This nearly brought tears to my eyes. It’s rare that I hear poetry that actually expresses things that have happened in my life, but holy cow (.com) have I been in this situation.
As with all good poetry, the poet (Tim Minchin) says it far better than I ever could, and rhymes at the same time.
My Political Views
I am a left moderate social libertarian
Left: 3.83, Libertarian: 3.04
Political Spectrum Quiz
Seems pretty accurate to me. I believe in strong social programs for certain important things, but I believe in a (generally) free market as well. Issues are complicated, and the best answer often lies somewhere in the middle, though I tend towards “freedom”.
I see the recent market crash in the United States as the full-on Libertarian version of the collapse of Russia’s communist regime. Those extremes just don’t work.
We attended a lecture by James Randi last night, as part of UBC’s “Science Week”. He was the keynote speaker.
I made sure to grab the batteries out of the charger and put them in our digital camera, and Mel put it in her purse so I wouldn’t forget to bring it. I’m always leaving important stuff behind.
Jess and her dad met us at our place, and her husband Rob was going to meet us there as he was working in Vancouver until later.
After a bit of scrambling around and leaving later than we had planned we got there “on time” for the official start of the lineup. Of course, nobody else obeyed to this and we were about 200 people back. Had we left on time we’d have been early for it too, d’ohh.
I grabbed the camera and started taking pictures of the crowd… or tried to. Every time I pressed the “take a picture” button it shut down. The freshly charged batteries were no good, and I’d brought no backups. Sorry, no photos.
Randi was entertaining and biting, though I’ll admit a bit rambling. His lecture consisted mostly of anecdotes of swindlers he’s caught and some proof of how silly a lot of pseudoscience is. As a fairly active online skeptic very little of it was new to me, and I did find myself wanting him to punctuate each anecdote with the moral of “so yes, even you scientists-in-training, can be fooled so question even yourselves” and so-on.
But we got more than we paid for (donated to Unicef for, technically) and Randi went on an extra hour. It really was a lot of fun, and the audience had a great time — with the exception of the girl who fainted when they showed the video of him performing “psychic surgery”. Here’s the video, but if you’re squeamish you might not want to watch. Don’t worry, it’s all fake.
Afterwards we headed out to a special Skeptics In The Pub, though when we arrived our famished party was told the Railway Club’s kitchen was closed on Mondays. We headed across the street and had some pretty good sushi. It was very fast sushi though, and we got back to the pub around 11:00. We got in and people were sitting around enjoying some pizza. We sat down but instantly realized that we couldn’t drink because we had to work tomorrow (them) or were driving (me) and so everyone else made “it’s really late” sounds and we ended up shuffling off home right away.
As soon as I got home though, Fred Bremmer tweeted that Randi was at Skeptics in the Pub, which filled me with instant jealousy. It was too late for me to head back in though, so I just had to realize I’d have to plan better next time.
Fred has posted his photos from the lecture and the pub afterwards on his Facebook profile. My favorite is the shot of Randi with the Randi doll.
Oh well, there’s always the next Amazing Meeting! Hey Rob — it’s in Vegas! July 9-12!
Really, you people should read the book. It’s got some CRAZY rules.
I really should have watched West Wing. Every time I see something from it, it’s great. Maybe I’ll borrow the DVD set from somebody or… something.
I can even embed them here, like my favorite The Big Snit.
This is a response to Blogosaurus Vex’s post, which you may want to read first. I’ll take it point by point, with a summary.
Here are some things that bother me about how some athiests think and behave:
Some athiests seem to think that the problem with religious people is they aren’t or can’t be logical.
Well, I’d certainly agree about the first part (aren’t logical) about their religious beliefs. Those beliefs aren’t logical, despite attempts to make them so with things like Descarte’s Ontological Proof of God.
And I do think that religious believers tend towards a less logical worldview overall. Of course there are a great many exceptions to this. The biggest that comes to mind is Ken Miller, who is a Roman Catholic, and yet an incredibly intelligent and educated biology professor who defended evolution and made a mockery of Intelligent Design proponents during the Kitzmiller v Dover trial.
But the subset of believers we tend to call “creationists”, who take the bible as the inerrant and non-metaphorical word of God?
They can’t be logical.
Some athiests seem to think that religious people are less than athiests somehow
I do — about that specific facet. There are a lot of believers who have done more than me in my life, have achieved more, have helped more people, are better looking, funnier, cleverer, are kinder, richer…
But they believe in a fairy story as though it were true, and many base their lives around it. They — if they’re Christian — make decisions based on a 2000 year old desert cult whose beliefs were originally an oral tradition and changed with each telling and was finally written down.
This doesn’t make me a better person than them. I don’t feel superior to them overall, but that one broken gap in their reasoning is certainly inferior to mine.
Tell me, Blogo, did you feel superior to your woo-spouting instructor? I’ll bet you did, and don’t really regret it. Why should religion be protected from mockery and her “chakra” bullshit not be?
Some athiests seem unwilling to admit the value and importance of religion in many people’s lives.
And apparently, some atheists can’t admit the value of a world based on reason, logic and truth.
The problem with the comfort of religion is that it’s a false one, and isn’t based on the real world or whether you should be comforted at all. The 9/11 hijackers were so comforted by their religion that they were able to fly the plan they were on into a building to their certain deaths.
They act as though becoming an athiest is no big deal, like nothing would be lost.
Nothing is lost, except for weekly social gatherings at the church where you can make business contacts. I don’t see the world as a big scary place where I need a security blanket of falseness to make me feel good about living in it. The “life is scary without religion” angle is brought up all the time by apologist atheists, and I have only to point you to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos as a positive, uplifting and heartwarming display of the wonder and marvel of the real world around us, how we fit into it, and what we can do in it to make our lives worthwhile.
Saying that others do need it is arrogant in the extreme, as though there’s something special about you and your mind.
Some athiests think we can make progress towards a more secular society by mocking the religious.
Oh, I don’t do it just because I think we can make progress. I do it because I can be a jerk sometimes.
That said, comedy is a powerful way to make uncomfortable points. The jester was the only one who could make fun of the king, and today’s comedians — or anybody being funny — are still far safer making fun of things nobody else will.
See, that’s mockery, funny, and true. And eye-opening to some.
Oh demotivators, your wisdom might just save us all.
People don’t become religious after careful consideration of the facts.
There are no facts to support religion, so of course not. However, a great many people become non-religious after careful consideration of the facts. I’ve had a few people I know through the Internet tell me that my posts on this blog opened their eyes and had them re-examine why they believed. Eventually they become non-believers. It blew my mind the first time because I honestly thought I was just shouting into the wind.
the elements that comprise religion are all drawn from cognitive “modules” that were naturally selected for to solve problems common in the ancestral environment.
In this way we can see religiosity as a natural phenomenon that, while it was not selected for itself, piggy-backs on systems that were. This means that it is “natural” for us as this evolved species to be religious.
Well of course we have a natural propensity towards belief. I’ve read quite a few great articles about the subject, and I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things”. The fact that we all look for someone to get angry at when it rains on a day we wanted to go outside doesn’t mean that someone did make it rain. It certainly doesn’t mean we should believe that nonsense and change our lives because of that belief, no matter how good it might make you feel. It will still rain on some days.
The “it’s natural” argument fails completely in the modern world. Human beings have a lot of natural tendencies that we are already actively suppressing. Rape was a viable way to continue your genetic makeup, but it’s abhorrent to us in modern society. Male dominance is another that our society has only recently begun to reverse.
We get rid of these things because they’re harmful to our society. Religious belief can be both helpful (I admit it, sometimes) and incredibly harmful. The usual way one deals with complex issues with both positives and negatives is to reason them out and try to keep the helpful while getting rid of the harmful. But then we’re simply insisting religion be subject to logic and reason, which you cannot do because it is inherently illogical and unreasonable! Where do you draw the line? Do you say “You can *believe* in killing non-believers and being rewarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife, but don’t go *doing* anything about it!”? or “You can *believe* God created all species in a puff of magic on one day, but don’t go influencing the schools with that belief!”?
The root problem of religion in our modern society is that it is not subject to rational discussion. It is inherently irrational and cannot be controlled by reasonable discourse.
And finally…
No secular ideology has ever successfully replaced religion in a people.
“It’s never been done, so stop trying to do it.”
Even if we don’t fully achieve it, every step we take towards a secular society makes our society better.
Sooner or later the Earth will be hit by a huge asteroid that’s floating out there in space. Prayer won’t stop it from wiping out every living thing on the plate — science, reason, and wide open eyes will.
Prayer won’t stop a world leader from pressing the big shiny button that wipes us all out. In fact it might make him (or her) do it. Reason is what we count on to keep that from happening.
I was out at Rob Tarzwell’s birthday celebration at the Yaletown Brew Pub a few weeks ago, and a few of us pulled out our iPod Touch/iPhones to check on something online — I found free wireless so my Touch worked just as well as the iPhone without the expense of a ridiculously priced data plan.
While I was on, I checked Twitterific, the free iPod Twitter App, announced a few updates I saw and got some questions about what Twitter was.
Twitter, I explained, is a mini-blog that lets you post short entries that anyone can “follow”. It lets you stay connected to friends without the one-on-one requirement of instant-messaging or the longer, more formal writing of a “blog post”.
“Ok,” asked Jennifer, “but what is it FOR? Why do you need to be able to do that?” She and Rob stared at me waiting for a response.
My answer wasn’t all that good. You don’t have to follow friends on Twitter — there are “official” things to follow. My secondary webhost Dreamhost has a Twitter account that they use to announce downtime, problems and other important updates. Heroes actor Greg Grunberg has a Twitter account, and interacts with his fans there, including my friend Josh with this fun update:
(Greg’s character Matt Parkman is a mind reader)
Mostly I just like staying in constant touch. I am, as a friend once said, “jacked-in”. I love the online world, I like staying in touch with people online without requiring a formal conversation, and I love regular updates. There are times when I’m working and will check Google Reader and see no updates on the sites I’m subscribed to and I’ll be a bit bummed. Geez, I only checked there 15 minutes ago, why isn’t there something new!?
Of course, this can get out of hand…
But not everyone is like me, so it was difficult to describe why “regular people” should be using Twitter. I just knew they probably should.
Well now I have an answer.
Rob’s father-in-law, Doug Pink, ended up in hospital earlier this week. We were playing poker on Sunday when Jess phoned Rob to give him an update and it didn’t sound good. That night I drove Rob out to the ‘wack so he could be with Jess (his tiny sports car had summer tires) and help her out through this tough time.
And then I waited for updates on Doug’s condition. And waited… I’ve known Jess for ages, and Doug was always a really friendly, pleasant guy, and he loves his daughter, and I know she loves him. I cared what happened, but couldn’t find out!
Finally, Rob made a Facebook status update, and I posted a comment on it thanking him and then noting that, hey, this is exactly what Twitter is good for — getting status updates on important news out to lots of people without requiring big formal blog posts, or one-on-one-conversations over and over again.
Rob agreed, got a Twitter account, and has been updating it with Doug’s condition, which I’m happy to report is getting better. You can just check that URL, or get your own Twitter account and have it automatically updated with posts from there (and anyone else you want to follow).
So there you go. What’s Twitter for? Connecting. Maybe not all the time every day like I and the other technophiles do, but when that connection is really important, Twitter is an invaluable tool.
Also, it’s free, geez.
Yes, I’m an atheist who enjoys Christmas. How can you not? People get time off work, are nicer to each other, get together and get social and friendly. Just because the “reason for the season” is (arguably) a religious myth’s birth doesn’t mean the effect isn’t enjoyable! I don’t go as crazy for it as some people, though.
But this holiday season has been one of heavy snowfall here. So much so that we, and others, can’t go anywhere. Mel and I usually go up to Pender Harbour to spend the holidays with my family, but that had to get cancelled when at first they got a big freeze — my mother’s car had to be abandoned “in town” — and then we got a big dump of snow.
And just as the weather seemed to get warmer yesterday, promising the break needed for socialization, we’re getting a second big dump of snow!
Our new house is great for socializing and gaming, but that doesn’t mean anything if people can’t get over here!
So instead we’ve stayed in, played World of Warcraft, watched a few movies and the Doctor Who Christmas Special (it was great!) and just waiting for a thaw that’ll let us see family and friends.
But, thanks to technology, it’s not totally lost. I can IM with my friends, play games online with them (geez guys, buy Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2 already! They’re on sale!) and if I bother to hook up the old webcam I can videoconference. Sure beats the old-timey days when all we had were phones.
But I can do all that stuff any time. As a holiday this Christmas has been a bust.
Bonus: Here’s our car in the driveway, and the snow continuing to come down. You can see I dug out access earlier, but it’s filling up again.
If your Internet habits are anything like mine, there are a lot of web sites you check up on regularly. I’d tried a few RSS readers before, but didn’t like having to run yet another program, or I didn’t care for the way it worked in the browser if it was integrated and finally just ignored them. Instead I used tabbed browsing and “groups” of links. I’d have a folder of, say, “Blogs” and I’d use my browser’s “Open all links” function to open each blog in its own tab. This got slow, of course…
Ok, I linked to the Wikipedia on RSS, but here’s a summary: RSS is a way to offer a “feed” of the posts on a site, independent of layout and using a standardized presentation so it can be viewed by any “reader”. Many RSS feeds, such as the one on my blog (at this time, anyway) are simply “snippets” of each post, with the URL on how to read the full article. Others have all the information.
I started seeing a few news articles on Digg about Google Reader‘s new look/features and finally decided to check it out. Wow, I wish I’d started using it earlier. What an incredible, easy-to-use, and most of all helpful web site!
All you have to do is go to http://reader.google.com/, log in with your Gmail account (sign up for one if you don’t have it — Gmail is the best way to deal with Email right now, hands-down) and start adding site feeds.
My Google Reader page, using the Google Chrome Browser
So there’s my Google reader. Boldfaced subscriptions are those with new entries, I can click them individually to see them, or click “All Items” which I currently have to set “New Items Only”.
And because it uses AJAX (a technology that lets web pages update with Javascript without the entire page being reloaded — you see it everywhere these days) you can just keep the site open in a tab and it’ll automatically check for updates all day.
Here’s where it’s vastly superior to other feed readers I’ve tried: Because it’s site-based rather than program of browser-based, I can check on the sites I’m following from anywhere. I can check it at home on my main desktop, or while on the couch watching TV, or even on my iPod Touch through its Safari web browser. Google Reader recognizes the iPod and formats itself a little more pleasantly for such a small screen.
I’ll never have to load up 20 tabs at a time again! If you read even a few sites regularly, you really owe it to yourself to try out Google Reader!
My Tweets
