tales of an ordinary girl

Happy Uno de Marzo minus Uno! Happy Leap Day!

I'm keeping my spirits up that Spring will come eventually.



More real posting later...

Yesterday the site reached 20,000 visitors. Well, 20,000 page hits from when I first started counting sometime after the site went live. It's probably more like 14,000 unique visitors, but hey, not bad. Thanks for stopping by!

Thursday: Sleet
Friday: Gray, but it's still Friday
Saturday: Sun just above the horizon
Sunday: A late picture of the sunset
Monday: Half ghost of a moon at sunrise
Tuesday: A few wisps of cloud catch pink
Wednesday: Mostly clear

I received a response from my Congressman about H.Res. 847. Click the image above to read it. The funny thing is, I also received a response addressed to Ms. Kristin H., I suppose she was the next letter in the list and accidentally got folded in with mine. Yay for those who sent in a letter! Though, there are several alphabetical letters between my last name and the next, so perhaps there weren't that many.

Anyway, to address his points:

1. It doesn't matter how many votes the resolution passed by. That's an Appeal to Popularity.

2. It doesn't matter that there were resolutions for Diwali and Ramadan too. I oppose those resolutions as well as I think they're frivolous. But I specifically object to statements in H.Res 847 more than in the other two.

Whereas there are approximately 2,000,000,000 Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population;

I'll grant that there are a lot of Christians in the world, but those numbers sound inflated. They only estimate 1,500,000,000 Muslims in the Ramadan resolution.

(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

This only perpetuates a myth that our government was founded on the Bible and Christianity.

I like what Representative Moore says about the First Amendment and I'd be more willing to believe him if he didn't vote on resolutions like H.Res 847.

The Kansas City Star posted an opinion piece on atheists by Linda Staten on Friday. See? Even Dixieland has atheists. (Yes, I know Missouri was technically Union, but non-technically it's debatable.)

Here are the conclusions:

Atheists are well-behaved.
Atheists don’t take up much space.
Atheists make good neighbors.
Atheists will not infringe upon your life uninvited.
Atheists are lousy fundraisers.
Atheists are the quiet type.

(via Keith)

Atheism
Defending the Atheist Movement
Others acknowledge that there is some sort of movement but reject it for a variety of reasons. The most common reason, one I've seen again and again, is the attempts by some atheists to distinguish between "real atheists" and those posing as atheists for some inexplicable reason. Of course, this almost always ends up being about tactics. Some are criticized for being too "militant" and others for not being "strong" enough. As someone who is regular criticized for being both, I'd have to agree that this sort of thing is not helpful.

Games
British bank blocking automated WoW payments
"We have...blocked the majority of Visa/Mastercard transactions we receive from there in order to combat this. We do not believe the fraud is anything to do with Blizzard themselves, their sites or the integrity of their billing systems, rather it is site users utilising stolen credit card details to pay for subscriptions," a Halifax representative explained. The rep went on to point out that "if a customer does want to subscribe to a game site operated by Blizzard, using a Halifax or Bank of Scotland credit card, we can arrange for the payments to be processed for them if they contact us."

Amazon looking to offer games via digital download
It looks as though Amazon is looking to join the likes of GameTap and Steam by offering digital downloads for games. Via a job posting on Gamasutra, we have learned that the online retailer is looking for someone to join the company's "Software and Video Games Digital Technology Team," which "is responsible for digital distribution of software and video game products from the Amazon web site, including the newly launched Amazon Software Download store.

International
The Pursuit of Happiness
Why the Danes are considered the happiest people on earth.

Where have the Sparrows gone?
India didn’t have this problem earlier, but now it’s becoming acute because of rapid industrialisation. China has an even more acute problem…I did not see a single bird in all the four cities of China that we visited last year. In India we do see birds in the cities, but they are mostly the sturdy crows and pigeons. Smaller birds like Mynas and sparrows are rarely seen.

Language


Politics


It’s a matter of trust
A month or so ago, Mike Huckabee said something to the effect that all signs pointed to Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction (WMD), that it was easy to use the tool of hindsight to point fingers of blame, but that it was unfair to do so. Far better it would be, he suggested, to forget about the past and look to the future. Now that we are in Iraq, what will we do?

I don’t trust anyone who says forget about the past. If not by history, if not by experience, then how, pray tell, can we humans learn from, and avoid errors in judgment in the future?

Religion
Bart Ehrman, Questioning Religion on Why We Suffer
In an earlier book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, I have indicated that my strong commitment to the Bible began to wane the more I studied it. I began to realize that rather than being an inerrant revelation from God, inspired in its very words (the view I had at Moody Bible Institute), the Bible was a very human book with all the marks of having come from human hands: discrepancies, contradictions, errors, and different perspectives of different authors living at different times in different countries and writing for different reasons to different audiences with different needs. But the problems of the Bible are not what led me to leave the faith. These problems simply showed me that my evangelical beliefs about the Bible could not hold up, in my opinion, to critical scrutiny. I continued to be a Christian—a completely committed Christian—for many years after I left the evangelical fold.

The Aura of Infallibility
It may be that there are people who became believers after dispassionately examining a variety of world religions, deciding which one was best supported by the evidence, and choosing to join that one. It may be that there are such people; I've never met them. Instead, the vast majority of believers of my acquaintance had their beliefs chosen for them at a very early age, and were taught to follow those beliefs without skepticism or doubt. (My college friend John, whom I wrote about in 2006 in "A Seriously Warped Moral Compass", told me with pride that he became a Christian at the age of five.) A relatively smaller number converted later in life, but again, I find that in the overwhelming majority of cases that decision was made for reasons other than a critical comparison of the options.

Is There a Catholic Doctor in the House?
It seems that both husband and wife, described as “two area Catholic doctors” — uh-oh! — have decided that there’s alarming medical evidence supporting their view that swallowable birth-control is bad, bad, bad for women. The ironclad proof supporting their opinion has, unfortunately, been swept under the carpet. In a sneaky disregard for scientific data, our overly permissive society has insisted for years that everybody should be free to have sex willy-nilly with one another, regardless of gender, age, or species.

Talking animals with more sense
A little further on, they do hit on a more legitimate reason, if it were true: the argument that the illustrations of the book are hateful stereotypes, of the sort that Germany has good reason to be sensitive about: you know, the old anti-semitic caricatures of Jews as hook-nosed and greedy. If they'd taken that ugly shortcut, yeah, I'd agree — it would be just more hate literature. However, they include several images from the book, and they don't look like that: the rabbi looks like any of the ordinary orthodox Jews you'd see walking around New York, so it's a bit of a stretch.

Maybe it's badly written. Maybe other illustrations are more overtly hateful. Just don't try to tell me it's a bad book because it makes ridiculous religions look ridiculous.

Science
BLG-109: A Distant Version of our own Solar System
How common are planetary systems like our own? Perhaps quite common, as the first system of planets like our own Solar System has been discovered using a newly adapted technique that, so far, has probed only six planetary systems. The technique, called gravitational microlensing, looks for telling brightness changes in measured starlight when a foreground star with planets chances almost directly in front of a more distant star. The distant star's light is slightly deflected in predictable ways by the gravity of the closer system. Recently a detailed analysis of microlensing system OGLE-2006-BLG-109 has related brightness variations to two planets that are similar to Jupiter and Saturn of our own Solar System. This discovery carries the tantalizing implication that interior planets, possibly including Earth-like planets, might also be common. Pictured above is an artistic conception of how the BLG-109 planetary system might look.

Eclipsed Moonlight


Sexism
Female Circumcision aka Genital Mutilation
Here’s a slideshow about “female circumcision“, courtesy of the New York Times.

Please excuse me for posting twice today, but this one is short and not for the faint of heart. To be honest, I skimmed over the pages in Infidel about Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s genital mutilation and I am afraid to watch this slide show.

They're your responsibility now
There are so many things wrong with that mindset I can't tell where to start. It's the belief that women are somehow lesser than children - if those children are male. It's the equation of a forty-something woman to a six-year-old girl. It's the infantilizing of women, which results in their being unable to take responsibility for themselves. It's the attitude satirized in Shrek the Third, when Fiona tells the princesses they need to get themselves out of captivity and they "assume the position" to wait for the princes to show up.

Sexuality
Come on baby, won't you show some class? (more on primate sexuality)
Modern contraceptives have largely divorced sex from reproduction, and as a result the romantic/sexual aspect of our culture has changed in a fascinating way. For the long-term, most people (male and female) naturally want to be in a long-term committed relationship -- this is closely related to the human trait of feeling "in love." Humans are remarkably adaptable, and contraceptive use has caused males' romantic/sexual responses in our modern culture to evolve to some degree, but not as much as one might expect. Here's what I mean: A typical man is viscerally horrified at the thought of his mate being with another man sexually -- even though these days it's less likely to lead to raising another male's offspring. On the other hand, the preference for virginal, inexperienced females (as long-term mates) has proven far more malleable, to the point where many modern men actually prefer to marry a sexually experienced woman (see virginity: once an asset, now a liability).

Sociology


On Illness, Bodies, and This Weird Free Will Thing
What I am saying is this: Whatever free will is, it seems to not be a simple matter of either/or, a light switch that's either on or off. (See the excellent On the Possibility of Perfect Humanity at Daylight Atheism for more on this.) Things happen in our lives that can limit or expand our freedom, that can broaden or diminish the choices that are available to us. Some of these are things that we can do something about; some of them really, really aren't. And I think those of us who have a lot of choices need to remember to have compassion for people who don't have as many.

So this article is in response to two posts I've read recently: MO - we gots teh sigh-ense! and Is There a Catholic Doctor in the House?.

The first article deals with the Missouri bill that will give pharmacies immunity from liability for refusal to perform, assist, recommend, refer to, or participate in any act or service in connection with any drug or device that causes an abortion. Except they define Plan B drugs as a drug that causes an abortion, which is clearly not the case. (If you don't want to follow the link then I'll give you a little spoiler. In brief, Plan B only suppresses the women's ability to produce an egg or not produce an egg. It doesn't interfere with pregnancy. So it's more like super birth control than abortion.)

The second article deals with doctors that refuse to prescribe any kind of birth control under the made the claim that birth control is bad for women and also doesn't fit in with their religious belief. So they're no longer going to offer women contraceptive options under any circumstance.

The question The Exterminator raised is what is the ethical responsibility that a doctor owes to his or her patient. I'm going to expand that to apply to a pharmacist as well, though I'm not sure they're quite the same, they're similar enough to discuss together.

The way I see it, one can view a doctor’s responsibility in five ways:

1. A doctor has a responsibility to do what a consensus of well-informed medical professionals, based on the best scientific data, would think is right for the patient.

2. A doctor has a responsibility to do what he believes is right, regardless of the patient.

3. A doctor has a responsibility to give his patient the best advice he can. But then he should follow his patient’s wishes, whatever they are, as long as they’re not illegal.

4. A doctor has a responsiblity to think of the greater good, even if it means acting against a particular patient’s best interests.

5. A doctor has no more responsibility than any other person who performs a service. He ought to be able to pick and choose the specific jobs he does.

Within that framework, or outside that framework if you care to expound, do you think a doctor or pharmacist should work?

Here's my take on the matter. I want the doctor to be able to refuse a service that he or she feels is harmful to the patient. In the case of circumcision, which is an accepted practice on men in the West, but not on women, should the doctor be able to refuse to perform the operation? What about risky procedures that might put the doctor in great liability?

Regardless of how the doctor or pharmacist comes to the decision, I don't think they should be required to do something they're against. Of course part of the sticky situation comes in with insurance. What if the doctor or pharmacy is the only one available to a patient under insurance? Why should the doctor or pharmacy or insurance company be the ones to decide the care of the patient without another opinion or option?

If I was faced with either situation, I would no longer give my patronage to the doctor or pharmacy. I believe, at least where I live and with the insurance I have, I do have that choice. So wouldn't have that big of an impact on me that either would refuse the service. I personally find it backwards, but it's only going to be a minor convenience as long as I can go to another doctor or pharmacist that will offer to treat me.

Chaplain brought up emergency situations, and I think in that case Philly is right. If someone refuses to treat me based on religious grounds because I'm a woman or an apostate or some other reason, then that person should not be allowed to work in the emergency room. In a life and death matter, there is no room for debate. Someone's personal beliefs do not trump someone's life.

So for me, probably a combination of #1, 3, and 5. As long as the doctor or pharmacist doesn't impinge on my choice or the choice of others, then I don't care. As long as the doctor or pharmacist is clear in what services they will offer and what services they won't then I can make a choice to not give them my patronage. When my choice is taken away, that's where it becomes an issue.

The Exterminator over at No More Hornets recently posted on the art form of Googl-oetry. Here is my contribution.

conclusion of biblical doctrines for lay christian
i'm odinary girl
     snorting girl
     girl in the kinoki commercial

why homeopathy is saying bad of baby girls and all girls?

an an ordinary girl
     achmed girl
     pig girl stories snort

i fell under the power
ordinary girls games

     anal sex
     china ass
     domestic discipline
     cow together sex movie
i have more sympathy for animals than humans

ordinary girl
     public education girls
     no ordinary girl

what happen when the ordinary person turn to very smart one


Update: For more googl-oetry visit
Letters from a broad
An Apostate's Chapel
The Choice Is Now
Primordial Blog
Greta Christina's Blog

I tried to get decent pictures of the eclipse, but these are only a shadow of what I could see with the naked eye. There were clouds skittering across the moon most of the night and once the eclipse was total they covered it completely. The few pictures I got of the total eclipse are completely black.

A tripod would probably help. I was forced to use the flash because I couldn't hold the camera still enough to get a good shot. Oh well, maybe in another 2 years...

And Evo, it was a balmy 14F for these shots.

Dikkii tagged me with the following meme:

1. Grab the nearest book (that is at least 123 pages long).
2. Open to p. 123.
3. Go down to the 5th sentence.
4. Type in the following 3 sentences.
5. Tag five people.

But I was taken aback by the chaos. Passengers scrabbled and tugged at a huge heap of battered suitcases that were dumped, unceremoniously, under the plane. Outside the airport, a swarm of men descended on us, urging us to ride with them into town. Infidel p.123

I haven't started the book yet, but now I'm even more intrigued. I vowed I'd finish Death By Black Hole before I started anything else.

I tag

The Exterminator
John Evo
Spanish Inquisitor
Babs
Keith

I think I'm becoming a sun-worshipper. Even in the suburbs where the sky is obstructed by buildings and ugly light poles the sky is still lovely.

Thusday: Caught on the way to work
Friday: Light painted across the sky
Saturday: Not worth getting out of bed for
Sunday: Sunset at the supermarketMonday: The sun is rising earlier
Tuesday: A beautiful sunrise

Wednesday: Clear and cold

Today is my birthday. It was a nice, mostly-lazy day thus far. I took the day off work and drove downtown to meet some friends for lunch. I even managed to squeeze a nap in around 5:00.

Am I the only one who can use Cosmos and The Universe as sleep aids? I find the shows very interesting, but by about the second commercial break I'm so relaxed that I drift off. I haven't been able to get through a single episode without dozing.

The only excitement for today is a new episode of Another Goddamned Podcast. What? It's my birthday. I'm allowed to make a plug. :)

And yes, I once had a Barbie birthday cake that probably looked a little like that. I think she was frosted in purple though because I hated pink. And not really a Barbie, but a cheap knock-off.

Ah, memories.

Last week I played cards for the first time in years. I forgot how much I enjoy playing simple strategy games like spades and hearts, especially with people I've never played with before. Card games, board games, video games, really anything with problem solving has always appealed to me. I think that's why I finally settled on computer science as a degree back in college. And even though I don't program anymore, I still enjoy the thought process behind it.

So what one thing have you not done in a while that you enjoy as a hobby or fun pass-time?

And while you're thinking watch this:



It's not my favorite song by Bitter:Sweet, but it's decent. I think it would make a good James Bond song.

I had the unfortunate draw of getting breakfast for us this morning. I was all set to go until I stepped outside and saw this:



Not that it was bad. What was bad is that I was dressed in sandals without a coat. Since the wind was blowing I went back in to get a coat, hat, gloves, and boots. I haven't payed attention to the weather in days and the snow was totally unexpected.

It's been an unusual winter for me, but my husband says this is more of what he remembers growing up. It isn't that we've had a lot of snow. Most individual snowfalls have been an inch or less. We've just had a lot more days where we've had a measurable amount of snowfall. I stopped counting around 10 and it might be double that by now. Usually, from the seven winters I've had here, we have about 4 or 5.

Anyway, this was probably our biggest snowfall this season, but within five hours it was all melting.

At first this just started out as a series of posts to point out excellent articles I found on the web, but it's grown into a lot more. I read over 1,000 articles to narrow it down to these few. But they don't seem like few as I'm going through my list for the week, nor when I publish the post.

I hope you, as a reader, find the list valuable. I'd like to continue the series, but it takes up more and more time every week. I've cut down my list of blogs to read a couple of times in the last couple of weeks just to keep up. And that makes me think that instead of broadening my focus, as I'd like to do, I'm narrowing it.

What I'd most like is for the readers to contribute as well. If you see an article that should be included in this list, please link it in the comments, or email me at the contact link in the sidebar.

Art
Evolutionary Art
Ilana Yahav's work is definitely unique (at least to me - never seen anything like it). With the depth of my artistic knowledge it's quite possible that this is a very common artform that I know nothing about. It’s a combination of painting and performance, done with sand instead of paint. I really like this particular one.

Atheism
Sunday Funnies #4: Billboard Battles!


Question # 1: What Kind Of Atheist Are You?
Do you atheize (I just made that word up) primarily to yourself, or are you a joiner? Do you socially interact as an atheist, or is your atheism simply incidental to your everyday life? Are you outspoken about your lack of belief, or do you keep it to yourself unless directly asked.

In short, are you an extroverted or introverted atheist?

Books
Lies Women Believe
I’d like to point out some other lies that women believe. Thankfully, skepchicks don’t fall for this kind of crap:

* Lies about themselves: Fulfilling your longings is selfish and evil. Women should never put themselves first. Jesus, Others, You is the way to JOY.
* Lies about sin: Sin is a real thing that you should worry about. Offending God is really, really bad, even worse than committing crimes that actually hurt people.
* Lies about their marriage: You should submit to your husband but your husband doesn’t have to submit to you.
* Lies about their emotions: Emotions are a sign of weakness or evil and only women have emotions.
* Lies about their circumstances: Women are weak and need help from God or men to deal with daily stresses.

To The Point, Rational Discussion
If a participant's argument is reformulated by an opponent, it should be expressed in the strongest possible version that is consistent with the original intention of the arguer. If there is any question about that intention or about implicit parts of the argument, the arguer should be given the benefit of any doubt in the reformulation.

Interview with Jessica Hagy, Author of Indexed


Games
Demo shows UI, PSP integration in PlayTV for the PS3
Europe will be getting a very neat product for the PS3 long before we do: PlayTV. The device features two high-resolution tuners and allows you to use your PS3 as a DVR, as well as use your PSP to tell your system to record a show or to watch your content from any WiFi connection. It's a pretty neat idea, and it gives Sony yet another corner of your home entertainment experience. Unfortunately, until the US embraces terrestrial digital broadcasting, we're locked out.

Government
Three Cases to Consider
Here we have, from three completely different milieus, victims of torture inventing crimes and incriminating others under torture. Does anyone really think that Herr Junius was a witch? Did he fly through the air to attend covens with the other witches of Bamberg? Did the rabbis of Damascus kill Father Thomas so that his blood could be used in Passover matzos? Does any but the most rabid anti-Semite believe the ‘blood libel’ really exist? Did a mysterious ‘rabbi Jacob’ create a poison out of frogs, spiders and communion wafers and, through a Europe-wide conspiracy, spread plague through poisoned wells?

A Blog Post That Deserved More Comments …let’s start with mine
But if civil union was the only thing a state granted, then it could be granted to a number of different relationships — not all of which would even necessarily be sexual. Perhaps two heterosexual women with children could decide to establish a civil union. I could think of several reasons they might choose to do so.

International
Williams is dangerous. He must be resisted
Faiths capture people. I do not mean this disparagingly. So of course do patriotisms, ideologies, families. But a religion, properly understood, makes profound claims on an individual and community, quite unlike the demands of a golf club. It involves the use of public places and public services, the subordination of the individual's will; and may demand that he subordinate his spouse's and children's wills too. Hence our unease about duress, and the completeness of “consent”.

Johann Hari: Rowan Williams has shown us one thing – why multiculturalism must be abandoned
Where a multiculturalist prizes the rights of religious groups, a liberal favours the rights of the individual. So if you want to preach that the Archangel Gabriel revealed the word of God to an illiterate nomad two millennia ago, you can do it as much as you like. You can write books and hold rallies and make your case. What you cannot do is argue that since this angel supposedly said women are worth half of a man when it comes to inheritance, and that gay people should be killed, you can ditch the rules of liberalism and act on it.

The job of a liberal state is not to stamp The True National Essence on its citizens, nor to promote "difference" for its own sake. It is to uphold the equal rights of every individual – whether they are white men or Muslim women. It has one liberal culture, with freedoms used differently by different people.

ESA, IIPA slam Canada for not fixing copyright "deficiencies"
Of course, just because a game is pirated doesn't always mean a sale has been lost. When pirated games are produced en masse in China and Russia, then moved through Paraguay into markets like Brazil—where the ESA admits high tariffs make the sales of legitimate games almost non-existent—the issue becomes even thornier, and the local governments may not have high levels of sympathy for the US economy. This could be why we're seeing a focus on Canada in these reports; our northern neighbor has a thriving game development community but suffers from easy availability of pirated games on the retail level.

The law, Sharia, and religious control
What Williams appears not to acknowledge is that secular civil law was set up to prevent religious interests over-riding the interests of individuals, and more than any other system in the history of the planet, it has done so. Canon law once permitted Catholics to take Jewish children away from their parents if a third party baptised them. Sharia permits the amputation, without anesthetic as if that made it better, of the hands of thieves. So far as I know Jewish law, not being of a proselytising religion, tends not to seek global domination, but it is so closely tied to the religious traditions of a particular ethnicity that it cannot function for all members of a multicultural and polyreligious society. Only secular law can do that.

Euthanasia may be illegal but it’s not exactly unpopular
What I found even more interesting is that even though Euthanasia is illegal in almost all of the world, public attitudes are largely sympathetic to Euthanasia. I got these charts from this blog, and the data is originally from this world survey. I had saved these charts on my pc months ago, and now cannot find them on the original site.

Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'
The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Movies
Whisper (2007)
I really hope that someday ABC buys the rights to Whisper and they just use some footage for it as a Sawyer flashback on Lost (in the movie, there's a back-story about his girlfriend cheating on him, maybe they can use it on Lost to explain why he refuses to get close to Kate). It will make Josh Holloway look better. Because honestly, he may call himself “Max” in the film, but he’s fucking Sawyer through and through. Same hairstyle, same mannerisms, and yes, same character (a two bit crook with shades of nobility). So either the guy is afraid to play outside of his comfort zone, or he simply just can’t act.

Politics
The Obama failing
There's much more in that speech that grates. For instance, he praises Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech for it's religious content, which he claims was necessary. NO. Read it again. King was a minister, and of course his religious tradition informed his speech, and the cadence of the speech is straight from good ol' sermonizing, but the religious references are nothing but little fillips on a call for social justice, for equality and freedom. If you read that speech and come away thinking it's a paean to religiosity, you're missing the point. Atheists and other secularists are moved and inspired by that speech; the religious content is background, not purpose.

Religion
I once was a born-again Christian…
I know that many Christians are unable or unwilling to contemplate that someone can have had the same experiences they’ve had and then turn away from it all. It’s a scary idea. It means they might be wrong. It means that they can’t say, “If you only felt what I’ve felt and lived what I’ve lived you’d turn your life over to God forever.”

10 cc of Atheism

Where Was God?
Clearly, not close by, or even in the general vicinity. He had failed to use his magical powers to prevent the accident from happening, though I can hear those of a religious nature saying that it could have been worse, but for god. However, I was focused on the actual work being done to help. I saw a very organized team of men and women, people who had trained for just this situation, using equipment and knowledge purchased by the taxpayers, probably with the help of some charitable contributions to volunteer companies, doing exactly what they had probably dedicated a portion of their lives to doing - saving the lives of others.



The End of Conservatism
Conservatism grew powerful in the 1970s and 1980s because it proposed solutions appropriate to the problems of the age—a time when socialism was still a serious economic idea, when marginal tax rates reached 70 percent, and when the government regulated the price of oil and natural gas, interest rates on checking accounts and the number of television channels. The culture seemed under attack by a radical fringe. It was an age of stagflation and crime at home, as well as defeat and retreat abroad. Into this landscape came Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, bearing a set of ideas about how to fix the world. Over the next three decades, most of their policies were tried. Many worked. Others didn't, but in any event, time passed and the world changed profoundly. Today, as Frum writes, "after three decades of tax cutting, most Americans no longer pay very much income tax." Inflation has been tamed, the economy does not seem overregulated to most, and crime is not at the forefront of people's consciousness. The culture has proved robust, and has in fact been enriched and broadened by its diversity. Abroad, the cold war is won and America sits atop an increasingly capitalist world. Whatever our problems, an even bigger military and more unilateralism are not seen as the solution.

Ellen Johnson is Wrong, Atheists Should Vote
Given that atheists represent at least 11% of the American population, we could be a powerful voting block if we chose to organize. But even without any formal organization, I think it is fair to assume that we tend to be a bit more oriented to reality than many of our theistic neighbors. I suspect that we are more likely to value secular humanism, science, reason, and critical thinking. Why would we not want these priorities to influence presidential politics?

Science
The galaxy that ate Detroit
NGC 1132 is also quite huge, bigger than the Milky Way (which has eaten its share of smaller galaxies over time too), and sits in a vast cloud of dark matter - normally invisible, but in this case revealing itself by its gravitational effect on the stars in the elliptical itself (actually, to be honest, I’m guessing how they found it: there are many ways to detect dark matter, but the venerable method is to measure the velocities of the stars in the galaxy, which are affected by dark matter; stars move faster when more dark matter is present in a halo around the galaxy). The amount of dark matter detected is way more than usually seen for a single galaxy; more evidence that this galaxy has been busily gobbling up companions — and their dark matter, too.

60 Second Science


Sociology
The Content of Their Character: Judging On the Basis Of Beliefs
If someone believes that gay couples shouldn't be allowed to adopt because homosexuality is a crime against God and humanity, should I really not judge them on their morality? If someone believes that their tax money shouldn't pay for poor children's health care because "those people are always looking for a handout," should I not judge them on their compassion? If someone believes that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago despite human historical records dating well before that, should I not judge them on their good sense? If someone believes that all human beings have been infested by space aliens, should I not judge them on their sanity? If someone believes that they don't have to reduce their fuel consumption because one person can't make any difference -- or because the Rapture is coming and none of this pollution and global warming stuff will matter -- should I not judge them on their social responsibility? And if someone believes that the moon landing didn't happen because they read it in the Some Guy On The Internet Journal, should I not judge them on their... well, on their judgment, their ability to discern, among other things, what is and is not a good source of information?

Why I Hate Valentine’s Day (Oh, and Jane Fonda Said “Cunt”)
Valentine’s Day makes me nauseous. Every year it’s the same thing: over-commercialized, prewritten crappy poetry on cards, chocolate, roses, chocolate roses, candy, hearts, candy hearts that say “do me,” paper hearts, dinners, “Kiss Kiss” Bears, poems, balloons, stuffed animals, balloons shaped like animals, chocolates arranged in the shape of hearts, and anything else one can fit into this prepackaged love fest. This whole holiday reeks of artificiality, consumerism, and bullshit.

I know I mentioned a couple of times seeing the film Pamela's Prayer. I thought about this most special of special days dedicated to love, that I'd discuss what's wrong with the movie and my thoughts about the message it portrays. (And why it's been pissing me off for years.)

The movie opens with Pamela's father promising her mother, who died during childbirth, that he'll raise Pamela in the right way. We see Pamela growing up and every night she and her father say a prayer together. When she reaches high school she wants to date, but her father won't let her because dating leads to promiscuity and sets kids on the road to ruin.

Pamela rebels and decides to date one of the cool kids at school behind her father's back. The cool kid brags to his friends how he's gotten all of the Christian girls. When he tries to kiss her, she runs home in tears. To make matters worse he tells everyone in school that he's had sex with her and she has to deal with the shame of the lie. How could he?

Pamela learns her lesson and decides to be patient and follow her father's wishes. Eventually we meet young dreamy working at the small business that Pamela's father owns. Seeing that Pamela is a chaste woman, he proposes to her and they get married, only then consummating their love with a kiss (although they never show a kiss in the movie).

That's pretty much the story in a nutshell. It's a simplistic fairy-tale suitable for no one. Not only are there issues with the message, but with the way that women are portrayed in the story.

And here's the trailer to show you exactly what I mean.



First, Pamela is little more than a prop. Her personality is non-existent and the only thing the film-makers care about portraying is her purity. The only other woman in the movie is Pamela's best friend who has sex with her boyfriend to "prove that she loves him". When Pamela tells her father about it he collapses as if the young girl has been tragically killed. We never see her again, so maybe God struck her down or something for her mistake.

And once young dreamy notices the wallflower of Pamela, he asks her father about her as a potential mate before he even tries to assess Pamela's feelings for him. The most nauseating scene is when he praises her father for keeping her pure. Make no mistake, she is chattel.

There isn't a single kissing scene in the movie. The actors aren't married so it would be a sin for them to kiss, according to the film-makers. Just as Pamela and young dreamy move in to kiss at their wedding the movie cuts the scene.

Pamela and her father have said a prayer every night together since she was born. And it's no different on her wedding night. She and her father say a prayer together before he turns the responsibility for Pamela's spiritual well-being over to her new husband. The movie leads the viewer to believe that Pamela cannot be responsible for her own decisions and that a man must always guard her purity.

In addition to the way women are portrayed I have a problem with the way sex and marriage are portrayed. I'm not particularly bothered about the choice to wait for marriage to have sex. It's probably going to lead to some disappointment and possibly incompatibility between the partners, but it's each person's choice to make.

But what I most have trouble with is holding people to such a standard of purity. Life is not perfect and neither are people. Even a good partnership is filled with disagreements, disappointments, and compromise. It's not that I think people shouldn't strive for perfection, but that they should also live in reality. Not to mention that there is nothing wrong with a healthy sexual relationship outside of marriage. In fact, I would encourage a couple of live together for a few years before even considering marriage. That way both partners can have more of a realistic expectation of each other before contemplating marriage. Marriage isn't the only way to make a commitment.

Only people that hold to the insulting phrase, "Why buy the cow when the milk is free," would not object to this movie. And that is insulting to men, not just women. It assumes that men don't seek an honest relationship, but would rather steal the only thing a woman has to offer (her purity). And it also makes women into manipulating bitches that use sex to get men to do what they want.

So although the MPAA would probably not find any of the themes explicitly objectionable for children, the ideas expressed are deeply unsuitable. This is a movie I'd rather not have children see.

Wednesday: Snow
Thursday: Just a little pink on the horizon
Friday: Mostly cloudy
No photoshopping here. How can two pictures taken seconds apart reflect such a difference in color?
Saturday: A clear, sunny morning
Sunday: Not a sunrise, but a crescent moon in the sky above a fading sunset
Monday: Cloudy
Tuesday: Snow sprinkled like sugar

70 words

Touch Typing

(via Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant)

Sorry this is a day late this week, but the podcast has taken up more of my time than I thought it would. But I'm having a blast, so I can't complain.

Art
The difference between the East and the West in pictures
I found these pictures brilliant, as they explain the differences between the East and West in a way that words never could. Although Yang Liu orginally made them to show the differences between Germany (where she lives) and China, Germany could easily be the West and China could represent the East. At times I have used the term West instead of Germany and East instead of China, but this may not necessarily be so. Quite a few of the pictures used to represent China could represent the Indian way of life pretty well.

Education
Seen and unseen parenting responsbilities
Older male colleagues (there are no older female colleagues) are so accommodating to the Active Dads. They praise the guys' involvement with their children's lives. Yet these same older male colleagues don't understand why myself and the one other mom don't want to do things like have all-weekend retreats or 5 pm meetings. Women's parenting responsibilities are completely unseen by our senior colleagues.

Games
Video games, the male brain, and addiction
There was no difference in motor performance-that is to say that men and women both had the same skill, but male volunteers were significantly quicker to pick up on how the game worked, and scored better than their female counterparts. Using fMRI scanners, the authors then generated brain activation profiles for the gamers, and they discovered a significant difference between male and female brains: the male brains showed a greater activation of the right nucleus accumbens, right amygdala and the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex. In addition, there was a positive correlation between success in the test game and male brain activation, but not in female brains.

GamePro hypes Gears of War 2 coverage, delivers speculation
We're sure that there's work being done on Gears of War—games that are successful don't end with only one title—but no one has any information to report, and teasing your readers by saying you do is a little... well, shady. One has to sell magazines, granted, but why not try to be a little bit more forthcoming about what information you actually have?

Another editor down: Ryan Davis leaves GameSpot
Torres also provided some new insights into GameSpot's past conflict between editorial and sales/marketing. It seems that after former editor-in-chief Greg Kasavin left for a position at Electronic Arts back in January of last year and the editor-in-chief position was still vacant, CNet (GameSpot's parent company) executive Josh Larson was put in charge of both the business side as well as the editorial side. "Last year, because we didn't have that position, he was kind of like straddling–he was trying to do business and kind of support editorial," Torres noted. "Clearly there needed to be a better line drawn, so that's why the EIC position came up and that's what I'm doing."

Cock the vote: Gamecock gets political
Gamecock Media Group, so far better known for its absurd marketing tactics than for actually making games, is continuing this tradition with its Cock the Vote campaign.

The project is affiliated with Rock the Vote, a program that attempts to encourage young people to vote, but it's clear that this is more about getting the Hail to the Chimp name out there and less about raising social awareness. Still, any attempt to politicize gamers by dressing up like furries is worth... something.

Percentage of M-rated titles halved since 2005. What gives?
So why isn't the number of M-rated title increasing as fast as the rest of the gaming market? It's possible that the drop in percentage of M-rated games is purely a financial decision. Anecdotally, it appears as if many of the successful M-rated games are sequels, games that are a part of a proven franchise. Assassin's Creed may have been new IP, but that game also enjoyed a huge marketing budget and was hyped for years before release. With outsized budgets, M-rated games that don't live up to sales expectations have become riskier endeavors for developers.

Drink the Kool-aid: get Left Behind Eternal Forces for "free"
To enter, navigate to the promotion page and select either "download" or "ship." Though the game itself is free, you'll still have to fork out a few bucks. Selecting the download option will prompt you to pay a $4.99 processing fee, while the ship option requires you to pay the shipping fees. Left Behind: Eternal Forces normally retails for $24.95.

History
American Jacobin
First, the Bible is not at all a political revolutionary book. Jesus (or his disciples like Paul) did not abolish one social or political institution. Not tyrannical government, not chattel slavery, not rule of Kings, not one. Today social liberals who preach the “social gospels” I believe misuse the Bible as do the Christian Marxists who advanced “liberation” theology. However, American Whigs who used the Bible in revolt against Great Britain were just as guilty of advancing something the Bible does not support: the right to political revolution. Be it the American or French (or quite frankly any political) Revolutions, Marxist governments or a modern social welfare state, none of these notions is “biblical.” And all who would use the Bible in support of such are equally guilty of misusing the good book.

International
What price social cohesion?
Dr Williams says that the idea, that one law should apply to all, is dangerous. So, let me try and understand this. You want to create separate legal systems so that whatever little interaction or participation that the Muslim community does have with the British mainstream can also be eliminated? Nice one!

What next? Separate MPs for Muslims? Oh, wait. They won’t need any MPs. Nobody needs to legislate once the Sharia is adopted into the British law. It is God’s word or something, isn’t it?

Our Friends, the Egyptians
The arrests began in October 2007, when police stopped two men having an altercation on a street in central Cairo. When one of them told the officers that he was HIV-positive, police immediately took them both to the Morality Police office and opened an investigation against them for homosexual conduct. The two men told human rights defenders that they were slapped and beaten for refusing to sign statements the police wrote for them. They spent four days in the Morality Police office handcuffed to an iron desk, sleeping on the floor. Police later subjected the two men to forensic anal examinations designed to “prove” that they had engaged in homosexual conduct.

Movies
Monster
This brings us to Monster, which, like all Asylum films, is a copy of another film, with superfluous changes and a much lower budget. This one is set in Tokyo, but otherwise the structure and plot are the same – some attractive folks are shooting on a consumer camera and end up making a documentary about a monster attacking a giant city. Instead of a bunch of hipsters, our characters are just two incredibly cute Americans who planned on making a documentary about global warming. The fact that the one scene in which they do this is almost entirely inaudible is sort of a blessing in hindsight – it would have been a shame if they had made their entire documentary, then went to edit it and discovered that they should have invested 60 bucks in a boom mike.

Nonbelieving Literati
A Plague of Carnivals. No, Wait! A Carnival of Plagues!
The current book under discussion is Albert Camus‘ The Plague, a novel about…well, I’m getting ahead of myself. One of the prime directives of the Nonbelieving Literati is to read a book picked by one of the participating blog members within the alloted time, and write an essay about it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a straight forward review of the book, but can be on anything that uses the book as a starting point of discussion. Due to time constraints and a backlog of other reading material, I failed to read or participate this time around. Having read the essays submitted so far, I thought it would be a good idea to make my contribution a mini-Carnival where all of the essays could be accessed from a central location. Actually, it wasn’t my original good idea, it was the Exterminator’s, which I freely swiped (I did say he was the original original, didn’t I?).

Nonbelieving Literati: The Plague
Camus isn't using 'humanist' in the sense of, say, the Humanist Symposium. I suspect he is referring to something closer to Renaissance humanism, and more specifically to the notion that men and women are, or should be, free to control their own destinies. We think we're free, he says, and we go on making plans, but in fact we are not free; certainly not so long as there are pestilences or invading fascists. The use of a plague -- a natural phenomenon -- as an allegory for an occupation -- a human phenomenon -- is interesting here. Whatever he thinks of the moral issues surrounding the behaviour of the German government and army, they are not the focus of this book. This book is not arguing that we should create a world which does operate the way we want it to. This book takes it for granted that there are pestilences of all types, at looks at how we deal with them.

Sick of The Plague
The reporter trapped in the town was supposed to, I guess, give me some sense of urgency. Being cut off from his lover in Paris he’s motivated to try and find a way to circumvent the bureaucracy and be allowed to leave. I felt more that he was driven by a sense of entitlement than any true feeling for his lover.

Politics
How The Middle Class Fucked Itself in This Gilded Age
The illusion of wealth in the middle class is much greater than the reality they truly face. Their real wages are down, their health care costs are astronomical, and their personal debt load would make previous generations shocked beyond belief. Now we are seeing the value of their homes, the single greatest source of wealth for the middle class, dropping in many areas of the country. Things are not good. Prosperity has been replaced by economic uncertainty and panic in some sectors. Foreclosures are higher than they have been in a generation. Banks are losing their ass right now. The Fed just dropped the prime lending rate 1.25% to stave off a recession, inflation be damned. The government is pumping $150 billion (as tax cuts) into the economy right when we owe the fucking Chinese our ass in government bonds to pay off our already astronomical national debt. The dollar isn't worth shit. This is all fucking scary, folks. It's 1929 all over again. Or maybe worse.

Mitt Romney: Secularist… Kind of.
Earlier on in the speech (alright, yeah, this is not in chronological order…), he said another very curious thing.

Again, I’m not quoting verbatim here, but…

“The people in this country believe in something. For some people that’s faith. For those who don’t have faith, that’s their ethnicity or their communities…”

Again, I don’t really support Mitt Romney, but I was very surprised to hear him say that. When the secularists got outraged by his faith speech, I think he learned a lesson, and for once, politicians seem to be acknowledging that there are non-believers in this country.

Granted, I didn’t pay much attention to how secular presidential candidates were in the past, and I haven’t heard in full any of the other candidate’s speeches, but after hearing all the Republicans and Democrats take so many opportunities to talk about their faith, it was a (refreshing) surprise to hear one mention that there are people who don’t have faith.

The Wrong Experience
This is the problem with Hillary Clinton. She is highly intelligent, has real experience and is an attractive candidate. But she is terrified to act on her beliefs. In fact, she seems so conditioned by what she sees as political constraints that one can barely tell where her beliefs begin and where those constraints end.

Putting Candidates' Religion to the Test
As much as possible, the presidential candidates should refrain from talking about their religious beliefs. Perhaps even a self-imposed ban on public avowals of religious would be wise. It's all too easy to cross the fine line between expressing faith and aggressively declaring it, and religious tolerance is, I think, inversely proportional to the latter.

Jesus Loves Sleazy Politics
The thing I find interesting is that, while Dobson has taken great care to meet his legal obligations to keep the entities distinct, he has been less careful about enabling his disciples to distinguish between the two groups. By carrying the familiar name over to the new organization, he has deliberately muddied the waters to such a degree that devotees of his ministry will be unlikely to distinguish his pastoral statements from his political pronouncements. Moreover, his continued involvement in both the ministry and the political group makes it clear that he wants to be identified with both. I can only conclude that his political group is merely a very thinly veiled mouthpiece for his ministry.

On Using Feminine Cultural Advantage
Well, it's true. The ability to show emotion and have people react sympathetically rather than scornfully is a cultural advantage that women have over men. And Clinton should have no more qualms over using it than a male politician should over using, say, a tough-guy image to try to attract votes. That is to say, it's silly image politics, but it happens all the time. Why should it be more wrong to use a feminine cultural advantage? Masculine ones are used every day and nobody blinks. And if the aim is to try to even the playing field, that doesn't mean that women should always try to conform to masculine methods of gaining respect.

Barack O-Bible
Just a few decades ago, the Bible Belt voted overwhelmingly Democrat. Christian morals and the Democrat political values were a natural match. The Democrats stood up for the poor and disadvantaged. But this lead to supporting the Civil Right movement of the 60's, and this was highly unpopular in the Bible Belt. And honestly, the Bible is not a great champion of Civil Rights.
But the Civil Rights movement worked very well for the Democrats, and so they became the party supporting women's rights as well, and this lead to supporting abortion, and even attracted supporters of gay rights and animal rights.

Religion
I'll make up for it, okay?
I mean, enough that God actually would care about who won the Super Bowl. But this story - that he killed Tyree's mother, and then - I dunno, felt bad about it? she badgered and/or begged Jesus into it? what? - made up for it by letting him win the Super Bowl?

Wilfred Laurier Loves Jebus - Freethinkers, Not So Much
A student named Tyler Handley, the president of the soon-to-be group, said in the comments over at The Frame Problem, "Our campus has 6 campus clubs of a religious nature." SIX groups that love Jebus or Muhammad or Buddha or some other fella of dubious paternity, existence, or distinction. You can bet your lunch money that those groups, "...respect and tolerate the views of others...." Especially atheists and agnostics. Religious folks are known for their tolerance.

Is Sex for Procreation?
These difficulties persist as long as one clings to the view that the only reason for sex is procreation. But if we discard that assumption, the matter comes into clear focus. An alternative explanation that accounts for the facts much better is that sex has two primary purposes: for procreation and also for pair bonding. And while pair bonding strengthens the family structure needed to raise healthy children, that is not its only purpose. In nature, it can also be used as a stress reliever, to strengthen group cohesion, as social currency, and simply for pleasure. Even homosexual sex exists in nature. Are animals violating "natural law" when they use sex for these purposes?

Science
Building Blocks of Life Detected in Distant Galaxy
Esteban Araya is an astronomer at New Mexico Tech in Socorro and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

He said the discovery of methanimine in Arp 220, along with "abundant circumstantial evidence, such as the short time it took life to appear on the early Earth, suggest that life ... may be quite common in the universe."

Moreover, he said, the discovery shows complex organic molecules can exist in very inhospitable environments, such as starburst regions.

The shake-ups during rapid star formation probably created the molecules in the first place—but the chance that they'll yield complex life in such a wild scene is low, Araya pointed out.

Highly moral - yet highly irrational. Steven Pinker and the colors of morality
Let's think first about two distinct cultures - and I'll use Southeast Asian and Western European. It's very likely, as Pinker shows us, that different cultures would have distinct "colors" that are more heavily emphasized than others. We might expect that in Southeast Asia, the moral values of "authority" and "purity" are given higher moral emphasis. For the Western European cultural community, we might see "harm" and "fairness" as more heavily expressed moral features, while each may treat "group loyalty" approximately the same.

Within cultures you will have this same sort of dichotomy based on politics, religions, race, ethnicities, etc. One group may most heavily weigh "group loyalty", another "purity" and yet a third group views "harm" as the highest moral consideration (and so on).

Three Month Composite of Comet Holmes


Sports
I'll make up for it, okay?
I mean, enough that God actually would care about who won the Super Bowl. But this story - that he killed Tyree's mother, and then - I dunno, felt bad about it? she badgered and/or begged Jesus into it? what? - made up for it by letting him win the Super Bowl?

In my last post on Voting Criteria I listed five criteria for deciding on a candidate: Upholding the Constitution, Education, Civil Liberties, Health Care, and Immigration Reform. After reading the comments and thinking about it some more, I don't think I can narrow it down to just five criteria. It's just too narrow. So I'm going to add some more that are blatantly missing off the previous list. I'm not going to rank them because it's just too difficult. So consider them of equal importance.

The Economy
While I think the economy is much too complex for a President to have control over it, I do think the President does have an impact through policy. I'm not pointing fingers because I'm really pretty ignorant on this subject, but the national debt bothers me and I feel it's had a huge impact on our economy, from the value of the dollar, to the earning power of the average American. Originally I didn't add this one to the list because I don't think I'm educated enough on economic theory to be a good judge and I doubt I can really learn enough between now and November to know what I'm evaluating. So definitely don't take my word on my future ratings in this category.

Foreign Policy
I didn't add this one because I thought a President that addressed my five criteria would probably do well in improving our foreign relations. But maybe that's not a good assumption to make. Certainly diplomacy should be considered.

The Environment
Honestly, this one is important to me and I overlooked it. I think it's important for our government to encourage renewable energy research and raise the standards for MPG and CO2 emissions across the board. And there are many reasons to encourage Americans to conserve and move towards a less wasteful society.

So where is this all going? What I might do, if I can steal a page from Vistaluna and rate each candidate on a scale from 1 to 5. I think it'd be good to set a minimum in the beginning for someone to meet my requirements and then rate each candidate, add it all up, and see how the candidates score and if they meet my *ahem* high standards.

But really, the process isn't that easy for deciding, so I'll have to think about it some more. Anyone have any suggestions?

Related Posts
Deciding on a Candidate
Voting Criteria

So some crazy people I know had this crazy idea of starting a podcast discussing the world from an atheistic point of view. I must have been crazy too because I joined them.

After a few false starts we have our first podcast available at the Another Goddamned Podcast blog. It's an excellent podcast, in my opinion, even though I still can't get used to hearing myself talk. We're still improving though, and we'd really like feedback from people out there in the Atheosphere. Give it a listen and let us know what you think.

Our first podcast is titled Barack Obama: Pandering to the Pious.

Wednesday: I caught a blurred picture of a partial moon in the sky
Then I happily snapped the first good sunrise in a while with pink color, but then...
..as I was leaving the colors had deepened and I had to take another shot.
and one more for good measure
Thursday: A gray day + orbs, bonus! (it's possible the orbs were snowflakes, but they didn't flash like last week's photograph)
The clouds lingered, but no snow was expected.
Saturday: I got up early to clean the apartment. Aren't you jealous?
and the crescent moon
Sunday: A thunderstorm turns to freezing rain and sleet.
Monday: Fog
Tuesday: Enlarge to see the flash reflecting off rain drops. Sorry, Evo, they're not stars.

In my Deciding on a Candidate post last week I said that I would come up with a list of criteria for deciding who I planned to vote for in the upcoming election in November. Here is a list of the top five issues that I plan to base my vote upon.

Upholding the Constitution
The presidential oath is a constitutional requirement for each President to take before assuming the office.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The most basic quality I look for in a President is to do exactly what he or she must pledge to do.

Education
Many of my fellow bloggers have been concentrating on science education. I think it's important, but I think a better quality of education in all subjects is of equal importance. Our children are our future, blah, blah blah. Seriously though, if we want people to make good decisions they have to not just know the facts, but be able to reason through the options.

Civil Liberties
If the government grants a right or privilege to one group, it should be granted to everyone. In most cases I can think of the government should just stay out of private affairs. Enough said.

Health Care
As a society I believe that we should take care of our own. Since the government represents us a society, then I think it's the best way for us to take care of our sick and disenfranchised. Yes, I'm talking about health care for everyone. I don't know the best way to accomplish it and I think there are many issues that have to be addressed before it can be viable, but I don't think people should suffer or die because they cannot afford treatment or an operation. It reflects on us poorly as a society.

Immigration Reform
Immigration is a serious issue for our country and I think that our immigration process needs to be reformed. There are very obviously many jobs in our country that are filled by immigrants and yet we can't address that need within the law. Thus far addressing that deficit has been blocked by nationalism, bigotry against the poor, and racism. Citizens or not, they are people.

There are many other issues that are important, but didn't make my list. I feel like these issues are fundamental and will help in all areas. If you disagree, by all means, let me know in the comments and why you disagree. After all, you have plenty of time to convince me otherwise between now and November.

Several years ago my father had bypass surgery. They planned on bypassing three arteries, but ended up doing four. During the surgery he had a cluster of strokes that left him in a coma for a about a month. After he woke up it was a long road to recovery. He was in rehab for about two months, but continued to have difficulties after he was released.

The change in him was overwhelming for me. He had been the strong patriarch of the family, but his illness left him unable to do even the easiest of things. He's a proud man and it was very difficult for him to have his family take care of him. My mother told me later on that when he was in a coma he believed he was in hell. I'm sure my father's faith was tested before, but never in this way. He didn't know what he had done in his life to warrant such punishment. He was shaken.

I was shaken too. My father has always seemed extremely sure of his convictions. It's the central part of everything he does. I was torn between wanting to encourage him to question his faith and wanting him to help him past his doubts and be happy again. Thinking of my father as an unbeliever was difficult for me. As a daughter I wanted him to be happy and his experience had put him in a deep depression. As a non-believer (I wasn't yet an atheist) I wanted to encourage him to question what he believed despite the fact it might make him more unhappy.

But what held me back the most is that I didn't want to proselytize. I didn't feel comfortable wading in on his personal struggle and encouraging him to take one path or another. Perhaps that was silly, but I wanted him to make his own decision without outside influence. And it was silly because I'm sure his pastor, friends, and other family members encouraged him in his faith. I may have been the only dissenting influence and I held back. If he would have asked me, I think I would have been honest with him about my own thoughts. But he never did and I regret that the conversation never occurred.

I feel like I let an opportunity pass and that I should have tried to talk to him. But maybe that conversation could still happen. I'm still struggling with atheism and proselytizing. I find it distasteful, and yet, I have no problem talking about my internal thoughts with people on the internet. Maybe the difference is between sharing and persuading?

In my posts I'm sharing my thoughts, not trying to convince anyone to take my point of view. But in a conversation with a person, I think I'd be more likely to try to persuade and change a point of view.

Do you think atheists should proselytize and where do you think the line is between being honest about your beliefs and stepping over the line into preaching to other people?

Atheism
MySpace: No place for Atheists?
Early this month, MySpace again deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group (35,000 members). This deletion, due largely to complaints from people who find atheism offensive, marks the second time MySpace has cancelled the group since November 2007.

What’s unique in this case is that the Atheist and Agnostic Group was the largest collection of organized atheists in the world. The group had its own Wikipedia entry, and in April won the Excellence in Humanist Communication Award (2007) from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Secular Student Alliance.

The Middle Ground
Atheists don’t argue from the assumption that god does not exist, which you would expect if we were on opposing sides, where the common perception places us. The only assumption an atheist makes is that the evidence, if properly pursued, will lead to the right conclusion. From that assumption we look at the evidence, both pro and con, and accept or reject it, as appropriate until a conclusion can be reached. So in a theist/atheist debate, the atheist is the only one with no ax to grind. The atheist is the only one who is arguing from a neutral position. The atheist is the only one taking the middle ground.

My Conflict Over Religious Bigotry, Part 1
My feelings about bigotry are far more conflicted. If a Christian hates someone he or she has never met, dismissing them as immoral, destined for hell, unworthy of citizenship, and the like, simply because the person is labeled an atheist, this is anti-atheist bigotry. But it also happens to be a part of the Christian religion insofar as the Christian in question intends to follow his or her bible. Does this change things, and if so, how?

Books
Defensiveness, Rationalization, Mulishness... What Does That Have To Do With Religion? Mistakes Were Made, Part 2
And of particular relevance, I think, is one of the book's main themes: the human tendency to reject any and all ideas coming from people we disagree with. The more entrenched we get in a belief, the more unwilling we are to acknowledge that our opponents have any useful ideas whatsoever, or any valid points to make.

Entertainment
From the Sublime to the Absurd
Do we mourn something different when someone dies young? Largely, I think we mourn the promise lost. But somewhere and very oddly, I think, we savour, perhaps even envy them in their death the fact that they will be remembered in eternally youthful images of varied hues of machismo, vulnerability, desirability and passion. We, on the other hand, if at all remembered, will be all wrinkled and frail.

Games
EA responds to FOX Mass Effect fiasco
The resulting coverage was insulting to the men and women who spent years creating a game which is acclaimed by critics for its high creative standards. As video games continue to take audiences away from television, we expect to see more TV news stories warning parents about the corrupting influence of interactive entertainment. But this represents a new level of recklessness.

Unreal licensees subpoenaed in Silicon Knights versus Epic case
The problem with this unveiling of licensing contracts, in the eyes of Epic and the various contract holders, is that the crucial information on intimate fee negotiations and other "trade secrets" would be exposed, which would pose a serious problem for Epic when it comes to selling to future licensees.

PTC throws down gauntlet, argues for video game legislation
It was time to ask the obvious question: why focus on games? The FTC has found that children are for more likely to be able to buy R-rated movies than M-rated games, so why fight so hard for legislation on the smaller issue? "We frequently hear from our members and parents that keeping violent video games out of their children's hands is a top priority," McKiernan replied. "And the evidence is conclusive: countless independent studies confirm that repeated exposure to graphic sexual, violent and profanity-laced video games has a harmful and long term effect on children."

Cooper Lawrence apologizes for Mass Effect attack
Let us focus on the fact that FOX viewers aren't likely reading the Times, meaning this is a nice case of having your cake and eating it too. Let us also discount the likelihood that she apologized only because her book was getting pounded by negative reviews on Amazon.com. Going by her words, she showed up to talk about games, was told what to think, and then aggressively argued about a game she knew nothing about. The fact that she was comfortable taking that a demeaning tone on the topic and then admitting that she had no clue what she was talking about when called on it makes her look worse; her argument seems to be this isn't her fault, since she can't be expected to actually learn about what she's attacking.

Government
Declarations of War
For the separation of powers system to work properly, each branch is supposed to be jealous of the few powers it’s granted — unwilling to allow the other branches to usurp their powers.

When the Congress, which has the authority to declare war, turns their power over to the President, to use at his discretion, they are engaged in “delegation.” Delegation is un-Constitutional. It breaks the separation of powers.

Movies
Untraceable
The problem with Untraceable is that it tries to cater to two audiences: those who like Hostel or Saw, and those who enjoy Diane Lane movies and “adult thrillers” (read: movies in which putting a child in momentary danger is considered “edgy”). And it ends up satisfying neither.

Cloverfield
Like I said though, the film could be a bit shorter, because they sort of go overboard with how much these average looking hipsters can survive in a short time. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say that there are two points before the ending where the movie could have conceivably ended, and with each “addition” you are required to put a little too much of your disbelief on hold. Considering that the whole film hinges on the “reality” presentation of this event, it’s a little strange that they expect you to believe regular people can survive 2.5 incredibly violent acts (sorry for slight spoiler, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to word it for like 10 min without spoiling anything and gave up).

Nonbelieving Literati
NL: The Plague by Albert Camus
It is Tarrou's philosophy, to some extent, but mostly Rieux's, that Camus approves of. Man finds meaning only inside himself; no meaning exists elsewhere. Not in the universe—that notion is absurd. In fact, the Absurd in Camus's philosophy is precisely this realization, that there is no meaning in the universe, that life is defined by death and is fleeting, and that the meaning of life is what we bring to it: a fight for happiness in the face of death. Tarrou acknowledges the Absurd, but fights it only when he must; Rieux, on the other hand, battles the Absurd on a daily basis and refuses to yield, though his "victories will never be lasting".

I’ve heard there aren’t any atheists in a Plague
This is not to say that Camus suggested that many people in the town were not religious and did not pray about their situation. Naturally, in any such situation, god will insert himself (in a calamity which, presumably, he could have prevented in the first place). But Camus populated his story with people faced by an unreasonable, uncaring death – people that I as an atheist could fully understand and sympathize with. Fortunately, Camus gave us insights into how humans handle such tragedy sans god. There were no victories in The Plague. The plague won and then disappeared. But each man and woman carried on in their own very human ways, prostrating themselves before the powers of nature, but not before the supernatural.

Nonbelieving Literarti: The Plague
I felt like I was missing something. When I read that it was likely a metaphor for the resistance to the Nazi occupation of France, more of the story clicked into place. A human, mortal enemy seemed to fit better than nature itself, though in that enemy some of the impact in the implied theme that there is no control over one's life is lost.

Humans vs. Death: La Peste (The Plague) by Camus
I think The Plague succeeds at delivering its message: We're all in this together. In the struggle against death, death always wins in the end. But we can't (and shouldn't) give up the struggle. Because we're human.

Choosing Between a "But" and an "And"
Ah, the writer: ever the optimist. Whether it’s Albert Camus, or those of us ranting and raving in the Atheosphere, or the clerk who secretly scribbles his novel night after night after night, we must tell ourselves — delude ourselves maybe — that we can take a bunch of words, throw them onto a piece of paper or a screen, and have other people understand what we’re trying to say. Writing is unlike other learned skills that get easier with practice. The more you do it, the better you get at it, the harder writing becomes. That perfect sentence never wants to happen.

no excuses: thoughts on camus' the plague
You either remain caught up in your own reasons, living like your everyday habits and worries actually mean something, or admit to yourself that you have no reasons. If you do that and choose to go on living, then you accept the consequences. You have no excuses for yourself, but you are free. Everything is permitted, and you bear the burden of your own decisions without anything or anyone to hide behind. In many ways this is a very bleak and lonely way to look at the world. Part of me shrinks away from it, but part of me knows that my reaction to it doesn’t make it any less true. Whether we choose to face it or not, it’s there.

The Plague, aka, Insipid Women
Bind me, gag me and whip me! Please! Do something to put me out of my misery! Is this not one of the most pathetically bland female characters ever to populate a novel? Rieux’s wife is even blander, a literary accomplishment that I would have presumed impossible had I not read it myself.

Politics
The Politics of Science
With all the problems this country is facing, the presidential candidates are heavily focused on issues of change, the economy, and the war in Iraq. It is difficult to discern their positions on many issues that are important to the scientific community. Even if the other issues are more important, some small part of my vote is still going to be based on a candidate's support for the sciences, and I would like to know where they stand.

Democrats, Horse Races, and John Edwards
And the fact that people don't vote for the person they most want to win is, I think, one of the main reasons the Democrats have traditionally coughed up such a pathetic succession of hairballs. I think the horserace mentality, the "Is he/she electable?" mentality, is what keeps the attention focused on such a narrow field... and what keeps attention off of anyone outside that field.

Stir the Pot or Drown at the Bottom
We have been watching this mindless charade being played out in Congress since the decisive 2006 elections. Then, as well as now, the majority of Americans expressed their displeasure, frustration, and downright vitriolic anger at the insanity that had become the Iraq War, economic lunacy, ridiculous tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans, and a scandalous “me and mine,” “good ol’ boy” administration. We wanted to transform the mutilated anatomy that was America in order to reflect its true constitutional, democratic form once more. We had demanded a new direction, an end to the bullshit, and a cease and desist on all attempts to negate our Constitution for the instant gratification of the powerful few.

Religion
Christian Culture
Many Christians do not hate atheists; they simply forget that we are there and don't understand why we aren't more willing to indulge them. They see us as complaining about an endless parade of trivial issues (e.g., god in the pledge of allegiance or on money, Christmas displays at city hall, etc.). These issues do not bother them because their religion is the one being promoted. While it would bother them if it was Islam being promoted instead of Christianity, this is not the case, and so they do not have to confront it.

God will pay your medical bills IF…
I also don’t have time to be nice, so excuse me in advance. Apparently there some idiot Christians in Denver who think we don’t need health insurance because some unregulated Christian group takes their money and helps pay their medical bills — a sort of catastrophic insurance policy — but get this: ONLY if you’re a Christian. (The baby Jesus must be crying. Shouldn’t Chrstians help others?) What a crock of shit. I can’t even get my bile down enough to write about this coherently.

Empathy For Christians
When I attempt to relate to Christians in an empathic manner, I can begin to understand why atheists are so threatening. Most (if not all) Christians experience periods of doubt. Their faith conflicts with reality, and they are not immune to perceiving the conflict. I imagine that some of these times are scary. After all, many Christians will tell you that their faith is an important part of their identity. Questioning one's identity or encountering threats to how one has defined oneself provoke the sort of existential anxiety with which we can all relate.

On the Character of Jesus
Unless one is a moral relativist, a label most Christians would fiercely deny, the moral conclusion must be that if slavery was ever wrong, it was always wrong. That being the case, we would expect a divine being not bound by the culture and prejudices of the time of his incarnation to have condemned it unequivocally. Instead, he speaks of it and works it into his teachings as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Light Bulb Time
Look at the big one. Immortality. Religion says that when we die, we really don’t, we just go somewhere else; to a better place where all of the people we loved in this life will join us, and we them, in the next. And we’ll all congregate with god, for eternity, in an place of immense joy and bliss. It sounds so wonderful, but in reality what religion is promising is the negation of a natural phenomenon - death. Death, we know, is a reality. The promise of immortality, so far, is nothing but words.

Science
Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory
The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man's appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man's brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of déjà vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated.

Artificial Life? Old News
So, ultimately, putting together a synthetic organism would simply confirm what scientists have known for a long time. The challenge to the project is not conceptual, but technical. And if you actually read the paper in which Venter’s team report the latest step in their project, it is supremely, fiendishly technical. They have a lot more tedium to survive before they create new life. And once they figure out how to build a viable genome and get it safely into a host cell, and if the two can cooperate nicely, what else would you expect but for life to emerge?

Asteroid 2007 TU24 Passes the Earth
Asteroid 2007 TU24 passed by the Earth yesterday, posing no danger. The space rock, estimated to be about 250 meters across, coasted by just outside the orbit of Earth's Moon. The passing was not very unusual -- small rocks strike Earth daily, and in 2003 a rock the size of a bus passed inside the orbit of the Moon, being detected only after passing. TU24 was notable partly because it was so large. Were TU24 to have struck land, it might have caused a magnitude seven earthquake and left a city-sized crater. A perhaps larger danger would have occurred were TU24 to have struck the ocean and raised a large tsunami. This radar image was taken two days ago. The Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico broadcast radar that was reflected by the asteroid and then recorded by the Byrd Radio Telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. The resulting image shows TU24 to have an oblong and irregular shape. TU24 was discovered only three months ago, indicating that other potentially hazardous asteroids might lurk in our Solar System currently undetected. Objects like TU24 are hard to detect because they are so faint and move so fast. Humanity's ability to scan the sky to detect, catalog, and analyze such objects has increased notably in recent years.

Self-Help


Skeptics
Uri Geller’s Confession and Human Fallibility
In an interview with me (not yet published) and in his online newsletter, Swift, Randi reported that recently, in an interview with German magazine Magische Welt (Magic World), Geller is quoted as saying:

I’ll no longer say that I have supernatural powers. I am an entertainer. I want to do a good show. My entire character has changed.

That is quite a revelation. Taken at face value it is a confession that all these years he has been nothing but a garden-variety mentalist and that he lied about having psychic power. I don’t know if this is the last word on the matter from Geller (he may have second thoughts about this reversal) but it confirms what skeptics and magicians have always known - it is not necessary to postulate paranormal powers in order to explain Geller’s feats.

Authority
So how do we resolve this problem? It ain’t easy. We can’t do all the experiments - at some point we have no CHOICE but to rely on authority. But part of the solution is to remember that authorities are themselves frequently wrong, or update their own views. We have to recognize where we are relying on authority, and be extra careful to recognize the weakness inherent in this approach, even though it is absolutely necessary. Finally, we have to try to be aware of our inherent biases, and be extra careful to examine the arguments of the very authorities with whom we most agree. After a while, we develop a sense of what makes sense and what doesn’t, but even that must be constantly checked. There’s a feedback loop in this, of constant checking and revising, but the danger of referring to authority is that it can short-circuit this process. Making sure that doesn’t happen is a lot of work, but hey, that’s why skeptics get the big money.

Sociology
Childish Attachment To Ideas
It seldom matters how intelligent we are. If we are attached to an idea, we will stick with it even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary — irregardless of how smart we are. Brains alone won’t overcome an emotional attachment to an idea: One needs some measure of emotional courage to overcome an emotional attachment.

I pledge to do better next month. If you elect me as your reader of the day, I will perform to the best of my ability while I am in office. I will not be distracted by television, computers, or chatty podcasting. I will not fall asleep while on the job, and I will allow my cat to take up 2/3 of the couch as I contort my body around him to make him comfortable.

Thank you.

Read in January
God Is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens
The Plague - Albert Camus

Currently Reading
Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us - Benjamin Radford
Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Coming Up Next
Galaxy in Flames (The Horus Heresy) - Ben Counter
Seasons - Robert Frost
A History of the End of the World - Jonathan Kirsch
Spirit Gate - Kate Elliott
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea - Carl Zimmer
Dark Tower - Stephen King
The Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo
The Android's Dream - John Scalzi
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science - Natalie Angier

The selection for the Nonbelieving Literati was The Plague by Albert Camus. I really wanted to like this book. I mean, come on. What better selection of literature could there be than a Nobel-winning book? But, I found it kind of dull.

I kept expecting something more to happen. I suppose that's been a theme with these selections. This time I didn't set myself up expecting an atheistic world-view, I just expected more from the story.

I couldn't identify with the time period, or maybe the culture. They had cars, and yet they still had city gates that could close people in? Rats were dying in droves and yet no one thought there might be a contagion? The doctor didn't try to stop people that wanted to break quarantine? The biggest threat to decorum was burying men and women in the same mass grave? Maybe it's the hyper-sensitivity of our time to bio-terrorism, but all of these things seemed unbelievable to me.

I never really bonded with the characters. They seemed nice enough people, I suppose, but they were too reticent. I never really felt like I knew them as people, just as characters. Perhaps it's that I dislike the style of the author. He would begin a scenes with a conversation, and then as if it's too laborious, sum up the conversation by telling the reader instead of continuing the conversation in scene.

For example, my favorite scene in the book is when Tarrou comes to Rieux's house to talk about Paneloux's sermon. The scene is defined pretty well, but abruptly cuts off in places.

"My question's this," said Tarrou. "Why do you yourself show such devotion, considering you don't believe in God? I suspect your answer may help mine."

His face still in shadow, Rieux said that he'd already answered: that if he believed in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one in the world believed in a God of that sort; no, not even Paneloux, who believed that he believed in such a God. And this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on Providence completely. Anyhow, in this respect Rieux believed himself to be on the right road -- in fighting against creation as he found it. p. 126 - 127

Then the conversation picks up again. It's jarring and could be accomplished much better by the conversation flowing naturally. It's almost as though the narrator wants to break into first person, but keeps himself in check with some effort.

Despite those objections there are times when the prose is startlingly beautiful. Towards the end as the plague winds down and the people quarantined inside the city are reunited with their loves, Camus writes,

If only he could put the clock back and be once more the man who, at the outbreak of the epidemic, had had only one thought and one desire: to escape and return to the woman he loved! But that, he knew, was out of the question now; he had changed too greatly. The plague had forced on him a detachment which, try as he might, he couldn't think away, and which like a formless fear haunted his mind. Almost he thought the plague had ended too abruptly, he hadn't had time to pull himself together. Happiness was bearing down on him full speed, the event outrunning expectation. Rambert understood that all would be restored to him in a flash, and joy break on him like a flame with which there is no dallying. p. 294 - 295

I felt like I was missing something. When I read that it was likely a metaphor for the resistance to the Nazi occupation of France, more of the story clicked into place. A human, mortal enemy seemed to fit better than nature itself, though in that enemy some of the impact in the implied theme that there is no control over one's life is lost.

In the end the book made me think, not about the characters or the story, but more about the themes that the author was conveying and that was what made it worth the read.