's development into a badass.

I'm still into it enough to keep watching it, even though it's been on a steady decline since the end of season one.

Palin & Couric

2008-09-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

I just watched a few of these on youtube.com. They're all pretty pathetic, but this one really stood out:

This is the Republican candidate for vice president, one month away from the election. The Republican Party is broken.

Obama vs McCain, first debate

2008-09-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

After watching the debate last night and reading some blog reactions today, my thoughts:

McCain seemed vigorous enough, I didn't get a sense that he's too old for the job (he seemed rather docile to me in the primaries).

But he sure seemed bitter and insecure, and he showed nothing but contempt for Obama. He began several statements with "what Senator Obama doesn't understand", and called him naive at least once. He just seemed annoyed with sharing stage with his opponent. Much has been made of his lack of eye contact (even when shaking hands) and refusal to follow Jim Lehrer's pleads for the candidates to engage one another directly.

Obama didn't much follow Lehrer's nudges for direct engagement either, but he did address McCain directly at least once, and he made clear eye contact. He mentioned several times that he agreed with McCain on a certain point, then pivoted to draw a distinction on their stances.

He was perhaps too deferential. I would have liked to have seen him react more strongly to some of McCain's accusations, but he did point out times when he felt McCain has been wrong ("dead wrong", was Biden's main post-debate talking point).

Overall, Obama liked talking about the last 8 years, McCain liked talking about the last 30. And Obama seemed slightly more focused on the future. Obama frequently distinguished between 20th century and 21st century problems and solutions.

McCain clearly wants to paint himself as the more bipartisan candidate. He gave several examples of his successes working with senate democrats. I thought his best line of the night was "It's hard to reach across the aisle from that far to the left," calling out Obama for his very liberal voting record. This might have resonated with me, except, if he's showing no respect face to face with the democrats' choice for president, how am I supposed to buy that he'll work well with them as president?

I did like Obama's response to the "reach across the aisle" jab: "John mentioned me being wildly liberal. Mostly, that's just me opposing George Bush's wrongheaded policies since I've been in Congress."

Domestic affairs ...

I got very little out of the first 40 minutes when they focused on the economic crisis. I liked that Obama was more willing to look at the problem from a wider lens, looking back over several years, to see where mistakes were made. McCain claimed he would place a freeze on spending except for military, veteran's benefits, and entitlements.

I like the idea of smaller government, but I have trouble trusting anything McCain says, and it seemed like a simplistic reaction he pulled out of his ass. I don't think Obama's going to do everything he claims either, but at least his proposals seem believable.

Foreign affairs ...

McCain tried to paint himself as the more experienced candidate, especially on foreign affairs. He highlighted his more extensive travels, familiarity with foreign leaders, and direct experience with every foreign conflict since Vietnam. Much was made of Henry Kissinger being on his staff.

This was another example of something that almost resonated with me. I just can't get his idiot running mate choice out of my head. He's clearly got all kinds of knowledgeable contacts and political allies, and he's put Iraq front and center in this campaign. It just really hit home with me - he's got Henry friggin' Kissinger on his staff, and he's placed Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency. If he were really serious about doing his best to lead this country against terrorism and nuclear proliferation, he would have made a different choice.

Post-debate ...

Just before or after Joe Biden's response, I saw at least 2 different networks make it very clear that Sarah Palin declined the opportunity to appear. One network had Giuliani giving the response - not bad. But another had some unknown campaign staffer. C'mon guys, act like a serious political party, will you?

Summary ...

Overall, I'd say Obama won. I was pretty squarely in his camp (at least, squarely in the anti-McCain/Palin camp) already, and this debate solidified my position. Despite McCain's vast advantage in years of experience, Obama seems like he would handle the presidency better.

Until this year I've always favored the socially liberal part of the democrats and the fiscally conservative part of the republicans. Right now, the democrats actually seem like the more fiscally responsible party, so my choice is easy.

Next debate ...

I can't wait to see Biden tear into Palin. I'll be sorely disappointed if he doesn't offer at least three jabs that have me saying "oh, snap!" (in my head - I know I can't pull off saying that out loud). You know, something like, "I can see the moon from my house, but that doesn't make me an astronaut."

Mixed messages from The West Wing

2008-09-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Aaron Sorkin. At least I was before Studio 60. Sports Night and his years on The West Wing are some of my favorite TV ever.

I've been re-watching the first season of The West Wing on DVD lately. I just watched a season 1 episode titled "Take This Sabbath Day", which is basically Sorkin's take on the death penalty and the relationship of religion and politics. Most of the episode involves the president and other White House staffers having deep philosophical discussions with each other and their religious leaders about capital punishment.

The end of the episode has the president speaking with his childhood priest, Father Cavanaugh (the president is Catholic). He offers the president two nuggets of advice:

“‘Vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the Lord.” You know what that means? God is the only one who gets to kill people.

A few minutes later, the president says he has prayed for wisdom but none has come. In response to that, Cavanaugh replies:

You know, you remind me of the man that lived by the river. He heard a radio report that the river was going to rush up and flood the town. And that all the residents should evacuate their homes. But the man said, “I’m religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me.” The waters rose up. A guy in a row boat came along and he shouted, “Hey, hey you! You in there. The town is flooding. Let me take you to safety.” But the man shouted back, “I’m religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me.” A helicopter was hovering overhead. And a guy with a megaphone shouted, “Hey you, you down there. The town is flooding. Let me drop this ladder and I’ll take you to safety.” But the man shouted back that he was religious, that he prayed, that God loved him and that God will take him to safety. Well... the man drowned. And standing at the gates of St. Peter, he demanded an audience with God. “Lord,” he said, “I’m a religious man, I pray. I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?” God said, “I sent you a radio report, a helicopter, and a guy in a rowboat. What the hell are you doing here?

Both are examples of standard folksy wisdom I heard a hundred times growing up in church. God is the sole arbiter of justice, and "the Lord helps those who help themselves". I doubt very many Christians, or other theists for that matter, would disagree with either sentiment.

But it wasn't until this last viewing that I realized how completely contradictory they are.

The first says, let God decide who lives or dies. Don't interfere, he can handle it. The second says, God is active in your life, but he often works through others. A man in a rowboat is as much the hand of God as an angel swooping to your rescue.

So, if God does want to kill someone, why wouldn't he work in the same way? Why would he not use, for example, the U.S. judicial system?

Of course, when any people of faith decide to kill, whether it's capital punishment, or war, or ethnic cleansing, they always think they're doing God's will. So, "vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord" is catchy, but it's a lame argument against anything.

In the end, the president chose to put his own feelings on captial punishment aside and not interfere with the legislative and judicial branches. Not a bad episode, but not one of Sorkin's strongest. Still, the 1st 4 seasons of The West Wing rock - you should watch them if you haven't.

Gibson Palin interview

2008-09-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

From Andrew Sullivan:

Gibson: Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?

Palin: In what respect, Charlie?

Gibson: What do you interpret it to be?

Palin: His worldview.

This is from the actual interview, not the Tina Fey skit.

She is threatening to surpass Dan Quayle as the most entertaining VP candidate to lampoon.

Sad story from India

2008-09-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Via Discover, this shit depresses the hell out of me.

A teenage girl in central India killed herself on Wednesday after being traumatized by media reports that a "Big Bang" experiment in Europe could bring about the end of the world, her father said.

It would have been a funny story to laugh at the silly culture that takes unfounded doomsayers too literally, or a media outlet over selling the credibility of kooks for better ratings, except for the fact that a teenage girl is dead.

Now, the fact that she did this obviously shows she had some mental health issues to start with, so I'm not blaming others for her death. But I was particularly bothered by this quote from her father:

"We tried to divert her attention and told her she should not worry about such things, but to no avail," he said.

Divert her attention? I could maybe buy that as reasonable parenting if there were a real threat that they simply couldn't do anything about, like a tsunami or something. But in this case, we have a world of credible, demonstrable evidence available that there was absolutely nothing to worry about. All he had to do was treat his daughter like an adult, which is, unfortunately, about the last resort many parents will take.

He wasn't the only idiot around though:

But in deeply religious and superstitious India, fears about the experiment and the minor risks associated with it spread rapidly through the media.
In east India, thousands of people rushed to temples to pray and fast while others savored their favorite foods in anticipation of the world's end.

I don't know how much MSNBC is over selling this point. I'd be interested what percentage of Indian citizens really took the threat seriously.

Giant Basalt Crystals

2008-09-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

These are pretty cool. If I ever make it Ireland or Iceland, I want to check these out.

http://giantcrystals.strahlen.org/europe/basalt.htm
http://www.popgive.com/2008/08/volcano-finn-maccool-ireland.html

We should all check this every few minutes ...

2008-09-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

I've always wondered this ...

2008-09-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

How much weight can my horse or mule carry?

I learned something yesterday ...

2008-09-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

Traveling in automobile exhaust actually feels pretty good when biking on a cold evening in a t-shirt and shorts.

Sarah Palin and the Republican Party

2008-09-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

I already had a strong preference for Obama over McCain, but the choice of Sarah Palin for VP and ensuing comments from Republican supporters has me questioning whether the Republican Party has any integrity at all.

She has, what, 2 years as Governor of the U.S.'s 47th most populace state? The rest of her experience is as mayor of Wasilia (population 5-6000). And she spent much of her speech criticizing Obama's lack of experience.
Speaking of the size of Alaska, apparently it's the acreage, not the population, that makes her qualified for the Presidency. Pat Roberston Buchanan is such a tool.
I've read at least two places (here and here) where the proximity of Alaska to Russia was touted as evidence of her foreign policy experience. Are you kidding me? An explanation of the absurdity of that argument.
She's being touted as a reformer, but she supported the "bridge to nowhere" before she opposed it, she has many ties to Ted Stevens (currently under indictment), and on at least three occasions she was responsible for the type of earmarking violently opposed by then Senator McCain.
Troopergate (still under investigation).

McCain's VP choice has some do do with Palin's youth (in contrast to the ancient McCain) and her charisma (former beauty pageant contestants always play well on TV), and the fact she is female seems an attempt to go after disgruntled Hillary supporters (although I can't see how her staunchly pro-life stance will play well with any of them).

But I think the real truth lies in her ties to the religious right (including her belief that God - that's the Christian God, mind you - wants us in Iraq). I'm guessing that's the main reason she was chosen. The religious right continues to exert more and more power over the Republican Party (and the Democrats too - I still can't believe the first televised presidential debate this year was in a friggin' church).

Which is why I will not vote for that party any time soon.

Volcanos are cool

2008-08-22T10:17:00.001-07:00

Amazing photos:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/07/recent_volcanic_activity.html

Bad week for my hands

2008-08-11T16:01:00.000-07:00

It was a bad week for my hands.

Last Sunday I planted some bushes and herbs in my garden. I had to hack up three bush stumps with a hatchet, resulting in a couple bad blisters on my right hand.
As I leave my condo I always swing my front door shut then reach back to lock it. On Thursday, in too much of a hurry, I reach back and smashed my left middle finger in the closing door. Cripes, did that hurt!
On Friday, playing softball, I fielded a high hop and didn't quite get my glove on it, so I stopped it with my bare right hand, resulting in a bruise near the base of my index finger.
Yesterday, while moving a pile of dishes that had accumulated in my sink to the dishwasher, I nicked my right ring finger on a knife.

I can be, in general, a clumsy person, so this isn't entirely surprising. But I don't know why it's gotten worse recently other than coincidence.

On the bright side, I've taken the opportunity to witness some pretty cool things our bodies do to take care of us.

I'm always fascinated by watching scrapes and blisters heal. The scab covers the area to protect it form germs (sometimes helped along by first aid cream and a bandage), after a few days the skin slowly repairs itself. It's just a little over a week later, and the skin is almost fully healed.
The smashed fingertip was the worst of the lot. It hurt like crazy for the first ~20 minutes, then settled to a dull throb. I wouldn't notice it for a while, then it would pop up again and remind me of the pain. This sort of degrading alert system reminded me of monitoring we have for production systems at work. I also noticed that, within a few days, I was already subconsciously adjusting to the damaged finger. When I would pick up an item with my left hand, without thinking about it, I would hold that finger back and use the other 4 (this after a few times when I didn't do that, and I painfully stubbed the tender fingertip).
The knife cut has, in less than 24 hours, already sealed closed.

Thank you, evolution!

Orson Scott Card on religion and science

2008-08-11T11:02:00.001-07:00

I'm about halfway through Speaker for the Dead on audio book right now. I don't like it quite as much as Ender's Game, which is one of my favorite novels, but it's still very good.

Religion is a much more prevalent issue in the sequel, which takes place about 3000 years after EG. Unfortunately since it's on audio book I couldn't earmark the passage, so I don't have the precise text handy. But, the passages that caught my attention were:

The Catholic Church has returned to its medieval prominence (or, close to it) in culture and government. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I sure hope that isn't the case 3-4 millenia from now.
In describing the faster-than-light communication technology known as the "ansible", he writes that even though humanity has learned to utilize this technology, nobody really understands how it works. I'm not sure what Card was getting at here, but it smacked of a flaky "science is just another religion" viewpoint. I suppose one could argue our understanding of quantum mechanics is like that now, but I would think by the time we're able to integrate quantum theory into common technology we'll have a better idea how it works.
When the main character first arrives at Lusitania, the planet whose colonists are overseen by a Portuguese Catholic theocracy, he's greeted by the local mayor. He has a reputation for being a raging atheist, but he surprises the mayor by espousing his appreciation for religious belief. Near as I can tell, he thinks religion is an "opiate of the masses", and that's a good thing.

It's too bad, I really like the characters, and I like Card's writing.

I did a little research on him and found he's an outspoken Mormon advocate (and a homophobe, to boot). In this article, he explains his belief that Mormonism is better than other religions because it's more scientific. This part sounds good:

... all scientific "knowledge" will eventually be found to be at least incomplete and quite possibly flat wrong, so if any area of science remains unquestioned, that is where the errors will accumulate.

Real scientists are unafraid of questions and never stifle them. The evidence of honest experiment will either affirm the existing belief or replace it with a better understanding. What's to fear in that?

There are no final answers in science, and anyone who thinks he has found one is no scientist.

Excellent sentiment. We should always be willing to test existing knowledge. But he loses me here when he says his church uses the scientific method to discover

The LDS faith is an experimental religion. We use the scientific method. No one is asked to rely on other people's faith; we are expected to ask the questions ourselves, and then "prove" and "test" the answers we are given.

This is laughable given some of the basic tenets of his religion, excellently satirized by South Park.

I suppose his outlook is better than those who do not question their faith at all. I only hope that many of them come to the conclusion that they can hold onto the valid and powerful aspects of their faith (e.g., their strong emphasis on family and community) while discarding the silly ones.

Ah well, he still writes good sci-fi.

Gore-Al

2008-07-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

From The Onion (which originated at The University of Wisconsin, I learned recently from my Badger alum girlfriend):

In brightly hued tights, it will be harder for people there to ignore him when he takes on his new planet's lobbyists, auto manufacturers, and enemies of justice.

Happy Birthday, Humanae Vitae

2008-07-28T15:32:00.000-07:00

It's the 40th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 Catholic document which, among other things, forbids abortion and contraception.

From Richard Dawkins' blog, several groups of Catholics have taken the opportunity to petition the church to change its stance on contraception, in particular highlighting the role the Catholic Church's stance has had in the spread of AIDS.

While I appreciate the need for this effort, I stand baffled by the notion that they choose to remain Catholic and fight the establishment. From a purely practical standpoint, throngs of would be tithers leaving the church would have much more of an impact than a petition. But the main thing I don't get is why they would choose to remain members in an organization that takes at best decades and at worst centuries to catch up with the moral sensibilities of the modern world.

I'm curious to know what these protesting Catholics think about Catholic morality. Supposedly this morality comes from God. Has God changed his mind? Was Pope Paul VI simply off his rocker? It doesn't seem to me that human nature has changed. We all want to have sex really badly (even those that believe it's a sin) and don't want to get diseases from it.

I dunno, I guess it saddens me that the progressive Catholics seem, in some ways, loopier than the staunch conservatives.

This might be the flakiest thing I've ever seen

2008-07-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

Taken at the East West book store in Mountain View.

Type 1 Civilization

2008-07-25T14:51:00.000-07:00

Via Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer pens an article for the LA Times in which he argues that more efficient harnessing of the available energy on our planet is crucial to human survival. We need to reach "Type 1", he argues. The definitions of types 1-3:

Type 1 can harness all of the energy of its home planet; Type 2 can harvest all of the power of its sun; and Type 3 can master the energy from its entire galaxy.

This seems vague and arbitrary to me. What about harnessing the rotational inertia of nearby planets? Or other cosmic radiation not generated by the sun, but not limited to the galaxy? And what does it mean to harness all the energy of a planet? And it's unclear how the energy conversion of plants and animals fits into this.

I do get the point that we're not as efficient as we can be, and that our efficiency bears on our survival. If anyone can explain these metrics to me, please do.

But here's where he really loses me, as he breaks down our progress from 0.1 to 0.7 (where we are now, supposedly) to 1.0 historically:

Type 0.1: Fluid groups of hominids living in Africa. Technology consists of primitive stone tools. Intra-group conflicts are resolved through dominance hierarchy, and between-group violence is common.

Type 0.2: Bands of roaming hunter-gatherers that form kinship groups, with a mostly horizontal political system and egalitarian economy.

Type 0.3: Tribes of individuals linked through kinship but with a more settled and agrarian lifestyle. The beginnings of a political hierarchy and a primitive economic division of labor.

Type 0.4: Chiefdoms consisting of a coalition of tribes into a single hierarchical political unit with a dominant leader at the top, and with the beginnings of significant economic inequalities and a division of labor in which lower-class members produce food and other products consumed by non-producing upper-class members.

Type 0.5: The state as a political coalition with jurisdiction over a well-defined geographical territory and its corresponding inhabitants, with a mercantile economy that seeks a favorable balance of trade in a win-lose game against other states.

Type 0.6: Empires extend their control over peoples who are not culturally, ethnically or geographically within their normal jurisdiction, with a goal of economic dominance over rival empires.

Type 0.7: Democracies that divide power over several institutions, which are run by elected officials voted for by some citizens. The beginnings of a market economy.

Type 0.8: Liberal democracies that give the vote to all citizens. Markets that begin to embrace a nonzero, win-win economic game through free trade with other states.

Type 0.9: Democratic capitalism, the blending of liberal democracy and free markets, now spreading across the globe through democratic movements in developing nations and broad trading blocs such as the European Union.

Type 1.0: Globalism that includes worldwide wireless Internet access, with all knowledge digitized and available to everyone. A completely global economy with free markets in which anyone can trade with anyone else without interference from states or governments. A planet where all states are democracies in which everyone has the franchise.

He's equating socio-political systems with energy efficiency. This seems like a dangerous path to go down if you're arguing for political reform. I don't have any numbers, but I bet there have been some wickedly efficient fascist regimes in the past.

I'm all for democracy and I'm all for clean energy, but there are much better arguments for both.

The Dark Knight

2008-07-24T23:42:00.000-07:00

I went to see the new Batman movie last night.

It's 95% at Rotten Tomatos. I don't get it.

The film wasn't very good. I had about the same response I had to the original Batman with Nicholson and Keaton - the Joker was great, everything else was mediocre or crap. Most of the supposed difficult moral conundrums are laughably contrived, and it gets way preachy at the end. The actions scenes aren't very good, and Bale's deep throaty Batman voice (which I found mildly annoying in the first film, but I wrote it off as a young Bruce Wayne trying to learn how to be scary) is even worse in this film.

Maggie Gyllenhaal had me pining for the complexity of Katie Holmes.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

There were 2 good performances - Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart. Eckhart's Harvey Dent was a compelling do-gooder politician who wasn't above temptation to break the rules, but the wheels came off once he became Two-Face. His performance wasn't bad, but the writing just absolutely sucked for the last 30 minutes or so (at 2.5 hours the film was too long anyway). I didn't buy his descent into madness at all.

Ledger's performance is a little over hyped due to his untimely death, but he really did steal every scene he was in. I found him quite believable both as a criminal genius and a madman, which makes for quite the frightening villain. As much as I disliked about the film, I'd recommend it just for his performance.

Book meme

2008-07-24T20:21:00.000-07:00

Via Greg Laden's blog:

Below the fold is a memetic book list. You are supposed to copy it on to your blog and bold the ones you've read. The initial assertion is that the 'average American' has read six items on this list of 100. Since this is an international blog, I'd like to see what the non-American perspective is on that.

I check in at 12, although there are a half dozen or so others that I read at least part of, but can't remember if I finished.

My list:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

What is a "belief system"?

2008-07-23T17:25:00.001-07:00

Good question.

But one which James Carse does an awful job of answering here (via Andrew Sullivan).

Take a snapshot of the conflicts around the world: Sunnis vs. Shiites, Israelis vs. Palestinians, Serbs vs. Kosovars, Indians vs. Pakistanis. They seem to be driven by religious hatred. It's enough to make you wonder if the animosity would melt away if all religions were suddenly, somehow, to vanish into the ether. But James Carse doesn't see them as religious conflicts at all. To him, they are battles over rival belief systems, which may or may not have religious overtones.

Well, no shit, human conflict will always arise from rival belief systems. What makes religious conflicts so maddening is that, since they have no rational justification, they can not be resolved with rational discourse.

To Carse, religion is all about longevity; it's what unites people over the millennia.

Yes, just as slavery and the flat Earth theory united us over millennia. It was too bad to see those go.

He goes on to make the requisite reference to Nazism.

A belief system is meant to be a comprehensive network of ideas about what one thinks is absolutely real and true. Within that system, everything is adequately explained and perfectly reasonable. You know exactly how far to go with your beliefs and when to stop your thinking. A belief system is defined by an absolute authority. The authority can be a text or an institution or a person. So it's very important to understand a belief system as independent of religion. After all, Marxism and Nazism were two of the most powerful belief systems ever.

I agree that belief systems are worst when they are dogmatic and doubters are punished. And a system does not have to be theistic to satisfy these criteria. But it does have to flow from an authority who can not be questioned, and God fits that bill for most.

Based on this strict definition of "belief system" I would agree that all belief systems are bad. But I think it's a definition contrived to make his point. Why does a belief system have to dictate beliefs? Instead of giving answers, why can it not offer guidelines for finding the answers, and changing them when conflicting evidence arises?

A few good ones that come to mind:

The golden rule, and its more complete cousin, Kant's Categorical Imperative.
Carl Sagan's excellent Baloney Detection Kit (note "argument from authority" is the 2nd item under "common fallacies of logic and rhetoric").
The scientific method.

Of course the problem with all of these is that they don't offer a simple set of rules for what to eat, whom to marry, how to manage one's resources, or how to spend Sunday morning. They're a base platform. One has to spend some energy building more specific ethics on top of them.

But, those who start from a base like this will have a common ground on which to defend their beliefs and resolve conflicts. Not so with faith-based beliefs.

"Darwinism"

2008-07-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

Via Andrew Sullivan:

I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed.

I agree with this sentiment, I've often felt dissatisfied with the term "Darwinism". Physics isn't "Newtonism". But I also can't take seriously anyone's attempt consciously to change common language - has that ever worked?

Another money quote from Sam Harris

2008-07-16T14:31:00.000-07:00

I was critical of some of his assertions in The End of Faith, but he's really growing on me in this debate with Andrew Sullivan (emphasis mine).

I do not doubt the consolations you get from your faith. But faith is like a pickpocket who loans you your own money on generous terms.

Nice.

iPhone review

2008-07-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

I've had about 4 days with my new iPhone now. Some features are stronger than others, but overall, it simply rocks.

Phone - I have several friends who bought the first iPhone a year ago. They often complained that it was lacking as a phone. I haven't found this at all. It's very clear, and I've had no trouble with AT&T service (we'll see how that holds up once I travel outside silicon valley). I have found that the screen gets a little oily after I've been talking for a while - I don't know if that happens to everyone, or I just need to scrub my cheeks and ears better.
Music- As a digital music device, it's better than anything else I've used. The speaker is top notch for a palm device, and the large touch screen UI blows my old Dell DJ away. I've only used about 2 of my 16MB so far - mostly music and a few photos. We'll see how that holds up if I stick a few TV shows and movies on.
Video - I have to admit I spent about 20 minutes of my first day with the iPhone watching Weird Al videos. I must strain to recall a moment in my life geekier than that. I don't get the sense that watching even a feature length movie would produce too much eye strain.
Browser - This is where it really shines. A couple web sites were a little awkward to read, but mostly it was easy to zoom in and out, select links, and read even large blocks of text. I use Google Reader a lot, and their mobile interface is excellent on the iPhone.
GPS/Map - Excellent interface. It integrates well with Safari, too. I got lost the other day. I looked up the web site for my destination. As I clicked on the maps link, it automatically launched the native maps application. I selected directions, then current location (the new iPhones have GPS), and voila - turn by turn directions without having to type a single character.
Text Entry - Alas, the Achilles heel. I just can't get the hand of the touch screen keyboard. There is a satisfying "click" feedback with each key, but the lack of tactile sensation is a big obstacle for me. It auto-corrects, but sometimes that's just a pain. 1- and 2-letter words are the worst. I took notes on a talk the other day that ended in a Q&A. I entered "q:" and "a:" before the questions and answers, and it kept auto-correcting 'q' to 'a'. Maybe there's a way temporarily to disable it. Fortunately I don't SMS much, and I don't anticipate sending much email. I might search for a dictation app so I can skip typing notes altogether. There's also no cut-and-paste that I can tell.

So, overall I'd give it an A, the text entry being the only barrier to A+. It really is a quantum leap over any other device I've used. We'll see how the new toy wow-ness factor wears out over time.

Sullivan vs Harris

2008-07-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

An interesting exchange here between a conservative yet moderate Catholic (Sullivan) and an atheist (Harris). It's over a year old, so I'm late to the party, but here are my thoughts.

Lots of good exchanges. Sullivan's first salvo is largely based on the "look at all the good works of the faithful" argument. Harris' response is well done - I found this to be the money quote (emphasis mine):

As I have argued elsewhere, the alleged usefulness of religion--the fact that it sometimes gets people to do very good things indeed--is not an argument for its truth. And, needless to say, the usefulness of religion can be disputed, as I have done in both my books. As you may know, I've argued that religion gets people to do good things for bad reasons, when good reasons are actually available

Yes, people of faith do good things, often because of their faith. It still doesn't make their beliefs either true or necessary.

Harris accuses religious followers of lying to themselves and others, that they make claims they can not possibly know. In response to this, Sullivan accuses Harris of intolerance (emphasis mine):

When we speak of things beyond our understanding - and you must concede that such things can logically exist - we are all in the same boat. Your assertion of nothingness at the end of our mortal lives is no more and no less verifiable than my assertion of somethingness. And yet I do not accuse you of lying - to yourself or to others.

First of all, I doubt Harris would tell anybody there is no life after death, but he would say it's highly unlikely. His assertion might be no more verifiable, but it is more reasonable. The lie is in the confidence in the assertion, not in the assertion itself. As Harris points out (emphasis mine):

What if I told you that I am certain that I have an even number of cells in my body? What are the chances that I am in a position to have actually counted my cells (there are on the order of 100 trillion) and counted them correctly? Would it be unfair (or worse, "intolerant") of you to dismiss my assertion as either a product of self-deception or outright dishonesty? Note that this claim has a 50% chance of being true (unlike claims about virgin births and resurrections), and yet it is patently ridiculous.

As to the usefulness of such lies, I love this response from Harris:

Mommy claims to know that Granny went straight to heaven after she died. But Mommy doesn't actually know this. The truth is that, while Mommy may be rigorously honest on any other subject, in this instance she doesn't want to distinguish between what she really knows (i.e. what she has good reasons to believe) and 1) what she wants to be true, or 2) what will keep her children from grieving too much in Granny's absence. She is lying--either to herself or to her children--but we've all agreed not to talk about it. Rather than teach our children to grieve, we teach them to lie to themselves.

Amen, brother. Keep your sweet lies to yourself - let me plow through the harshness of reality to a better, and ultimately happier, resolution.

In Sullivan's next response:

I cannot prove Christiannation it to be true, in empirical fashion, then my faith must be excluded from rational discourse. In fact, if I understand you right, it must not only be excluded, it must be stigmatized. It must be ridiculed.

I don't see how he can claim that Harris wants Christianity to be excluded from rational discourse when he's actively participating in a rational discourse on the subject. He then gets a little wishy washy, trying to differentiate between empirical truths and those truths "beyond reason". I think he goes way off the rails here:

Discovering that historical truth is the vocation of a historian - and it is a different truth than science, and reached by a different methodology and logic.

Buh-loney. It is not a different truth than science, though it is less precise than other disciplines. Historians do take scientific approaches to their work. They allow for new evidence to challenge consensus beliefs. They seek to reach consensus among various source materials. They're basically detectives.

I did like this section from Sullivan:

I may believe these things, but I am aware that others may not; and I respect their own existential decision to believe something else. I respect their decision because I respect my own, and realize it is indescribable to those who have not directly experienced it.

Would that all of the faithful were as open to uncertainly as you, Mr. Sullivan. The problem here is that one who is open to both faith and doubt still has little ammunition with which to engage another armed with faith and certainty.

Sullivan goes into, basically, a Unitarian explanation of the world in his next response - all religions are true expressions of God, but we all have to come to God based on our own place in time and space. he then says:

In fact, people of faith who are not fundamentalists may be the most important allies you've got. Why don't you want us to help out?

This struck me because I asked a similar question in a recent post. I still wrestle with this, but I guess right now my response is that I don't mind you helping out, but I don't think you're going to get very far. Sullivan issues a lengthy testimonial that basically says he has no explanation for his faith, it's just always been there. That's great for him, but how is that supposed to convince anyone else, either atheist or fundamentalist?

Harris is a wizard with analogies. I loved this response to Sullivan's tale of living as a homosexual Catholic:

I find it peculiar that you consider your successful ordeal of living as a homosexual in a homophobic faith to be evidence in support of the religious project. It's like hearing a man who has been unfairly confined to a straight-jacket all his life say that he is grateful to have been taught such "economy of motion."

Anyway, the entire exchange is long but well worth the read. I'm about halfway through it. Despite my obvious alliance with Harris here, Sullivan is an excellent foil for him. I recommend it to anyone who has not yet read it.

Respect for communion and religious liberty

2008-07-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

A response to the PZ Myers cracker story, via Andrew Sullivan. It's attributed simply to "a priest".

A person in a free society is at liberty to burn his own Torah scrolls, to tear up his own copy of the New Testament, to plunge his own copy of the Koran in his own toilet, and to trample his own stock of communion wafers. That should be recognized as protected religious or anti-religious expression under the First Amendment.
However, no one is free to break into a synagogue, to take the Torah scrolls enshrined there, and to burn them. Or to do that with a Koran belonging to a mosque where he is visiting, or to take the Bible or the Blessed Sacrament from a church and desecrate them. If a particular religion gives its sacrament or sacred things only to its own members and someone deceives the adherents of that religion in order to desecrate their sacred rituals or objects, then that is a fraud and a violation of the religious liberty of others.

This sounds reasonable enough - you don't have to believe what I believe or worship how I worship, but don't interfere with my attempts to do so.

But, any "cracker abuse" Myers might inflict interferes with nobody's freedom to worship as they see fit. I ask, what in this sequence of events is a violation of the religious liberty of others?

Webster Cook, the UCF student whose actions started the ball rolling on this whole ruckus, attended mass. Instead of swallowing the host, he kept in his mouth.
After returning to his seat, he placed the communion wafer in his pocket and left the building with it. According to Cook, a member of the congregation made both verbal and physical attempts to stop him from doing so.
PZ Myers blogged on the subject, and suggested someone else similarly obtain a communion wafer and send it to him. He did not specify if this agent should be a practicing Catholic. He then promised to "treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web".

In steps 1 & 2, Cook was in violation of church teachings. But, if we are free to choose our own religious beliefs, shouldn't we be able to choose not to believe them? I had several Catholic friends growing up, and none of them believed all tenets of church law (I have yet to meet a lay Catholic who does not practice safe sex). The church is free to boot him, but surely nobody would argue that he is violating the rights of others.

Perhaps the priest was referring only to Myers' actions. Myers' hasn't even acquired his target yet, he's only threatened so. But lets say, for the sake of argument, one Joe Reader does acquire a communion wafer for him.

If Joe is a Catholic who simply questions transubstantiation, is he in violation of others' religious liberties? What if he wants to study the consecrated host at home with his chemistry set? Does he not have a right to do so? Is that even in poor taste? Isn't it within his religious rights to do so? Is this theft? I'd argue the wafer becomes his property as soon as the priest places it in his mouth.

What if Joe is not a Catholic? I think we'd all argue lying is immoral. But it's not illegal. I am in violation of no law if I join the Catholic church but do not believe in Catholic doctrine. And I'd wager there are more than a few Americans in just this state.

Some Catholics believe removing the wafer from the communion service without swallowing it (I fail to see how passing the body of Christ through one's digestive tract is any less abusive than ... I'm not even going to go there) is "abuse". Most of the rest of us do not believe this.

If you give me an object you consider holy, you have every right to be offended by anything I do with it, but I have every right to do it. Nobody's religious liberties have been violated here, and any claim to the contrary is ludicrous.

Humanist meeting

2008-07-13T22:31:00.000-07:00

I attended a meeting of Humanists in Palo Alto today. As far as I can tell their only web presence is this meetup group. They seem to meet once/month on Sunday morning. That's a little too churchy for my tastes - aren't sleeping late and attending otherwise crowded places on Sunday morning supposd to be advantages of eschewing church? At least it doesn't start until 11am.

A speaker gave a talk on his perspectives on race in America. Like me, he grew up in the south. I'd estimate he's about 25 years older than me, so my experiences in the 80s and 90s were much different from his in the 50s-70s. But I did identify with some of what he said. He mentioned that he never considered himself a racist, and was raised in a family with (for the time at least) progressive ideals, but he now sees some racism in his own actions. I don't think I ever told a racist joke, but I heard plenty of them, and I'm sorry to say I laughed along with some. Even when I didn't laugh, even when I felt uncomfortable or offended, I rarely if ever spoke up in protest. And while I'm disappointed in my own behavior on this account, I am encouraged that society has progressed.

He mentioned The Tuskegee Experiment, a shameful episode in America's past, to be sure. He offered this to temper reaction to Reverend Wright's suggestion that HIV was invented by the U.S. government to kill blacks. Wright himself said "based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything". I don't think the speaker meant to lend any credibility to Wright's claim, just to remind us of the pain and mistrust that experiment (which lasted 40 years) has caused in the American black community. I can see the point, but it's still a big leap from callous disregard to genocide, and there is no data to back up the HIV claim.

Some comments from the audience that I found interesting (the items in quotes are paraphrases":

"Nationalism is a form of racism, both are forms of prejudice": That depends on what your nation stands for. The identity of many nations is tied up with ethnic and religious distinctions, but I certainly hope most democratic nations are capable of rising above that and standing for human rights for all. Discriminating against another nation based on their lack of respect for human rights is clearly different from racism.
"Opposition to illegal immigration is a form of racism": I had to roll my eyes at this. While I'm sure many who oppose illegal immigration have a racist bias, there's at least one very good reason to oppose it ... it's illegal. People I know who oppose it have no problem with legal immigration, and do not advocate a racist bias for legal immigration.
"Positive racism is almost as bad as negative racism": The idea here is that idealizing, or making excuses for, members of a particular race is almost as bad as denouncing them. I thinkthis is a really good point. Even though it's more complimentary, it's still a snap judgment that doesn't appreciate individual differences.

Even though I didn't agree with everything said, it was a positive experience and gave me food for thought. I don't know if I'll make it every month, but I plan to attend again.

Blogging the Quran

2008-07-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Via The Atheist Experience, I came across the Kafir Girl blog. A female atheist who was raised as a Muslim is trying to read The Quran cover to cover and comment on it (I'll be impressed if she completes the task). I've only read a couple posts, but it's funny, and she offers an interesting perspective since she was raised in school where she had to memorize parts of the Quran.

How to approach fundamentalism

2008-07-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

I think most of us without faith, and many of those with faith, would agree that whatever dangers lie in religious thinking, they are worst in extreme religious thinking. But, what does it mean to be extreme? One person's extremism is another's devoutness.

What does it take to be a religious moderate? What is "moderating" the historical, literal scriptural views of Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.?

Is it a natural progression in thinking led by God's hand? Did we as humans simply misinterpret the Old Testament that God favors favor slaughter of our enemies and murder of blasphemers? The New Testament certainly moderated much of that, and few Christians today find their lives guided by much of anything in the Old Testament. But if that's the case, why can't we throw both of them out in favor of an even Newer Testament that, say, takes into account what we as humans have learned over the last 200 years? I'm not holding my breath on this one.

I've recently read books by 2 of the "Four Horsemen", Dawkins and Harris. They both argue that religious moderation owes its roots to secular influences, much of which started with the Enlightenment. They also argue that religious moderates are almost as bad as extremists because they give the latter political cover.

Harris wrote in The End of Faith, "The doors leading out of scriptural literalism do not open from the inside." Barrack Obama seems to be taking a different approach, trying to moderate religion from the inside by bringing it more into the public square, but influencing it be more accepting through federal grants (at least, I hope that's where he's going with that).

I favor the first far more than the second, but my question is this: is the latter a necessary evil? Many of the faithful see any secular incursion as threatening (you know, things like not teaching creationism in public schools) - are moderating forces on the inside needed to make it work? And if so, is it better for secular efforts to form partnerships, or to take the hard stance of Dawkins and Harris? I don't know the answer.

Saturday Bike Ride

2008-07-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend Keri and I had a nice day of biking today. Here's the route.

We started with a 2.5 mile ride to The Original Pancake House in Los Altos. This has historically been one of my favorite breakfast spots since I was introduced to it in Dallas, TX. I've had a few cases of lousy service, but they have really good coffee, and I love their two signature dishes, Apple Pancake and Dutch Baby. They're both huge, so it works out well to split one.
Next, 7.9 miles up Foothill Expressway to the Stanford shopping mall. This was a nice ride, not too much traffic, with nice wide bike lanes where cars are not allowed to park. A little hilly, but not bad. We went to the Apple Store and waited in line for about 30 minutes for our iPhone 3Gs. I bought one each for Keri (her birthday present) and myself.
7.1 miles back to downtown Los Altos where we checked out a Wine & Arts festival for which we saw signs right after breakfast. They had pretty much the same stuff I see at most of these sorts of events. We ate some Greek food from a street side vendor (felafels, grape leaf wraps, and spanakopita) and listened to a decent cover band do some 70s-80s music.
2.9 miles back to my place where we are now chilling for the rest of the evening.

It was a very nice day, and now I get to play with my new toy!

PZ Myers vs The Cracker

2008-07-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

Derek turned me onto the Pharyngula blog a month or so ago, and it's a good daily read. PZ Myers is a scientist and ardent critic of religion. I tend to agree with most of his perspectives, and he's pretty funny when he gets going on a rant.

Recently, he tore into the catholic Church and Cracker-gate. Basically, someone snuck a communion cracker out of a mass, and overreaction ensued. One church spokesperson called it a hate crime, the Catholic League suggested the student should be expelled and labeled the cracker a "hostage" - total lack of perspective. Myers rightly exposed the inanity, and then wrote this:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart.

I found the "kick the pope in the balls" comment unnecessary. I think it would have been funnier had he remained above personal attacks and focused on wafer abuse. But whatever rudeness he might be showing is completely overshadowed by the absurdness of the response.

The Catholic League responded. This part is particularly heinous:

It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ.

Remember, "desecrating the body of Christ" is "stealing a cracker". It's pretty insulting to all the people in the world to whom vile things have been committed to say you can't top that.

It has now escalated to the Republican National Convention.

It's sad the Catholic League has gotten any traction out of this. They've apparently gotten the link to Myers' blog removed from his web site and are asking for the school to discipline him, perhaps even fire him. I don't know how much they had to do with changing the title of the original post from "It's a Goddamned Cracker" to "It's a Frackin' Cracker" (note the URL still ends with its_a_goddamned_cracker.php). Richard Dawkins has personally appealed for support of Myers.

And Myers hasn't even done anything to a cracker yet, he only talked about it. I can't wait to see the reaction once we get a youtube video of a consecrated wafer being lit on fire, or dressed like a mini prostitute.

Why I didn't like The End of Faith

2008-07-09T00:39:00.000-07:00

My 2 big problems with Sam Harris' The End of Faith:

Harris tends to define morality as that which maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering. I can't improve on Derek's articulation of the problems with this reasoning.
He gets notably unscientific when speaking of some assertions, such as ESP and reincarnation. I share James Randi's disappointment.

He spends the last chapter or so advocating a form of secular spirituality through introspection, in particular focusing on Buddhist-inspired meditation. I respect the rest of Harris' writing enough that it has prompted me to do some research in the area (I'll let you know how that goes). But the ESP and reincarnation comments leave me skeptical of his standards for evidence.

I also found this passage off putting:

p208

The idea that brains produce consciousness is little more than an article of faith among scientists at present, and there are many reasons to believe that the methods of science will be insufficient to either prove or disprove it.

I'm not sure what he's getting at here. Any reasonable scientist will admit we know very little of what there is to know about consciousness. But I don't see how there's any reason to believe it exists anywhere but in our heads.

I do agree with his assertion that our experience with brains is qualitatively different than our experience as brains, and both paths are necessary to figure out how this thing works. And it's certainly possible that we will never figure it out (my guess is we will some day). But that's no reason to find traditional scientific methods inadequate for its investigation.

And it certainly lends no credibility to ESP or reincarnation, for Pete's sake.

Why I liked The End of Faith

2008-07-08T23:10:00.001-07:00

I've just completed reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris. I agreed wholeheartedly with most of it (see my next post for my disagreements), particularly his skewering of religious dogma and the sad affect it has had on human progress. Here's a sampling of my favorite passages, with the money quotes in bold.

pp18-19

The only reason anyone is "moderate" in matters of faith these days is that he has assimilated some of the fruits of the last two thousand years of human thought (democratic politics, scientific advancement on every front, concern for human rights, an end to cultural and geographic isolation, etc.). The doors leading out of scriptural literalism do not open from the inside.

This is something I've thought for a while, but never articulated it as well as Harris has. I don't see how religious institutions can take credit for their progress. From Galileo to Darwin to birth control, the church has pretty much always been dragged kicking and screaming into modern thought.

pp21-22

Imagine that we could revive a well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century. The man would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith. His beliefs about geography, astronomy, and medicine would embarrass even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know about God.

This really hit home with me, as it was something that I struggled with when I was a Christian. How can a belief system based on scripture ever be expected to make progress? And if scripture is simply an imperfect reflection of truth requiring constant interpretation, why have scripture at all? Pythagoras was a smart dude, but it would be ludicrous to use his writings as a textbook for a modern Geometry class.

p95 (referring to this mistranslation)

It would appear that Western civilization has endured two millenia of consecrated sexual neurosis simply because the authors of Matthew and Luke could not read Hebrew.

Mostly I just found this one funny, but it does point out the absurdity of it all.

p131

Given the constraints of Muslim orthodoxy, given the penalties within Islam for a radical (and reasonable) adaptation to modernity, I think it is clear that Islam must find some way to revive itself, peacefully or otherwise. What this will mean is not at all obvious. What is obvious, however, is that the West must either win the argument or win the war. All else will be bondage.

I agree with this assessment. I don't see any path to "winning the argument" when our identity as a nation is so strongly tied to our Christian heritage, and I don't see that identity changing any time soon. And "winning the war" will have to be ugly, and we'll wind up taking actions for which future generations will be ashamed.

So far, my thought processes beginning here lead me nowhere but to despair.

p215

Jared Diamond's fascinating thesis, to sum it up in a line, is that advances civilization did not arise in sub-Saharan Africa, because one can't saddle a rhinoceros and ride it into battle. ... Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won't do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention.

Another funny one. Despite the heavy nature of the subject matter, Harris offers several biting one-liners that gave me a hearty laugh.

I learned some things about the Catholic Church's behavior surrounding the Holocaust.

As late as 1914, a Vatican newspaper published a story accusing Jews of human sacrifice.
The Catholic Church opened its genealogical records to the Nazis to help them track down German Jews.
No German Catholic was ever excommunicated for actions related to the holocaust (yet Galileo remained so until 1992).

I continue to be sadly amazed that anyone looks to the Catholic Church for moral guidance.

In summary, it's a very well written book, and I would recommend it to anyone. I think he offers a load of compelling evidence for the dangers that religious thought has for our world. As he points out many times, people with 11th century motivations soon will have 21st century weapons, and that should give us all reason enough to examine our values and dispense with blind respect for the pious.

One Without Faith

2008-07-08T21:17:00.001-07:00

Why "One Without Faith"?

Inspired by such thinkers as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and my friend Derek, my thoughts lately have been concerned with rationality as the path to wisdom, and the dreadful consequences of some alternatives.

It's not that I think all, or even most, people of faith will ever resort to barbarism of this ilk. It's that I don't think we'll ever have a common language to negotiate the end of such behavior as long as we cling to faith as a justification for beliefs.

I started to name this blog "infidel", but that name was already taken. Plus, the word has modern usages that aren't exactly what I'm going for. So I searched my wikipedia for a definition of infidel, and the literal translation, "one without faith", struck a chord with me.

I am not man of faith. I believe science and rationality provide a much more reliable path to wisdom than faith does.
In addition to the obvious connotation that I am a person without faith, I also like the connotation that, without faith, I am "one" - unified, consistent, at peace. In my youth, the scientific and religious parts of my psyche spent a lot of time arguing. It was only after rejecting my faith that I began to feel like I was capable of living a life I truly believed in.

To be clear, I am speaking of "faith" as belief without reason, as opposed to science or rationality. I am not devoid of "faith" in the sense of belief or trust. It would not be inaccurate to say I have faith in democracy, free speech, the scientific method, the love of my family and friends, or Tony Romo. But those are all beliefs and trusts for which I can offer some rational support. I'll never hide behind faith as a justification.

So, welcome to my blog.