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May 24th, 2010
02:37 pm - The End of LOST Awards
Now that LOST is over, we can render the awards to those characters that best exemplified things that I feel deserve an award.
( Read more... )
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March 29th, 2010
02:33 pm - ha
Having things a little slow in the office has lent me to start throwing down on forum posts in various places, one of my favorites is being one of the atheists on Washington Posts On Faith forum (http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/)
It was therefore a little suprising when I looked at it today and found one of my posts as a featured comment. Mmmm... recognition is tasty.
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March 19th, 2010
04:01 pm - poor athiest preachers
The Washington Post had an interesting case study conducted on a few clergy members who had lost their belief in God over the years, and yet still remained in their original places, being unable to easily reconcile being intellectually honest and eat.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/Non-Believing-Clergy.pdf
Having finally read the whole article, it is quite a nice piece. The pastors seem almost like lonely sea captains, being deeply concerned with their congregations, yet standing apart from them, and lacking consistent interactions with those of similar standing, or their superiors. Often their families are very religious as well, and members of their congregations too, for that extra bit of fun. Any athiest who was once religious knows that it is hard to leave a community like that (and I am fortunate that I simply was able to move... I wonder how many have done likewise rather than coming out of the closet as such). From my experiences with the wanna-be pastor girlfriend, I now it must be even harder for a pastors and clergy, since the church is big on perks, light on cash. Sure, you get lots of love, maybe a free house or lodging, retirement, and health care, but you can't take it to another job. And you likely can't get another job if you leave your church organization either. I'd imagine catholic clergy have it even harder... their median salary is like (google search says... hm, mostly stuff about pedophiles... not good for the RCC) 18k a year.
I also think Its an important illustration of how we as a culture need to change. We as a culture need to stop viewing the loss of faith as a deal breaking, world ending situation. I see plenty of examples in TV and movies were priests or nuns or just normal people lose faith and find it again, and we are expected to breath a sigh of relief. Touched with an Angel was pretty much based on that. But why? Why is no longer believing your original faith so terrible, when most people already dismiss every other religion but their own? The real tragedy is that intellectual honesty so directly contests social and economic interests, and that for clergy to forsake their belief, it means some might consider them to have wasted at least a good chunk of their life (though I don't think any of those in the study would have thought so). Even more than the economic concerns though, is that there will always be some feeling of betray and apostasy that comes with leaving a faith, especially for atheism. Its hard not to feel a little let down when a friend doesn't believe what we do, but I suspect in this case, the religious nature cuts a little deeper on a lot of people. After all, what does it mean when someone learns more about a thing and believes in it less? One of the pastors actually had study groups for more controversial irrilegious texts, desiring to seek out those people who had doubts and let them know that it was okay. Its okay to doubt, and I think they didn't go far enough, to let people know that its okay to not believe. You'll still be people at the end of the day.
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March 17th, 2010
04:21 pm - in which we shill for Amazon
Went up to Ohio for my niece Reese's 4th birthday, and discovered they they make robot hamsters now. Reese got 3 of them, along with hamster balls and cars and the like, perhaps a much better solution to the ever present fear of hamster implosion than the living versions. I also picked up The Lost Books of the Odyssey, which makes me think it would make an interesting Book Club book, though it will be on the shelf till I can finish up my latest crop of library books. Also of note, I do get so very, very tired of stores like B&N and Target and what not trying to get me to buy a discount card or credit card. I don't like refusing 3 things before I can buy my goods, especially when they are 30% more than I could get on Amazon. Course, I like the library better still, as they don't even ask me for payment.
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March 5th, 2010
03:20 pm - Blast from the past
Its always funny seeing your home town turn up in the news. Its even stranger when it turns up in the blog of one of the New Atheists, PZ Meyers.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/another_creation_museum.php
Whats even stranger, is that I have actually been to this particular Christian bookshop, back when I was young, since I collected coins and they were one of the few places that sold them in the area, along with a bunch of interesting junk. Mom never let me go into the Museum, because I, in my innocence, had no idea that there were bad museums. I only assumed their were big ones and small ones. It was only later in life that I went by there and realized that it was a creationist museum, filled with stuffed animals. I can still remember the odd book mold and fudge smell of the place. Strange that it should survive into the Age of Amazon so well.
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February 3rd, 2010
12:38 pm - On balancing the budget
Its obvious that the US seems to have a problem with spending more than it takes in. And a lot of times, rather than taxing necessities, which hits the poor more than the rich, we resort to taxing the luxuries, which hits the rich more, and makes them angry and vote for republicans who seem more inclined to continue borrowing from China.
So I propose a new type of tax, a tax on bullshit.( skip if you are offended by alternative medicine not being real. )
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January 27th, 2010
11:50 pm - A call for Midievil scholasticism
So I was thinking about Braveheart, and how one of the characters got hit with an arrow, and he had it pulled out and cauterized with a burning brand. I've seen this a fair bit, along with people pouring spirits on their wounds, and I had to wonder, did people really know to use hot irons or alcohol to clean wounds before germ theory? Especially in the "we're covered in shit" ages (looking at you 1347).
I suppose I could look it up on Wikipedia, but wouldn't it mean much more to you, the reader who is interested in the Middle Ages, to look it up for yourself? Cause I'm all about helping you.
This also made me think of the terrible movie Boondock Saints, where the characters thought to sterilize their many wound with literal hot irons. I suppose its not impossible that it could work, but in an age with rubbing alcohol? It looked like what I would imagine chimpanzee first aide would be like.
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January 15th, 2010
02:57 pm - Germania
So, I've been ignoring the LJ updates for a while, so I figured I should post a little more about this years Trip to Germany, post clusterfuckery. ( Read more... )
Next I'll talk about the rest of our time in Dresden, and how the Dresden Green Diamond is impressive.
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December 19th, 2009
05:35 pm - anatomy of a clusterfuck
So, our initial plan was to visit Salzburg, Austria for a few days before Christmas, renting a van so that Ellen's brother and his wife and kids, and Ellen and I could all take a single vehicle down from Dresden. First kink, the kids got a bit sick, and we weren't sure if they'd be well by the day, but fortunately they did, and we were on the road at 9am.
What were weren't expecting is that not only was it snowing a whole lot, but that it was seriously freaking cold. The Germans salt their roads, so they weren't really bad, the problem was that the passing cars and trucks kicked up a thick sludge of salt that stuck firmly to the windshield, rendering it impossible to see. And, most importantly, the wiper fluid froze solid, and we had no way of cleaning off the windshield, on the Autofuckingbahn. So we stopped, doused everything with warm water that the gas stations were helpful enough to provide, and continued onward, hoping things had thawed. So we stop again, this time at a rest stop, not gas station.
While Ellen's brother was trying to clean the windshield and his wife was trying unsuccessfully to call Hertz to get emergency help (they put us on hold and then hung up!), not one, but two vans full of Santas (and a troll) stopped next to us, completely unloaded and started honking horns.
Thats when we realized this day might be more than a little ridiculous.
So, we eventually moved away from the dozen honking Santas, and headed back to Dresden to see if we could get a new van, or a second car (we could use Rick's car as well). Unfortunately the other van was a gigantic thing, the sort of thing that fits in Germany like a dinosaur fits in a studio apartment. So, Rick walks back to the office, gets keys to another few cars, all of which are unable to spray wiper fluid, when the old man helping us thinks he can fix our problems with hardcore -30 tested wiper fluid. It works, Hallafuckinglula. Rick goes back to get things sorted out in the office, when a rental truck glides by our van, and nearly cracks off a side view mirror. Keep in mind, this happened in slow motion, the truck almost clearing us, and at the last second snapping it to the side.
But we snapped it back into place and it was still good right? So we took off, energized that it might all still work. The wipers sprayed fluid, as one would expect, but then we realized that tests in a stationary environment aren't a good model for the effects of -8C at Autobahn speeds. The wipers crusted over with wiper fluid, and then the windshield became a hazy milk colored surface. Also, the other side had an accident just as we were leaving Dresden, and we didn't see the end to the back up before we needed to turn around.
By now it was about 2pm, and we had about 3 hours more of light, and we decided, screw it, we'll cancel our reservations in Salzburg, but they still wanted to charge us for one night at a penalty. Even after Rick said "Please, mum, it's Christmas, can't you be kind to us?" Fuck this christmas spirit bullshit. So we head back via the back roads, and decide to stop at Meissen, which has a beautiful multistyled castle. Which was closed till January.
So, cold and hungry, we stopped at a little cafe, where we got to sit next to a radiator, and had drinks which cost 3 euro, but came with a shot of whiskey or amarreto. Then, feet and hands warmed, things finally turned around. Meissen is small but pretty, with a cute xmas market, and a nice view of the castle looming overhead. The christmas spirits visited the hotel lady, and she was able to rebook our rooms and just gave us a minor charge for the booking, and we took a lovely ride back through the Elbe valley.
But man, what a day.
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