I’ve lived in the South off and on throughout my life, but this is the first time that I’ve really immersed myself in what I would consider the “Deep South”. There is still a very distinct divide between the races here, although no one is allowed to talk about it. Instead they just watch each other through the corner of their eyes, cautiously check on each other to make sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to, and always make sure to treat each other with purposeful distance.
The public areas are still segregated, with some general overlap and a couple of people who have crossed the race lines. A high percentage of the older generations still act as if things could go back to “the way things were” at any moment. It’s an odd, discomforting feeling to be around those who see each other so disdainfully, yet wont ever voice that opinion. The silence truly is deafening.
Maybe I am sensitive because I have seen a different way. While living in several other places within the US, I noticed that the racism or bigotry was more socioeconomic - with persons of one class looked down on another. These classes usually were inhabited by a single race, but were not defined by that characteristic. Here in Anderson, SC, the classes are very specific and divided sharply across race lines. Socioeconomic classes only apply to those in the middle-upper to upper class people.
It would almost appear that the local population does not realize that heightened race awareness is more important in changing racial inequality than judging whether individuals are racist. This inability to discuss the issue only increases when it cannot be openly discussed and creates a taboo of racial discussion - creating more segregation.
I know that there will always be racism, and while I refuse to fall into the trap of perpetual white guilt, there needs to be a recognition of our history and our differences. I am saddened by the elephant in the room that is racism here in the South, but do not know how I can combat this behavior. I treat people as equally as I can, talk about race openly, and believe to be honest about any prejudices I have. I’m frustrated that I can do more than this because I’ve seen better. And I don’t know whether to pity or envy those who have seen no different. Injustice comes in all forms, but it is always at its worst when it is silent.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Your Soul Saved at Half the Price This Exit!
This last week I traveled from the South to the Northern Midwest and back again, stopping liberally along the way. I have done several cross-country trips over the last few years and have noticed the same thing no matter where I go - people love to advertise their religion. To me, this is an extremely odd phenomenon. Personal beliefs, spirituality, and faith are private matters and really shouldn’t be discussed with everyone traveling on I-75. Yet there they are anyway, trying their hardest to show you how much they believe as you fly by at 70MPH. So if I may, I would like to address these people for a moment:
Erecting billboards proclaiming that Jesus is the King of Kings next to signs for Budweiser proclaiming they are the King of Beers probably takes away any reverence you hoped to instill in passing motorists.
Painting a hymn on the side of your fertilizer barn kinda undercuts your message.
There's nothing like a fifty-foot cross made of aluminum siding to say, "I'm a recovering alcoholic with unresolved issues".
It you feel the need to build a 60ft fiberglass Jesus bursting out of a lake, maybe your belief in him really isn’t as solid as you pretend.
I know you love your God, but trying to tell the world using the same methods as insurance companies and restaurants brings your personal beliefs and spirituality down to a base level. Or to quote the Bible, “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matthew 6:5-6). Anything else cheapens your beliefs and lowers them to petty advertising and shows you as desperate for social approval.
Erecting billboards proclaiming that Jesus is the King of Kings next to signs for Budweiser proclaiming they are the King of Beers probably takes away any reverence you hoped to instill in passing motorists.
Painting a hymn on the side of your fertilizer barn kinda undercuts your message.
There's nothing like a fifty-foot cross made of aluminum siding to say, "I'm a recovering alcoholic with unresolved issues".
It you feel the need to build a 60ft fiberglass Jesus bursting out of a lake, maybe your belief in him really isn’t as solid as you pretend.
I know you love your God, but trying to tell the world using the same methods as insurance companies and restaurants brings your personal beliefs and spirituality down to a base level. Or to quote the Bible, “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matthew 6:5-6). Anything else cheapens your beliefs and lowers them to petty advertising and shows you as desperate for social approval.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Travel Often or Die Wondering
“Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed” - Newton
Over the last two months I have traveled over 7,500 miles and visited several countries, with many of those miles up and down the US in different vehicles with plentiful stopping. During my recent travels, I have had an abundance of time to see the East coast and Midwest in great detail. What I’ve realized is twofold. First, my equilibrium is in a constant state of motion. I cannot sit still, and that is how I like it. The force that is usually required to slow an object is rarely ever great enough to adversely affect my momentum.
This need for motion has led to a never-ending quest to do and see everything - and I think that this is healthy. Seeing more than your own town is not only a good idea, it’s essential for gaining a perspective greater than your neighborhood has to offer. And in these times of increasing paranoia and increasing globalization it is absolutely necessary for all of us to get out and see the world.
The second thing that I learned was there is large percentage of Americans that never travel. According to the US State Department, only 20% of Americans have passports. (In contrast, 40% of Canadians hold passports). In 1857 Mark Twain quipped, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
That means that a considerable amount of US citizens have never seen a major museum, a good ballet or symphony, or immersed themselves in a different culture. They have never been to a major metropolitan city in the U.S. or anywhere in the world where millions of people from all races live together comfortably and normally all the time. And so they are afraid - of everything. This leads to a downward spiral of fear, unsubstantiated hatred, and blind religious fervor (see my next blog “Your Soul Saved at Half the Price, This Exit!”).
From these realizations and thousands of miles on the road and in the air, I have come to the conclusion that what our country needs right now is for more of us to get out and see the world. I think what they will find is people just like them, with slightly different customs, religions, and foods, who hold many of the same values and manners. They will find that everything else is just politics.
Over the last two months I have traveled over 7,500 miles and visited several countries, with many of those miles up and down the US in different vehicles with plentiful stopping. During my recent travels, I have had an abundance of time to see the East coast and Midwest in great detail. What I’ve realized is twofold. First, my equilibrium is in a constant state of motion. I cannot sit still, and that is how I like it. The force that is usually required to slow an object is rarely ever great enough to adversely affect my momentum.
This need for motion has led to a never-ending quest to do and see everything - and I think that this is healthy. Seeing more than your own town is not only a good idea, it’s essential for gaining a perspective greater than your neighborhood has to offer. And in these times of increasing paranoia and increasing globalization it is absolutely necessary for all of us to get out and see the world.
The second thing that I learned was there is large percentage of Americans that never travel. According to the US State Department, only 20% of Americans have passports. (In contrast, 40% of Canadians hold passports). In 1857 Mark Twain quipped, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
That means that a considerable amount of US citizens have never seen a major museum, a good ballet or symphony, or immersed themselves in a different culture. They have never been to a major metropolitan city in the U.S. or anywhere in the world where millions of people from all races live together comfortably and normally all the time. And so they are afraid - of everything. This leads to a downward spiral of fear, unsubstantiated hatred, and blind religious fervor (see my next blog “Your Soul Saved at Half the Price, This Exit!”).
From these realizations and thousands of miles on the road and in the air, I have come to the conclusion that what our country needs right now is for more of us to get out and see the world. I think what they will find is people just like them, with slightly different customs, religions, and foods, who hold many of the same values and manners. They will find that everything else is just politics.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
John Wayne Was a Pussy
John Wayne received a deferment claiming that he had a wife and three kids to support while other actors, younger and older, in similar circumstances hurried to enlist and fight for their country. While promising to enlist he ignored additional summonses from his draft board until his studio could intervene on his behalf. Unfortunately, he is held up as the great American man in many people’s eyes.
This type of coward always overcompensates for their spinelessness and unashamedly supports military interventions so they will feel like patriots and men of courage. To further the fake front, it is equally important to label people who avoid service or dissent against a war as cowards and traitors.
By waving the flag and calling for war, they become courageous, strong, and patriotic. By denouncing those who disagree, the dissenters become cowardly, unpatriotic, and weak. Perfect examples of this are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who avoided combat by any means while depicting a true war hero, John Kerry, as an effete namby-pamby.
In my lifetime this tactic has been the republican and conservative strategy since Ronald Reagan, who also avoided combat, attacked Jimmy Carter, who served aboard nuclear submarines. These Reagan and Bush types not only portray themselves as he-men and strong, but their opponents as nerdy, shy, losers. We have seen this bullshit chest thumping and finger pointing over the last couple of years in both our government and in a medium percentage of the population. They spend all of the time that they could be working on the hard tasks and ideas, trying to make others who have done the hard work, look like pansies for not just throwing rocks at a situation.
So here I sit, a liberal with a who understands his weaknesses and thrives on facing difficult challenges; who will no longer put up with being told that I am not patriotic because I don’t support our coward of a president. My heroes do not exist in macho-bullshit stereotypes, but in those average people who choose to face life on their own. It is in them that true strength and courage will always exist.
This type of coward always overcompensates for their spinelessness and unashamedly supports military interventions so they will feel like patriots and men of courage. To further the fake front, it is equally important to label people who avoid service or dissent against a war as cowards and traitors.
By waving the flag and calling for war, they become courageous, strong, and patriotic. By denouncing those who disagree, the dissenters become cowardly, unpatriotic, and weak. Perfect examples of this are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who avoided combat by any means while depicting a true war hero, John Kerry, as an effete namby-pamby.
In my lifetime this tactic has been the republican and conservative strategy since Ronald Reagan, who also avoided combat, attacked Jimmy Carter, who served aboard nuclear submarines. These Reagan and Bush types not only portray themselves as he-men and strong, but their opponents as nerdy, shy, losers. We have seen this bullshit chest thumping and finger pointing over the last couple of years in both our government and in a medium percentage of the population. They spend all of the time that they could be working on the hard tasks and ideas, trying to make others who have done the hard work, look like pansies for not just throwing rocks at a situation.
So here I sit, a liberal with a who understands his weaknesses and thrives on facing difficult challenges; who will no longer put up with being told that I am not patriotic because I don’t support our coward of a president. My heroes do not exist in macho-bullshit stereotypes, but in those average people who choose to face life on their own. It is in them that true strength and courage will always exist.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Mae Govannen
Mellyn,
I am a nerd - have always been and always will be. I do try to hide it, but it always ends up shining through. My favorite books and movies all fall into the sci-fi or fantasy realm, I have more computer certifications then any normal person (especially anyone who no longer does computer support) should, and am constantly reengineering everything that I can get my hands on. Worse than that, my blogs, lectures, and home decorations all have a decidedly nerd theme. I can quote Sagan, Tolkien, Heinlein, Vonnegut, Feynman, Carrol, Bova, and Shakespeare on command. Frankly, I wear my nerdiness like a Jedi wears his light saber (J. Díaz).
That is not to say that I fit any stereotype. I don’t have glasses, play video games, watch that much TV, or would be caught dead dressed up at a convention. I have been known to be quite successful with the ladies and have a long history with organized sports. In high school I was in drama, the chess club, and some AP classes, along with playing football and being a captain of the soccer team. I had good friends, a sex life, and an active social life. Yet I started this blog post with a couple of words that will only be understood by .05% of the population - and I am proud of that.
And you know what; no one should be ashamed to be a nerd. Nerds rule the world, control information, run industry, invent things, send people and robots into space, split atoms, create tomorrow's technology, and are clever and witty. I am proud to be a nerd and think that the rest of the nerdly world needs to speak up - as soon as their SG1 torrent finishes downloading.
Curate ut valeatis,
Brian
I am a nerd - have always been and always will be. I do try to hide it, but it always ends up shining through. My favorite books and movies all fall into the sci-fi or fantasy realm, I have more computer certifications then any normal person (especially anyone who no longer does computer support) should, and am constantly reengineering everything that I can get my hands on. Worse than that, my blogs, lectures, and home decorations all have a decidedly nerd theme. I can quote Sagan, Tolkien, Heinlein, Vonnegut, Feynman, Carrol, Bova, and Shakespeare on command. Frankly, I wear my nerdiness like a Jedi wears his light saber (J. Díaz).
That is not to say that I fit any stereotype. I don’t have glasses, play video games, watch that much TV, or would be caught dead dressed up at a convention. I have been known to be quite successful with the ladies and have a long history with organized sports. In high school I was in drama, the chess club, and some AP classes, along with playing football and being a captain of the soccer team. I had good friends, a sex life, and an active social life. Yet I started this blog post with a couple of words that will only be understood by .05% of the population - and I am proud of that.
And you know what; no one should be ashamed to be a nerd. Nerds rule the world, control information, run industry, invent things, send people and robots into space, split atoms, create tomorrow's technology, and are clever and witty. I am proud to be a nerd and think that the rest of the nerdly world needs to speak up - as soon as their SG1 torrent finishes downloading.
Curate ut valeatis,
Brian
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Entry for August 03, 2008 (Part 2)
Violence - the last desperate act of someone who has just lost an argument.
Entry for August 03, 2008 (Part 1)
Pacifism - A philosophy of nonviolence, historically only practiced by those who rely on the killing and dying of others in defense of their privilege to practice that philosophy.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Vaccine Denial
Vaccine Denial
By Koren Shadmi
Progress is easy to take for granted. When I was a child in the late '60s, polio was history, measles was on the way out, and diphtheria and whooping cough were maladies out of old movies. Now these contagious diseases are making a comeback. Take measles, for instance. The disease used to infect 3 to 4 million Americans per year, hospitalizing nearly 50,000 people and causing 400 to 500 deaths. In 2000 a panel of experts convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proclaimed that measles transmission had been eradicated in the United States, except for imported cases. But that caveat is important. An unvaccinated 7-year-old from San Diego became infected with measles while traveling with his family in Switzerland and ended up transmitting the disease back home to two siblings, five schoolmates and four other children at his doctor's office - all of them unvaccinated. Whooping cough has also seen a resurgence: A school in the East Bay area near San Francisco was closed recently when some 16 students fell ill.
The reason for these incidents - and for recent outbreaks of polio - is that the percentage of parents vaccinating their children has fallen, perhaps because some parents see no point in warding off diseases they've never encountered. Religious or new-age beliefs may also factor into the decision: The San Diego outbreak spread in a school where nearly 10 percent of the students had been given personal-belief exemptions from the vaccinating requirement. The East Bay outbreak started at a school that emphasizes nature-based therapy over mainstream medicine; fewer than half of the students were vaccinated.
Why would parents refuse to vaccinate their children against dangerous diseases? Many are skeptical of modern science and medicine in general. (And it is true that most vaccines carry exceedingly tiny - but real - risks of serious illness or even death.) But I think most are responding to the widespread belief that vaccines are linked to autism. Recent studies have soundly dispelled that notion. And a simple glance at health statistics shows that autism cases continued to rise even after thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative widely blamed for the supposed autism link, was largely phased out of U.S. vaccines by 2001.
Nevertheless, these unsubstantiated fears have led some people to say that getting vaccinated should be a matter of individual choice: If you want to be protected, just get yourself and your children vaccinated.
Only it's not that easy. While the measles vaccine protects virtually everyone who is inoculated, not all vaccines have the same rate of success. But even if a vaccine is effective for only 70, 80 or 90 percent of those who take it, the other 30, 20 or 10 percent who don't get the full benefit of the vaccine are usually still not at risk. That's because most of the people around the partially protected are immune, so the disease can't sustain transmission long enough to spread.
But when people decide to forgo vaccination, they threaten the entire system. They increase their own risk and the risk of those in the community, including babies too young to be vaccinated and people with immune systems impaired by disease or chemotherapy. They are also free-riding on the willingness of others to get vaccinated, which makes a decision to avoid vaccines out of fear or personal belief a lot safer.
Of course it is very success of modern vaccines that makes this complacency possible. In previous generations, when epidemic disease swept through schools and neighborhoods, it was easy to persuade parents that the small risks associated with vaccination were worth it. When those epidemics stopped - because of widespread vaccinations - it became easy to forget that we still live in a dangerous world. It happens all the time: University of Tennessee law professor Gregory Stein examined the relation between building codes and accidents since the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York and discovered a pattern: accident followed by a period of tightened regulations, followed by a gradual slackening of oversight until the next accident. It often takes a dramatic event to focus out minds.
The problem is that modern society requires constant, not episodic, attention to keep it running. In his book The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death 1700-2100 Noble Prize-winning historian Robert Fogel notes the incredible improvement in the lives of ordinary people since 1700 as a result of modern sanitation, agriculture and public health. It takes steady work to keep water clean, prevent the spread of contagious disease and ensure an adequate food supply. As long as things go well, there's a tendency to take these conditions for granted and treat them as a given. But they're not: As Fogel notes, they represent a dramatic departure from the normal state of human existence over history, in which people typically lived nasty, sickly and short lives.
This departure didn't happen on its own, and things don't stay better on their own. Keeping society functioning requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work by people who don't usually get a lot of attention - sanitation engineers, utility linemen, public health nurses, farmers, agricultural chemists and so on. Because the efforts of these workers are often undramatic, they are under appreciated and frequently underfunded. Politicians like to cut ribbons on new bridges or schools, but there's no fanfare for the everyday maintenance that keeps the bridges standing and the schools working. As a result, critical parts of society are quietly decaying, victims of complacency or of active neglect. It's not just vaccinations or bridges, either. A few years ago, I attended an Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board meeting, and the water-treatment discussion was enough to make me think about switching to beer.
What do we do about this? To some degree, we have to do what the reformers of the 19th and early 20th centuries did: Hector people about the importance of paying attention to our society's upkeep. Alas, our main allies in persuasion will probably be the epidemics and other disasters that take place when too few pay attention. Sometimes, people have to trip and fall to be reminded that it's important to watch their step.
Shadmi, K. (2008, August). Vaccine Denial. Popular Mechanics, 185(8), 48-50.
By Koren Shadmi
Progress is easy to take for granted. When I was a child in the late '60s, polio was history, measles was on the way out, and diphtheria and whooping cough were maladies out of old movies. Now these contagious diseases are making a comeback. Take measles, for instance. The disease used to infect 3 to 4 million Americans per year, hospitalizing nearly 50,000 people and causing 400 to 500 deaths. In 2000 a panel of experts convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proclaimed that measles transmission had been eradicated in the United States, except for imported cases. But that caveat is important. An unvaccinated 7-year-old from San Diego became infected with measles while traveling with his family in Switzerland and ended up transmitting the disease back home to two siblings, five schoolmates and four other children at his doctor's office - all of them unvaccinated. Whooping cough has also seen a resurgence: A school in the East Bay area near San Francisco was closed recently when some 16 students fell ill.
The reason for these incidents - and for recent outbreaks of polio - is that the percentage of parents vaccinating their children has fallen, perhaps because some parents see no point in warding off diseases they've never encountered. Religious or new-age beliefs may also factor into the decision: The San Diego outbreak spread in a school where nearly 10 percent of the students had been given personal-belief exemptions from the vaccinating requirement. The East Bay outbreak started at a school that emphasizes nature-based therapy over mainstream medicine; fewer than half of the students were vaccinated.
Why would parents refuse to vaccinate their children against dangerous diseases? Many are skeptical of modern science and medicine in general. (And it is true that most vaccines carry exceedingly tiny - but real - risks of serious illness or even death.) But I think most are responding to the widespread belief that vaccines are linked to autism. Recent studies have soundly dispelled that notion. And a simple glance at health statistics shows that autism cases continued to rise even after thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative widely blamed for the supposed autism link, was largely phased out of U.S. vaccines by 2001.
Nevertheless, these unsubstantiated fears have led some people to say that getting vaccinated should be a matter of individual choice: If you want to be protected, just get yourself and your children vaccinated.
Only it's not that easy. While the measles vaccine protects virtually everyone who is inoculated, not all vaccines have the same rate of success. But even if a vaccine is effective for only 70, 80 or 90 percent of those who take it, the other 30, 20 or 10 percent who don't get the full benefit of the vaccine are usually still not at risk. That's because most of the people around the partially protected are immune, so the disease can't sustain transmission long enough to spread.
But when people decide to forgo vaccination, they threaten the entire system. They increase their own risk and the risk of those in the community, including babies too young to be vaccinated and people with immune systems impaired by disease or chemotherapy. They are also free-riding on the willingness of others to get vaccinated, which makes a decision to avoid vaccines out of fear or personal belief a lot safer.
Of course it is very success of modern vaccines that makes this complacency possible. In previous generations, when epidemic disease swept through schools and neighborhoods, it was easy to persuade parents that the small risks associated with vaccination were worth it. When those epidemics stopped - because of widespread vaccinations - it became easy to forget that we still live in a dangerous world. It happens all the time: University of Tennessee law professor Gregory Stein examined the relation between building codes and accidents since the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York and discovered a pattern: accident followed by a period of tightened regulations, followed by a gradual slackening of oversight until the next accident. It often takes a dramatic event to focus out minds.
The problem is that modern society requires constant, not episodic, attention to keep it running. In his book The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death 1700-2100 Noble Prize-winning historian Robert Fogel notes the incredible improvement in the lives of ordinary people since 1700 as a result of modern sanitation, agriculture and public health. It takes steady work to keep water clean, prevent the spread of contagious disease and ensure an adequate food supply. As long as things go well, there's a tendency to take these conditions for granted and treat them as a given. But they're not: As Fogel notes, they represent a dramatic departure from the normal state of human existence over history, in which people typically lived nasty, sickly and short lives.
This departure didn't happen on its own, and things don't stay better on their own. Keeping society functioning requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work by people who don't usually get a lot of attention - sanitation engineers, utility linemen, public health nurses, farmers, agricultural chemists and so on. Because the efforts of these workers are often undramatic, they are under appreciated and frequently underfunded. Politicians like to cut ribbons on new bridges or schools, but there's no fanfare for the everyday maintenance that keeps the bridges standing and the schools working. As a result, critical parts of society are quietly decaying, victims of complacency or of active neglect. It's not just vaccinations or bridges, either. A few years ago, I attended an Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board meeting, and the water-treatment discussion was enough to make me think about switching to beer.
What do we do about this? To some degree, we have to do what the reformers of the 19th and early 20th centuries did: Hector people about the importance of paying attention to our society's upkeep. Alas, our main allies in persuasion will probably be the epidemics and other disasters that take place when too few pay attention. Sometimes, people have to trip and fall to be reminded that it's important to watch their step.
Shadmi, K. (2008, August). Vaccine Denial. Popular Mechanics, 185(8), 48-50.
Monday, July 14, 2008
The News is Making Me Dumberer
Occasionally CNN or one of the other 24 news channels makes a morning debut when there is actual big news event that is rapidly changing, or I feel the need for background noise and NPR is running a telethon. What I’ve found amazing is the ever increasing dumbing down of the network news. Whether it’s the pretty blonde girl rapidly talking to compensate for depth, or guy who is either your best friend or far too avuncular chiming in with vague non-sequiturs, or the grizzled old guy with downcast eyes and a gruff demeanor, no one has anything intelligent to say. Maybe that is why all of the news organizations have gone to "experts" to give perspective on whatever it is that is being reported that moment.
I use to think that it was a time filling strategy, because there is rarely ever 24 hours worth of news (most days there is barely an hour). But alas, this isn’t the case. The truth is that these people (and I use that term loosely) are just hired to look friendly and read whatever is put in front of them. Any conjecture, insightful questions, or witty banter is strictly frowned upon. Instead, these paid news readers are suppose to immediately turn to someone claiming to be an expert in whatever that field is for further analysis. If the news is in some way political (and what isn’t?), they will call in two people who presumably are politically opposed. And in turn, these people repeat prepared statements and arguments from their own political side. The whole thing is choreographed so that no original thought is put forth and no one is asked a question that requires an answer that is more than a simple catchphrase or insult.
What the hapless viewer is left with is news that hasn’t really told them anything. Something simple has been stated, both sides added their spin, and the person watching the show is forced into taking one of the sides as the truth. The whole thing is massively insulting to any rational human being. Moreover, because of the overall lack of real news throughout the day, soft news (Brittney Spears, Brangelina, or whatever dumb blond is that minute’s "it girl") is reported upon just like the real news. The only difference is that the people on either side of the spin are paid to mock her and to do it with a smile. The 24 hour news stations need this infotainment to break up the constant propaganda being force fed from all sides.
In the end you are probably less informed then you were to start with. And I am left wondering why I turned it on in the first place.
I use to think that it was a time filling strategy, because there is rarely ever 24 hours worth of news (most days there is barely an hour). But alas, this isn’t the case. The truth is that these people (and I use that term loosely) are just hired to look friendly and read whatever is put in front of them. Any conjecture, insightful questions, or witty banter is strictly frowned upon. Instead, these paid news readers are suppose to immediately turn to someone claiming to be an expert in whatever that field is for further analysis. If the news is in some way political (and what isn’t?), they will call in two people who presumably are politically opposed. And in turn, these people repeat prepared statements and arguments from their own political side. The whole thing is choreographed so that no original thought is put forth and no one is asked a question that requires an answer that is more than a simple catchphrase or insult.
What the hapless viewer is left with is news that hasn’t really told them anything. Something simple has been stated, both sides added their spin, and the person watching the show is forced into taking one of the sides as the truth. The whole thing is massively insulting to any rational human being. Moreover, because of the overall lack of real news throughout the day, soft news (Brittney Spears, Brangelina, or whatever dumb blond is that minute’s "it girl") is reported upon just like the real news. The only difference is that the people on either side of the spin are paid to mock her and to do it with a smile. The 24 hour news stations need this infotainment to break up the constant propaganda being force fed from all sides.
In the end you are probably less informed then you were to start with. And I am left wondering why I turned it on in the first place.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Entry for July 10, 2008
The attractiveness of a guy is inversely proportionate to the probability that he will be accused of sexual harassment.
Monday, July 07, 2008
I Fail to Believe That You Are a Christian
First of all, let me state that I am 99% Atheist (with the 1% going to the extremely rare possibility that Earth was created by a mythological superhero that now has turned vain and wants our approval). So my condemnation of people advertising that they are Christian comes with a grain of salt. That being said, I think that I'm in the right when I say that a lot of your Christianess is completely phony. These people are fairly easy to spot due to their overt attempts to tell the world that they are indeed Christians.
To help easily identify those who are not actually Christian, please see the following list a la my own Jeff Foxworthy knockoff of:
You Might Not Be A Christian if...
...you are proclaiming their religion in bumper sticker form - usually next to the equally important Looney Tune character sticker or Go Ahead and Honk, I'm Reloading. Because nothing says you love God more than putting him on the same level as Yosemite Sam.
...you are wearing a cross that cost more than the entire wealth of all of the money changers that Jesus through out of Temple in Jerusalem. Like you thought that the best representation of your vow-of-poverty prophet is a diamond encrusted, 24k gold, obscenely large cross dangling over your low cut blouse and scientifically enhanced boobs.
...you add a large cement lawn ornament of the Virgin Mary to your front yard. As if the insanely clear personification of humble purification put forth by Mary somehow doesn't count when there is an empty spot in your yard screaming to be filled by a six foot statue of modesty.
...you can justify the government killing people, just as long as unwed mothers don't do it. I'm not sure how, "Thou Shall Not Kill" can be turned into "Well, we have to have wars and the death penalty - you know, for God".
...you drive your $80,000 car from your $250,000 home to a $2,000,000 church to learn how you can be more generous to your fellow man.
...you judge people in the name of someone who defended a prostitute from an angry mob that was trying to kill her for religious reasons. If we take Jesus' word of "he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone" and your actions together, we come to the conclusion that you are perfect - or at least think you are.
...you are holding up a John 3:16 sign at a sports stadium. That passage is the Cliff Notes version of the Bible. So you're marketing to the same crowd who is advertised to using talking dogs and half-naked women. I know that you think that if you could only reach these people you could convert them, but you just come off as an attention seeking idiot and might as well have your face painted.
...you allow gambling (bingo, etc...) in your church on Fridays. If it is a sin on Sunday, it's a sin on Friday. As if church is a giant-economy package. Like to drink, gamble, dance, and wench? Do it with a free conscience, under holy auspices, and where God can approve it!
...you spread hate and intolerance through sanctimonious choices in some Bible verses, while completely ignoring other verses that either contradict or are aimed at a group of people that you either a) personally like or b) are too powerful to pick on. Like the message of Christian love comes with exclusions of bigotry, sexism, and racism.
...you think that the 1/3 of the world's population, or 75% of the US population, is in any way persecuted for their beliefs. The only way that the majority of anything can be systematic mistreated, is if they do it to themselves.
I'm not saying that you don't have some spiritual beliefs; I'm just saying that your Christian credentials look like they're full of shit.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
The Beautiful Moron
There are people who walk this earth who, being blessed with above average physical qualities, have evolved to live solely on those talents. These individuals respond to any mental task with a mixture of exacerbation and increased sexual potency in the hope that you will see their frustration and beauty and be moved to help them. This display, while effective at younger ages, tends to fade with time. It leaves those who are dim and divine in a desperate departure from common sense to decrease their debilitating digression into distasteful despondency. In other words, they become damn-near worthless.
The upside is that they are willing to trade themselves for continued assistance in life. We know them as trophy wives, pool boys, etcetera. And for the right price, anyone can have one. It’s the putting up with them that is difficult. In order to help identify these people, I’ve created the following breakdown:
Younger years: When confronted with a mental problem they will smile, flirt, announce their intellectual short-comings, and wait for you to help.
Middle years: When confronted with a mental problem they will openly ask you to do the task giving one of several prepared excuses while looking tired and flaunting their best remaining features.
Older years: When confronted with a mental problem they will become clumsily lewd in the vain hope that you will either help out of your own sexual desperation or to stop them.
This last stage is the final act of a sickly animal. Excessive plastic surgery is their natural way of showing a thinning mane or a bum leg. Inviability is close at hand.
Now there is nothing particularly wrong with these sublimely slow. Just make sure that properly recognize them for what they are: beautiful morons.
The upside is that they are willing to trade themselves for continued assistance in life. We know them as trophy wives, pool boys, etcetera. And for the right price, anyone can have one. It’s the putting up with them that is difficult. In order to help identify these people, I’ve created the following breakdown:
Younger years: When confronted with a mental problem they will smile, flirt, announce their intellectual short-comings, and wait for you to help.
Middle years: When confronted with a mental problem they will openly ask you to do the task giving one of several prepared excuses while looking tired and flaunting their best remaining features.
Older years: When confronted with a mental problem they will become clumsily lewd in the vain hope that you will either help out of your own sexual desperation or to stop them.
This last stage is the final act of a sickly animal. Excessive plastic surgery is their natural way of showing a thinning mane or a bum leg. Inviability is close at hand.
Now there is nothing particularly wrong with these sublimely slow. Just make sure that properly recognize them for what they are: beautiful morons.
Whistle While You Work, Alone
Your whistling has never added anything to a song, melody, or situation. Instead, it just annoys those around you. It’s worse then talking to yourself in public, humming along in an elevator, or singing along in the car. So stop it, just stop it. Save your whistling for some time when no one else can hear you, because no one else wants to hear you.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Read Everything
Tomorrow ends my favorite part-time job ever. As many of you know, I took a job at the Barnes & Noble in Saginaw, MI to a) get me out of the house since all of my teaching assignments are now online and b) for the discount. I cannot express how much I enjoyed this position and the other individuals with whom I’ve worked.
There is just something sublimely enchanting to be constantly engulfed in literary tomes and speaking with fellow booklovers about history, alternate worlds and realities, poetry, science, travel, the love of language, and the need for intellectual stimulation. And to watch a child dive soul-first into a book warms my heart deeper than almost anything else. I will miss seeing that on a regular basis.
If there is one thing that I can take away from my time there, other than the hundreds of books that I purchased, it’s that you should always read everything. Honesty comes in the average, so if you make it a habit to read each and every book that you can get your hands on, you will find the closest possible thing to the truth. Moreover, if knowledge truly is power, and the quickest way is reading, than bookstores are the source for nearly infinite power and honesty. So please, seek out your local bookstore, immerse yourself, and read everything.
There is just something sublimely enchanting to be constantly engulfed in literary tomes and speaking with fellow booklovers about history, alternate worlds and realities, poetry, science, travel, the love of language, and the need for intellectual stimulation. And to watch a child dive soul-first into a book warms my heart deeper than almost anything else. I will miss seeing that on a regular basis.
If there is one thing that I can take away from my time there, other than the hundreds of books that I purchased, it’s that you should always read everything. Honesty comes in the average, so if you make it a habit to read each and every book that you can get your hands on, you will find the closest possible thing to the truth. Moreover, if knowledge truly is power, and the quickest way is reading, than bookstores are the source for nearly infinite power and honesty. So please, seek out your local bookstore, immerse yourself, and read everything.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Loose Lips
From the apparent usefulness of the social virtues, it has readily been inferred by skeptics, both ancient and modern, that all moral distinctions arise from education, and were, at first, invented, and afterwards encouraged ... in order to render men tractable, and subdue their natural ferocity and selfishness, which incapacitated them for society - David Hume
These shared limitations of morality - these defining characteristics of our societal structure - allow our civility to exist. Beyond laying the groundwork for law, they help us to understand one another. Social virtues and moral distinctions work to transcend religion, culture, and class. The hallmark of a structured society becomes compromised when one of these moral codes is broken. Scorn and punishment come quickly and often with great vengeance, either through demand of restitution or, once the punishment or scorn has run its course, expulsion.
The cliché is the standard in westerns: someone killed someone and revenge must be taken in blood. There is a similar theme in real life, although recompense in civilized societies has become the norm. This tradeoff exists because we seem to be incapable of simply dealing with our own affairs. We are petty, insecure, trivial, and needy. The desire to feel that we are bigger than ourselves undermines our actual potential. At the same time, in considering that humility is the quickest overlooked virtue, we can hear the voice of Freud echo through life declaring that the ego is not master in its own house. We are all small creatures longing to be big. And in return for a momentary increase in stature, we are willing to cast aside our shared functionalist interpretations of social or cultural entities and do as we wish.
As much as I would like to preach the gospel of forgiveness or tell a story about carrying your faults, I am not currently in the position to change the rules. Instead, I am now faced with dealing out punishment for a blatantly broken social virtue, and it is difficult to reconcile my own humility and ego while faced with the task at hand. Something must be done, a price must be paid, and the scorned must become an example. My job is to complete the circle and restore what Hume underscored as our societal natural balance. In this task, I am both reluctantly ardent and callously humble.
These shared limitations of morality - these defining characteristics of our societal structure - allow our civility to exist. Beyond laying the groundwork for law, they help us to understand one another. Social virtues and moral distinctions work to transcend religion, culture, and class. The hallmark of a structured society becomes compromised when one of these moral codes is broken. Scorn and punishment come quickly and often with great vengeance, either through demand of restitution or, once the punishment or scorn has run its course, expulsion.
The cliché is the standard in westerns: someone killed someone and revenge must be taken in blood. There is a similar theme in real life, although recompense in civilized societies has become the norm. This tradeoff exists because we seem to be incapable of simply dealing with our own affairs. We are petty, insecure, trivial, and needy. The desire to feel that we are bigger than ourselves undermines our actual potential. At the same time, in considering that humility is the quickest overlooked virtue, we can hear the voice of Freud echo through life declaring that the ego is not master in its own house. We are all small creatures longing to be big. And in return for a momentary increase in stature, we are willing to cast aside our shared functionalist interpretations of social or cultural entities and do as we wish.
As much as I would like to preach the gospel of forgiveness or tell a story about carrying your faults, I am not currently in the position to change the rules. Instead, I am now faced with dealing out punishment for a blatantly broken social virtue, and it is difficult to reconcile my own humility and ego while faced with the task at hand. Something must be done, a price must be paid, and the scorned must become an example. My job is to complete the circle and restore what Hume underscored as our societal natural balance. In this task, I am both reluctantly ardent and callously humble.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Maybe
Once upon a time a peasant had a horse. This horse ran away,so the peasant's neighbors came to console him for his bad luck. He answered: "Maybe".
The day after the horse came back, leading 6 wild horses with it. The neighbors came to congratulate him on such good luck. The peasant said: "Maybe".
The day after, his son tried to saddle and ride on one of the wild horses, but he fell down and broke his leg. Once again the neighbors came to share that misfortune. The peasant said: "Maybe".
The day after, soldiers came to conscript the youth of the village, but the peasant's son was not chosen because of his broken leg. When the neighbors came to congratulate, the peasant said again: "Maybe".
- Huai Nan Tzu
The day after the horse came back, leading 6 wild horses with it. The neighbors came to congratulate him on such good luck. The peasant said: "Maybe".
The day after, his son tried to saddle and ride on one of the wild horses, but he fell down and broke his leg. Once again the neighbors came to share that misfortune. The peasant said: "Maybe".
The day after, soldiers came to conscript the youth of the village, but the peasant's son was not chosen because of his broken leg. When the neighbors came to congratulate, the peasant said again: "Maybe".
- Huai Nan Tzu
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Entry for June 21, 2008
I posted a blog the other day on same sex marriages and have a quick follow-up. I do feel sorry for the future children of these couples. Not because I think that they will be any less loved or supported in their lives, but because of my own childhood memories. You see, it was always hard enough for me to make one coffee mug or macaroni card for Mothers Day or Fathers Day, so I can’t imagine having to make two. And you just know that one is invariably going to be better than the other one. Then you have to choose which mom or which dad is going to receive the better one and how you’ll explain the choice to them.. .. ..really, it’s a lot of pressure for a young child. So a word of advice to these future children of gay parents: Make one parent the coffee cup and the other the card. Do not try to make duplicate items. There, I feel much better now.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Entry for June 19, 2008
I think that we should all be very proud that we are part of a cosmic system of energy degradation.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Democratic Digression
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. - Sir Winston Churchill
Our system, our Democracy, stays in place because of one simple reason: it works satisfactorily.
But I think that it is occasionally important to go over the actual process. History is littered with attempts at governments installed in the hope that they would look after the masses. For a good bit of this time there was a belief in the “divine right of kings” to rule over us. This absolute monarchy style was destined to fail due to a lack of available good kings.
We as a species have tried thousands of different ways of governing ourselves in the hope that we will find a moralistic government that is both stable and benevolent. The problem with all of these previously tried systems is that they relied heavily on continued maintenance by those who would pursue the founding principle of compassion. In short, those who put a leader in charge willingly wish to see that leader treat them well. The problem then arises when that leader is either unchecked in power, or is able to slowly rot the system through the slow creep of authoritarianism or through their failure to live up the job.
Our Declaration of Independence may list our inalienable rights as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, but it is built upon a system that must immediately limit those rights in order to maintain them. Still, few rebel even though everyone complains. Living standards, crime, and personal freedom are, historically, at an all time high. And it’s not because our voters are any smarter. Our last two elections proved that. So why does our system work better than all others tried so far?
It is because our original system was built upon the backs of generations that put the welfare of their countrymen over themselves. It is the only practical difference and the reason we have the system that we do. We are a nation created for each other. Thus, there must be a constant renewal of the connection between responsibility and authority. Or, as Thomas Jefferson told James Madison in a letter (Jan. 30, 1787), “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical”.
To vote is to wield authority and continued success is not a matter of chance. To allow unchecked authority in either the electorate or the elected officials removes the responsibility and is the sign of the end of a government. So we must encourage the occasional social responsibility to remind us why it is that we allow ourselves to be governed by and for others. We as citizens must understand that our responsibility is to the state first in order to maintain the freedom of others. But before you accuse me of communism, remember that we cannot install moral virtue at the end of a gun; we cannot force social responsibility at the end of a speech. It must be given in lives, blood, loss, and pain. There is no other historical proof that a governed population can find within themselves the ability to govern each other without individual sacrifice. So it does not matter what political system is in question.
So what are morals? At their most primitive, morals are what come out of our instinct to survive. They are the ability of an individual to see beyond themselves. Think of morals as the willingness of a mother who would die protecting someone else’s children. They are earned, maintained, and spread through channels all connected to the state and the freedoms that it may or may not allow.
True democratic governance can and never will exist. Defined, it is simply representative government with equality placed at the forefront above all else. It is a system that theoretically exists to give everyone equal say. And it can never be a reality because the average voter, representative, or appointed individual can never grasp the potential of their own power or understand the lasting ramifications of their actions. It is at best a system that allows for some individuals to have a direct influence on the daily lives of others, but only in limited scope and with varying success. At the worst, it is a system that allows the electorate to believe that they are indeed free when in actuality they consist in nothing more than a quasi-democratic organization built to support its own continuance. We are a nation held together by the belief that we are one.
Our system, our Democracy, stays in place because of one simple reason: it works satisfactorily.
But I think that it is occasionally important to go over the actual process. History is littered with attempts at governments installed in the hope that they would look after the masses. For a good bit of this time there was a belief in the “divine right of kings” to rule over us. This absolute monarchy style was destined to fail due to a lack of available good kings.
We as a species have tried thousands of different ways of governing ourselves in the hope that we will find a moralistic government that is both stable and benevolent. The problem with all of these previously tried systems is that they relied heavily on continued maintenance by those who would pursue the founding principle of compassion. In short, those who put a leader in charge willingly wish to see that leader treat them well. The problem then arises when that leader is either unchecked in power, or is able to slowly rot the system through the slow creep of authoritarianism or through their failure to live up the job.
Our Declaration of Independence may list our inalienable rights as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, but it is built upon a system that must immediately limit those rights in order to maintain them. Still, few rebel even though everyone complains. Living standards, crime, and personal freedom are, historically, at an all time high. And it’s not because our voters are any smarter. Our last two elections proved that. So why does our system work better than all others tried so far?
It is because our original system was built upon the backs of generations that put the welfare of their countrymen over themselves. It is the only practical difference and the reason we have the system that we do. We are a nation created for each other. Thus, there must be a constant renewal of the connection between responsibility and authority. Or, as Thomas Jefferson told James Madison in a letter (Jan. 30, 1787), “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical”.
To vote is to wield authority and continued success is not a matter of chance. To allow unchecked authority in either the electorate or the elected officials removes the responsibility and is the sign of the end of a government. So we must encourage the occasional social responsibility to remind us why it is that we allow ourselves to be governed by and for others. We as citizens must understand that our responsibility is to the state first in order to maintain the freedom of others. But before you accuse me of communism, remember that we cannot install moral virtue at the end of a gun; we cannot force social responsibility at the end of a speech. It must be given in lives, blood, loss, and pain. There is no other historical proof that a governed population can find within themselves the ability to govern each other without individual sacrifice. So it does not matter what political system is in question.
So what are morals? At their most primitive, morals are what come out of our instinct to survive. They are the ability of an individual to see beyond themselves. Think of morals as the willingness of a mother who would die protecting someone else’s children. They are earned, maintained, and spread through channels all connected to the state and the freedoms that it may or may not allow.
True democratic governance can and never will exist. Defined, it is simply representative government with equality placed at the forefront above all else. It is a system that theoretically exists to give everyone equal say. And it can never be a reality because the average voter, representative, or appointed individual can never grasp the potential of their own power or understand the lasting ramifications of their actions. It is at best a system that allows for some individuals to have a direct influence on the daily lives of others, but only in limited scope and with varying success. At the worst, it is a system that allows the electorate to believe that they are indeed free when in actuality they consist in nothing more than a quasi-democratic organization built to support its own continuance. We are a nation held together by the belief that we are one.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Should Gay People Have the Same Rights?
I mistakenly flipped on the TV today to check the weather because it looked like it could storm and stopped by one of the 24-hour news networks on my way to the Weather Channel. The blonde behind the desk, smiling prettily and looking overly intelligent in her pastels and hoop earrings, said the phrase, “Should gay people have the same rights as the rest of us?”. Now I immediately want to forgive her because she is a) reading off of a teleprompter and b) a moron not paid to think for herself.
So here, let me answer that question:
If you believe that women, people who are a color other than white, and non-Christians should have equal rights, then you have to give the equal rights to gay people as well. Those strange religious nutjobs (and it’s always the religious nutjobs) who think that gay is either a lifestyle or against the Word of God should look back into their own history at how their religion was once used to explain why blacks should be slaves, non-Christians should be treated differently, and why women should be subservient. Strangely enough, they don’t see the connection. They cannot look at this class of people, who they want to separated from everyone else, and see the same parallels drawn between this new hatred and the old prejudice done in the name of their God. So for any religious people, who happen to read my blog, let me explain something to you: Your bible can be used to say anything and people who use it to tell others that who is less of a human are bigots preaching hate.
Want proof? Let’s go through a quick exercise:
Do you believe that black people should be white people’s slaves?
Well, Jesus said it was ok. In Luke 12:43-48 Jesus explains the proper way to treat your slaves. Jesus condone slavery enough to make some ground rules for their enslavement. Don’t believe me? Search the KKK’s website and you’ll find that, along with a whole host of other quotes from the Bible on how slavery is alright.
Now if you truly believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then slavery is a good thing. If you don’t believe that slavery is a good thing, then you do not believe that the Bible is the word of God. The only way to get out of this quandary is to say that the Bible is not to be taken literally, but then the same would apply for the rules governing homosexuals too.
Back to our point, should gay people have the same rights as the rest of us? Only if you believe that we are all equal. If you don’t, you probably see slavery, oppression of women, and exclusion of those of different religions as you, as all ordained by God. If you don’t, please know that that is exactly how the rest of us view you. And history has proven time and time again, that you and your Christian approved bigotry and hatred will not be tolerated.
So here, let me answer that question:
If you believe that women, people who are a color other than white, and non-Christians should have equal rights, then you have to give the equal rights to gay people as well. Those strange religious nutjobs (and it’s always the religious nutjobs) who think that gay is either a lifestyle or against the Word of God should look back into their own history at how their religion was once used to explain why blacks should be slaves, non-Christians should be treated differently, and why women should be subservient. Strangely enough, they don’t see the connection. They cannot look at this class of people, who they want to separated from everyone else, and see the same parallels drawn between this new hatred and the old prejudice done in the name of their God. So for any religious people, who happen to read my blog, let me explain something to you: Your bible can be used to say anything and people who use it to tell others that who is less of a human are bigots preaching hate.
Want proof? Let’s go through a quick exercise:
Do you believe that black people should be white people’s slaves?
Well, Jesus said it was ok. In Luke 12:43-48 Jesus explains the proper way to treat your slaves. Jesus condone slavery enough to make some ground rules for their enslavement. Don’t believe me? Search the KKK’s website and you’ll find that, along with a whole host of other quotes from the Bible on how slavery is alright.
Now if you truly believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then slavery is a good thing. If you don’t believe that slavery is a good thing, then you do not believe that the Bible is the word of God. The only way to get out of this quandary is to say that the Bible is not to be taken literally, but then the same would apply for the rules governing homosexuals too.
Back to our point, should gay people have the same rights as the rest of us? Only if you believe that we are all equal. If you don’t, you probably see slavery, oppression of women, and exclusion of those of different religions as you, as all ordained by God. If you don’t, please know that that is exactly how the rest of us view you. And history has proven time and time again, that you and your Christian approved bigotry and hatred will not be tolerated.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Why Aren’t Computers Better?
I’m tired of having to fight my computer to get it to do what I believe that it should do automatically. And there is absolutely no good excuse for it. If anything else was this temperamental or troublesome, you would learn to do without it. For instance, if you purchased a microwave at Sears, took it home, spent 12 hours removing useless parts and adding essential things that didn’t come with it, you would be livid if you attempted to finally use it and received the error message “cannot compute potato” when you tried to pop a bag of popcorn. Immediately you would tear the microwave out of the wall, do 90mph back to Sears, and pummel the sales clerk to death while screaming, "I only wanted a fucking bag of popcorn!!!!" But we don’t. We accept computer problems as some sort of strange quirk to the privilege of owning a machine that lets us do the technologically advanced task of communicating with each other.
This isn’t anything new either. From the very beginning, both the PCs and Macs required users to spend countless hours installing, repairing, rebuilding, and upgrading both their software and hardware just so that their computer was the equivalent of a phone, calculator, or pen and paper. And before someone out there starts in with the increased speed argument, let me remind you of the wasted, precious days you spent trying to get that increased speed to actually work. I believe that if you averaged out all of the time that you’ve spent fighting with your computer versus the time that it would have taken to do whatever it was manually, you would have saved time never learning how to turn your computer on. But those were the good old days where computers resembled frontloading washing machines, yet weren’t as useful. If a single computer had managed something like getting the stain out of a shirt, it would have been hailed as a miracle, canonized, and reproduced into small statues for all of us to worship.
Now we cannot do without them. Endless information is available at any hour with only a few keystrokes, you can contact almost anyone anywhere, and everything from having your finances automatically managed to performing remote surgery on a needy patient can all be done from the convenient little screen in front of you. Yet they are still the same unreliable pieces of crap that we’ve always had. It’s like they’ve learned to bribe us with information so that we will live with their faults. We’ve traded our lives for Myspace quizzes, useless Wikipedia information, and joke emails that really aren’t that funny.
I have learned that there is no difference between our bond with computers and long-term domestic abuse. The more computers abuse us, the more we think that we deserve it for asking too much of them. We want them to treat us better, but understand that if this is what it takes, we’re willing to sacrifice. And if not, we will wait patiently and hope that someday we will meet a nice computer who knows how to treat us with equal love and respect.
This isn’t anything new either. From the very beginning, both the PCs and Macs required users to spend countless hours installing, repairing, rebuilding, and upgrading both their software and hardware just so that their computer was the equivalent of a phone, calculator, or pen and paper. And before someone out there starts in with the increased speed argument, let me remind you of the wasted, precious days you spent trying to get that increased speed to actually work. I believe that if you averaged out all of the time that you’ve spent fighting with your computer versus the time that it would have taken to do whatever it was manually, you would have saved time never learning how to turn your computer on. But those were the good old days where computers resembled frontloading washing machines, yet weren’t as useful. If a single computer had managed something like getting the stain out of a shirt, it would have been hailed as a miracle, canonized, and reproduced into small statues for all of us to worship.
Now we cannot do without them. Endless information is available at any hour with only a few keystrokes, you can contact almost anyone anywhere, and everything from having your finances automatically managed to performing remote surgery on a needy patient can all be done from the convenient little screen in front of you. Yet they are still the same unreliable pieces of crap that we’ve always had. It’s like they’ve learned to bribe us with information so that we will live with their faults. We’ve traded our lives for Myspace quizzes, useless Wikipedia information, and joke emails that really aren’t that funny.
I have learned that there is no difference between our bond with computers and long-term domestic abuse. The more computers abuse us, the more we think that we deserve it for asking too much of them. We want them to treat us better, but understand that if this is what it takes, we’re willing to sacrifice. And if not, we will wait patiently and hope that someday we will meet a nice computer who knows how to treat us with equal love and respect.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Mordor's Kitchen
As we prepare to move away from our small two-story apartment in Saginaw, I am moved by how the worst kitchen that I have ever had the displeasure of working in has been the one that has turned me into an excellent amateur cook. I can differentiate between four different levels of roux (I’m still learning what to do with them), can taste the difference between the quality of ingredients, and am comfortable making a full four-course meal by myself. I am, by my own admission, a completely different person in the kitchen. It is the only place on the planet that I lose my temper. I am a man possessed. Mordor-bent on perfection. Every recipe guarded, researched, and reworked. I am proud enough to say that most of my regular menu trumps most restaurants and the biggest compliment that I’ve heard came from a friend a couple weeks ago, when at an extremely nice restaurant exclaimed, "I think you make this better". In short, I am a damn good cook and I got so working in the shitty kitchen ever.
What’s wrong with the kitchen? It is four feet from counter to counter and eight feet long. There is an electric stove with uncorrectable crooked burners, an oven that cannot hold a temperature and whose door cannot be opened all the way, small cabinets, a dishwasher that can be heard from the front yard, and a refrigerator from the bargain bin at Goodwill. The counters are inadequate in every definition of the word and the kitchen itself can only handle two people if they are working in perfect unison. Add to that the insufficient lighting, laughable ventilation, and substandard storage for anyone who does not wish to exist only on soup and rice, and you have a cook’s worst nightmare. This kitchen is where I learned technique, where I made recipe after recipe trying to perfect dishes, and where I feel the most comfortable cooking. I will deeply miss this shit-hole.
Monday, June 09, 2008
I Hereby Give Up Plastic Water Bottles
Over the last couple of months I've been slowly weening myself off of buying water in plastic bottles. This is hard because I happen to love San Pellegrino and buy it by the case. But from now on I plan on buying and consuming only the glass bottles when I have to, or doing without.
Below is one of the many articles that has sparked this change:
Thirst for bottled water unleashes flood of environmental concerns
By Krisy Gashler, The Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal
Once reserved for Perrier-sipping elitists, bottled water has become a drink of the masses.
Sales have quadrupled in the last 20 years, and rose almost 8% last year alone.
Marian Brown, an assistant to the provost at Ithaca College who works on sustainability initiatives, has watched this growth with dismay.
"More and more people, more and more entities on campus, even for special events, were starting to think, 'Gosh, let's do bottled water,' instead of putting out (pitchers) of water," Brown said. "It's like, 'God no, they're making it worse!'"
The problem isn't the water — it's the use of resources. It takes a lot of oil to make all those little bottles and ship them, sometimes halfway around the world. But Tom Lauria, vice president of communications for the International Bottled Water Association, said bottled water isn't the environmental bad guy.
Sales on the rise
There's no question that sales of bottled water are increasing.
According to Lauria's bottled water association, in 1990, 2.2 billion total gallons of bottled water were sold worldwide. In 2007, it was 8.8 billion.
In just the last year, wholesale dollar sales for bottled water grew 7.8%, to $11.7 billion in 2007, according to the bottled water trade group.
Increased purchasing of bottled water is good news, Lauria said, because much of the sales growth is coming from people making a health-conscious decision not to buy soda and sugary juices.
"We're finding that most of that growth is in category switching," Lauria said, citing consumer research. "People are making a decision at lunch to buy bottled water as opposed to something else. Some people want to reduce caffeine, sugar, many reasons."
The Container Recycling Institute found that between 1997 and 2005, sales of carbonated drinks remained relatively flat while sales of noncarbonated drinks, including bottled water, almost tripled.
Plastic water bottles produced for U.S. consumption take 1.5 million barrels of oil per year, according to a 2007 resolution passed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. That much energy could power 250,000 homes or fuel 100,000 cars for a year, according to the resolution.
Cornell University professor and environmentalist Doug James said the irony of bottled water is that it's marketed as clean and healthy when its production contributes to unnecessary environmental degradation.
"Fiji water, for example," he said. "A one-liter bottle is taken out of the aquifer of this little island, and shipped all the way across the world, producing like half a pound of greenhouse gases so you can have this one-liter bottle of water."
The taste question
Another obvious issue in the consumption of bottled water is taste.
In some areas, tap water simply isn't drinkable, Brown said, and in those situations, bottled water is a useful resource.
Other consumers simply prefer the taste of bottled water, Lauria said.
"Consumers have lots of preferences and some people want mineral water for taste," he said. "Everyone has their own reasons for buying products. And some people have a preference for bottled water."
But, Brown argues, perceptions about the taste of tap water and realities about the taste of tap water can be very different things.
To test her hypothesis that tap water tastes as least as good as bottled water, Brown has been conducting a series of taste tests at Ithaca College in the past year.
In five blind taste tests over the last year, the tap water has won four times, she said.
The growth in advertising and consumption of bottled water has occurred "frankly, since the big soda companies bought up water," she said. "They would buy up the Dasanis, and they would buy up the Poland Springs, and you get into the huge marketing machines of the major soda industries, Coke and Pepsi, notably, and they take it to a whole different field."
Water and waste
Then there's the waste stream.
In roughly the last 10 years, the amount of polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles being recycled increased from about 775 million pounds in 1995 to about 1,170 million in 2005, according to the Container Recycling Institute.
But during the same time period, the amount of PET bottles going into landfills skyrocketed from 1,175 million to 3,900 million pounds.
Water bottles are a big part of that problem, Brown says, because there are so many more of them, and because in many states, water bottles don't have a redemption value like soda and beer bottles do.
Lauria said the focus on water bottles is unfair because they make up "less than one-third of one percent" of the entire U.S. waste stream.
"There are many other plastic objects that are in our lives that no one seems to be concerned about and yet it all needs to be recycled," he said. "As you recycle bottled water you should also recycle many other products that are in your refrigerator when you're done with them."
Brown said that better recycling rates of water bottles would certainly help, but even better would be for people to stop using bottled water when tap water will do just fine.
"Even if we can do a good job of separating and recycling water bottles, it still comes down to the fact that it's completely unnecessary," she said. "From a cost standpoint alone, people should be starting to think about, 'I'm paying $1.19 or whatever it is for a bottle of water that I could get free out of my drinking water tap?'"
Hidden costs of water
Strictly speaking, tap water isn't free — it costs about $0.00002 per ounce.
But single-serve bottled water costs between 1,000 and 4,000 times more, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Some cities, including San Francisco, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, and Seattle, have banned city purchase of single-serve bottled water because of waste impact from the bottles and because it's viewed as an unnecessary cost to taxpayers.
On the waste reduction hierarchy, reduce and reuse should be above recycle, said Tompkins County Solid Waste manager Barb Eckstrom.
Even so, bottled water can provide a healthier choice in situations, like sports events, where people are going to buy drinks anyway, she said.
Brown reiterated that clearly "there is a place for bottled water."
"But for so many of us here in the Finger Lakes we're so blessed with excellent water systems, we need to at all costs preserve and maintain (them)," she said.
Below is one of the many articles that has sparked this change:
Thirst for bottled water unleashes flood of environmental concerns
By Krisy Gashler, The Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal
Once reserved for Perrier-sipping elitists, bottled water has become a drink of the masses.
Sales have quadrupled in the last 20 years, and rose almost 8% last year alone.
Marian Brown, an assistant to the provost at Ithaca College who works on sustainability initiatives, has watched this growth with dismay.
"More and more people, more and more entities on campus, even for special events, were starting to think, 'Gosh, let's do bottled water,' instead of putting out (pitchers) of water," Brown said. "It's like, 'God no, they're making it worse!'"
The problem isn't the water — it's the use of resources. It takes a lot of oil to make all those little bottles and ship them, sometimes halfway around the world. But Tom Lauria, vice president of communications for the International Bottled Water Association, said bottled water isn't the environmental bad guy.
Sales on the rise
There's no question that sales of bottled water are increasing.
According to Lauria's bottled water association, in 1990, 2.2 billion total gallons of bottled water were sold worldwide. In 2007, it was 8.8 billion.
In just the last year, wholesale dollar sales for bottled water grew 7.8%, to $11.7 billion in 2007, according to the bottled water trade group.
Increased purchasing of bottled water is good news, Lauria said, because much of the sales growth is coming from people making a health-conscious decision not to buy soda and sugary juices.
"We're finding that most of that growth is in category switching," Lauria said, citing consumer research. "People are making a decision at lunch to buy bottled water as opposed to something else. Some people want to reduce caffeine, sugar, many reasons."
The Container Recycling Institute found that between 1997 and 2005, sales of carbonated drinks remained relatively flat while sales of noncarbonated drinks, including bottled water, almost tripled.
Plastic water bottles produced for U.S. consumption take 1.5 million barrels of oil per year, according to a 2007 resolution passed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. That much energy could power 250,000 homes or fuel 100,000 cars for a year, according to the resolution.
Cornell University professor and environmentalist Doug James said the irony of bottled water is that it's marketed as clean and healthy when its production contributes to unnecessary environmental degradation.
"Fiji water, for example," he said. "A one-liter bottle is taken out of the aquifer of this little island, and shipped all the way across the world, producing like half a pound of greenhouse gases so you can have this one-liter bottle of water."
The taste question
Another obvious issue in the consumption of bottled water is taste.
In some areas, tap water simply isn't drinkable, Brown said, and in those situations, bottled water is a useful resource.
Other consumers simply prefer the taste of bottled water, Lauria said.
"Consumers have lots of preferences and some people want mineral water for taste," he said. "Everyone has their own reasons for buying products. And some people have a preference for bottled water."
But, Brown argues, perceptions about the taste of tap water and realities about the taste of tap water can be very different things.
To test her hypothesis that tap water tastes as least as good as bottled water, Brown has been conducting a series of taste tests at Ithaca College in the past year.
In five blind taste tests over the last year, the tap water has won four times, she said.
The growth in advertising and consumption of bottled water has occurred "frankly, since the big soda companies bought up water," she said. "They would buy up the Dasanis, and they would buy up the Poland Springs, and you get into the huge marketing machines of the major soda industries, Coke and Pepsi, notably, and they take it to a whole different field."
Water and waste
Then there's the waste stream.
In roughly the last 10 years, the amount of polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles being recycled increased from about 775 million pounds in 1995 to about 1,170 million in 2005, according to the Container Recycling Institute.
But during the same time period, the amount of PET bottles going into landfills skyrocketed from 1,175 million to 3,900 million pounds.
Water bottles are a big part of that problem, Brown says, because there are so many more of them, and because in many states, water bottles don't have a redemption value like soda and beer bottles do.
Lauria said the focus on water bottles is unfair because they make up "less than one-third of one percent" of the entire U.S. waste stream.
"There are many other plastic objects that are in our lives that no one seems to be concerned about and yet it all needs to be recycled," he said. "As you recycle bottled water you should also recycle many other products that are in your refrigerator when you're done with them."
Brown said that better recycling rates of water bottles would certainly help, but even better would be for people to stop using bottled water when tap water will do just fine.
"Even if we can do a good job of separating and recycling water bottles, it still comes down to the fact that it's completely unnecessary," she said. "From a cost standpoint alone, people should be starting to think about, 'I'm paying $1.19 or whatever it is for a bottle of water that I could get free out of my drinking water tap?'"
Hidden costs of water
Strictly speaking, tap water isn't free — it costs about $0.00002 per ounce.
But single-serve bottled water costs between 1,000 and 4,000 times more, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Some cities, including San Francisco, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, and Seattle, have banned city purchase of single-serve bottled water because of waste impact from the bottles and because it's viewed as an unnecessary cost to taxpayers.
On the waste reduction hierarchy, reduce and reuse should be above recycle, said Tompkins County Solid Waste manager Barb Eckstrom.
Even so, bottled water can provide a healthier choice in situations, like sports events, where people are going to buy drinks anyway, she said.
Brown reiterated that clearly "there is a place for bottled water."
"But for so many of us here in the Finger Lakes we're so blessed with excellent water systems, we need to at all costs preserve and maintain (them)," she said.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Chocolate is Exquisite, What a Pity it Isn't Illegal
The White House and several Republicans who have continuously backed the justification for the Iraq War, the amplified power of the Executive Branch, and the general creep of authoritarianism across the political spectrum are now quickly backing off of their positions and have decided to take a very awkward stance. In the beginning, they were absolute in their beliefs. To disagree with their neoconservative ideals was tantamount to patriotic heresy. Everything was going perfectly, justified, and right. Now, as truth is shown the light, they have gone to contending that what they did was not illegal, only incompetent. This tactic speaks to the complete degradation of their argument. Not only are they out of all logical defenses, they have also resigned themselves to simply trying to convince everyone that they are not criminals.
The problem with this new debate over whether or not their actions were unlawful is twofold. Firstly, by immediately taking a “last stand” approach on the lowest common denominator of the argument (the legality of their actions), they are conceding all of their actions were incorrect, hazardous, and wrong. The second part is that the press was almost completely complicit in the Neoconservative agenda in the aftermath to 9-11. The press cannot report en masse that they were deficient in their jobs as reporters without using up the last of their own political capital and losing the general public’s trust. In short, if they report the abject across-the-board failure of the outgoing Right Wing they are also, through their (non)action, admitting their own incompetence.
What we are left with is two groups who are telling us, directly and indirectly, that they are only a shade better than a common criminal.
The problem with this new debate over whether or not their actions were unlawful is twofold. Firstly, by immediately taking a “last stand” approach on the lowest common denominator of the argument (the legality of their actions), they are conceding all of their actions were incorrect, hazardous, and wrong. The second part is that the press was almost completely complicit in the Neoconservative agenda in the aftermath to 9-11. The press cannot report en masse that they were deficient in their jobs as reporters without using up the last of their own political capital and losing the general public’s trust. In short, if they report the abject across-the-board failure of the outgoing Right Wing they are also, through their (non)action, admitting their own incompetence.
What we are left with is two groups who are telling us, directly and indirectly, that they are only a shade better than a common criminal.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Entry for May 31, 2008
The people who feel the need to constantly ruin a good silence with mindless babbling are no more intellectually or socially advanced than an infant learning to speak.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Greatest News Story Ever
'Darth Vader' spared jail in Jedi church attacks
Wed May 14, 7:36 AM ET
A man who dressed up as Darth Vader, wearing a garbage bag for a cape, and assaulted the founders of a group calling itself the Jedi church was given a suspended sentence Tuesday.
Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, attacked Jedi church founder Barney Jones — aka Master Jonba Hehol — with a metal crutch, hitting him on the head, prosecutors told Holyhead Magistrates' Court.
He also whacked Jones' 18-year-old cousin, Michael Jones — known as Master Mormi Hehol — bruising his thigh in the March 25 incident, prosecutors said.
The two cousins and Barney Jones' brother, Daniel, set up the Church of Jediism, Anglesey order, last year. Jedi is the faith followed by some of the central characters in the "Star Wars" films.
The group, which claims about 30 members, says on its Web site that it uses "insight and knowledge" from the films as "a guide to living a better and more worthwhile life."
"We all love the films and what they stand for. Obviously some people are going to laugh about it," the Wales on Sunday newspaper quoted Barney Jones as saying last month. "But a lot of people do take it seriously."
Unfortunately for Hughes, his March attack was recorded on a video camera that the cousins had set up to film themselves in a light saber battle.
"Darth Vader! Jedis!" Hughes shouted as he approached.
Hughes claimed he couldn't remember the incident, having drunk the better part of a 2 1/2-gallon (10-liter) box of wine beforehand.
"He knows his behavior was wrong and didn't want it to happen but he has no recollection of it," said Hughes' lawyer, Frances Jones.
District Judge Andrew Shaw sentenced Hughes to two months in jail but suspended the sentence for one year. He also ordered Hughes to pay $195 to each of his victims and $117 in court costs.
In the 2001 United Kingdom census, 390,000 — 0.7 percent of the population — listed Jedi as their religion.
Wed May 14, 7:36 AM ET
A man who dressed up as Darth Vader, wearing a garbage bag for a cape, and assaulted the founders of a group calling itself the Jedi church was given a suspended sentence Tuesday.
Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, attacked Jedi church founder Barney Jones — aka Master Jonba Hehol — with a metal crutch, hitting him on the head, prosecutors told Holyhead Magistrates' Court.
He also whacked Jones' 18-year-old cousin, Michael Jones — known as Master Mormi Hehol — bruising his thigh in the March 25 incident, prosecutors said.
The two cousins and Barney Jones' brother, Daniel, set up the Church of Jediism, Anglesey order, last year. Jedi is the faith followed by some of the central characters in the "Star Wars" films.
The group, which claims about 30 members, says on its Web site that it uses "insight and knowledge" from the films as "a guide to living a better and more worthwhile life."
"We all love the films and what they stand for. Obviously some people are going to laugh about it," the Wales on Sunday newspaper quoted Barney Jones as saying last month. "But a lot of people do take it seriously."
Unfortunately for Hughes, his March attack was recorded on a video camera that the cousins had set up to film themselves in a light saber battle.
"Darth Vader! Jedis!" Hughes shouted as he approached.
Hughes claimed he couldn't remember the incident, having drunk the better part of a 2 1/2-gallon (10-liter) box of wine beforehand.
"He knows his behavior was wrong and didn't want it to happen but he has no recollection of it," said Hughes' lawyer, Frances Jones.
District Judge Andrew Shaw sentenced Hughes to two months in jail but suspended the sentence for one year. He also ordered Hughes to pay $195 to each of his victims and $117 in court costs.
In the 2001 United Kingdom census, 390,000 — 0.7 percent of the population — listed Jedi as their religion.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
You Are Not That Smart
Don’t worry, neither am I.
But what separates those of us who are a little bit smarter than the rest is that I know that I’m not that smart. My limitations are very clear to me: I do not know that much.
So when someone says that I know better than someone who has had years of training in a specific field, I know that it is not true. Case in point, while I was living in Georgia a local school system was faced with a growing parent belief that they know how to best educate their children. While coming to this belief they tried to take over the school system by forcing lawmakers to purpose new bills on their behalf. The chief theme of these bills was to take power away from the educational professionals and put them in the hands of the parents. Concerned that the local population of Georgia really didn’t have the educational training, years of experience, or professional credentials to teach the next generation, I wrote the following editorial was printed in the local paper:
Now I know that was blunt to the point of tongue through cheek, but I felt that it needed to be done. We all are not experts in everything and just because our intentions are good, does not mean that we have any idea what we are doing. So please, anytime anyone tells you that you know best, know that they are lying to you and have ulterior motives.
Original Story: http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-i-2007-06-14-157890.112113-Do_parents_really_know_best_about_education_matters_.html
Editorial: http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-i-2007-05-24-157227.112113_Parents_know_best_is_new_mantra_of_education.html
But what separates those of us who are a little bit smarter than the rest is that I know that I’m not that smart. My limitations are very clear to me: I do not know that much.
So when someone says that I know better than someone who has had years of training in a specific field, I know that it is not true. Case in point, while I was living in Georgia a local school system was faced with a growing parent belief that they know how to best educate their children. While coming to this belief they tried to take over the school system by forcing lawmakers to purpose new bills on their behalf. The chief theme of these bills was to take power away from the educational professionals and put them in the hands of the parents. Concerned that the local population of Georgia really didn’t have the educational training, years of experience, or professional credentials to teach the next generation, I wrote the following editorial was printed in the local paper:
June 18, 2007
I understand that you've received lots of mail against the new "Parent's know best" educational model that has just been signed into law, so I thought that I would be the dissenting voice to those letters.
As a parent who believes in the freedom to do their own children's dental work, I believe that I also know best when it comes to my child's education. Sure I'm not a trained educator or dentist, and don't have any fancy degrees to back up either the educational training or decent bathroom root canals, but I think that my best intentions trump decades of experience and should be good enough for my child's future.
I would also like to thank all of those representatives that I voted to give me more power over so called "professionals" who think that they know "stuff" just because they went to college in that field and spent years working on their craft. Who do those people think they are to question my absence of knowledge when it comes to directing the next generation? Not everyone can be a parent, and when you become one you immediately know what is best for your child in every aspect of life. Now if you'll excuse me, I think my son's appendix just burst and I need to find my good set of pliers.
– Brian Hamilton
Now I know that was blunt to the point of tongue through cheek, but I felt that it needed to be done. We all are not experts in everything and just because our intentions are good, does not mean that we have any idea what we are doing. So please, anytime anyone tells you that you know best, know that they are lying to you and have ulterior motives.
Original Story: http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-i-2007-06-14-157890.112113-Do_parents_really_know_best_about_education_matters_.html
Editorial: http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-i-2007-05-24-157227.112113_Parents_know_best_is_new_mantra_of_education.html
Einstein’s Supposed Religious Ambiguousness Clarified
Belief in God 'childish,' Jews not chosen people: Einstein letter
Tue May 13, 9:02 AM ET
Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.
The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.
As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other people".
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
"No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.
The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house's managing director Rupert Powell.
In it, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become Israel's second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people.
"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.
"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."
And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
Previously the great scientist's comments on religion -- such as "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" -- have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.
Powell said the letter being sold this week gave a clear reflection of Einstein's real thoughts on the subject. "He's fairly unequivocal as to what he's saying. There's no beating about the bush," he told AFP.
Tue May 13, 9:02 AM ET
Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.
The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.
As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other people".
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
"No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.
The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house's managing director Rupert Powell.
In it, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become Israel's second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people.
"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.
"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."
And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
Previously the great scientist's comments on religion -- such as "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" -- have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.
Powell said the letter being sold this week gave a clear reflection of Einstein's real thoughts on the subject. "He's fairly unequivocal as to what he's saying. There's no beating about the bush," he told AFP.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Mother’s Day Limerick for Barbara Bush
Mother Bush lived a life of great fortune
T'was clear she nary skimped on her portion
But son George made a mess
Caused such global distress
Even the Pope would'a blessed that abortion!
T'was clear she nary skimped on her portion
But son George made a mess
Caused such global distress
Even the Pope would'a blessed that abortion!
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Grand Cayman Revisited
"Always do what you are afraid to do" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
In September of 2004 my wife and I were living on Grand Cayman when Hurricane Ivan came through wreaking massive damage and closing down the island, destroying thousands of lives, and taking most of our belongings. While the hurricane itself was fairly trying, it was the months that followed that were very, very hard. This last week we returned to the island for her graduation.
When I last left the island it did not have reliable running water and only had scattered electricity. It was still a war zone as tourists were carefully escorted down the fully restored scenic sections, making sure to never take them down a side street where people where still living under tarps in their ruined homes. Tourism powered the economy, but it was a hard sell as the grocery stores were still rationing water and milk. Being that the media is state controlled, no real information escaped as to how widespread the destruction really was.
I felt more alone than I have ever felt in my life and returning was one of the hardest things that I have ever done. Below is the only thing that I have written about the experience:
Winds of Change
Let me preface this by saying that I don't care what you think. Now that we have that out of the way we can continue:
At time I was the director of technology for a company that owned most of the grocery stores, radio stations and imports/exports on the island of Grand Cayman. The average house was built 10 feet above sea level when Hurricane Ivan rolled ashore with 200mph winds, a 30 foot storm surge and constant string of small tornadoes scattered throughout the two days it had ownership of the island. The real hell is the months afterwords. This is my account of the storm itself in hours as it fell through my brain. I have excluded the months after the storm because most of you would no longer speak to me as one sane person speaks to another they believe to be sane.
September 9th, 2004
1300 - Just called Kela to tell her that I’m leaving work. She’s invited two classmates to our home because they’ve closed the dorms. Don’t care, just want to leave the station after I do my last report on when and how fast it will make landfall.
1400 – Last one here, finishing last copy of backups. Leaving one in safe, taking one with me and putting one in a ziplock at another location. Evacuated work on bosses command via cell. Insisted all of us wrap our computers in trash bags in case the roof comes off. Dumbass.
1500 – Arrived home to find three nervous, excited people and one stupid dog. Dog obviously the only one with any sense. Decided to watch movie.
1600 – Power cut to the house. Van driving around with loudspeaker told us to leave. Loading the car with idiots and stupid. Don’t know where to go – headed back to work.
1630 – Back at work with group. Checking updates to storm online – it has strengthened. Going back on air to tell people that their god hates them.
1700 – Boss leaves own safe house to make sure all computers at work are covered. Thanked me for telling masses their f*cked and sends me out the door. He obviously doesn’t want to come back to dead bodies and spitefully uncovered computers.
1730 – Called friends down the street who haven’t been evacuated. They’re all drunk, have their elderly parents in town, kid hopped up on sugar and two dogs running crazy in carnal anticipation. This should be fun.
1800 – Two cases of beer and a couple hotdogs turned out to not last as long as we had hoped. Storm coming ashore, driving home to get supplies.
1830 – Arrived home, again, this time to waves crashing over pool and onto back deck. Decide to hurry.
1900 – Driving back to friends with reasonable amount of supplies. Small, unconscious three cylinder Suzuki Alto gains self realization to waves crashing over street, trees falling in path and finds 200 horsepower.
2000 – Arrive at friends, again, everyone already drunk – thank god.
2100 – Storm arrives fully and knows that we f*cked his sister and didn’t call.
2200 – Decided to wake everyone when water comes through front door. Everyone hurries to abandon food for essential electronics equipment in mad dash upstairs.
2205 – Reality sets in, we missed the DVD player. Everyone takes it personally.
2230 – Hunger sets in, forced to drink Jamaican Beer
2300 – Water slowly rising fast to first floor ceiling. Decided it was a good time to take a nap.
September 10th, 2004
600 – Woke to sounds of waves hitting the inside of the house, went outside on porch to pee.
605 – More Jamaican beer as I watch the waves slowly break on the second floor landing. God this beer sucks.
1000 – Realize that storm is not going anywhere and water is slowly deeper. Talked with friend about having to crawl onto the roof with 150mph winds. Talked about letting dogs in go into the raging current to fend for themselves. Talked about maybe having to abandoned friends parents to save the next generation. Tricked Kela into calling parents one last time to tell them we’re having fun. Potential goodbyes are worse then the real one.
1100 – Prepare final plan with male of friends family. Wait for seemingly inevitable.
1800 – Water has stopped at second floor. Can see very little left of surrounding homes around us from porch. Wanted to cry but everyone else beat me to it.
September 11th, 2004
200 – Nothing has changed. Going to bed.
600 – Wake and see that nothing has been missed.
1200 – Water has receded. Storm has passed. Wading out to see who else is still alive.
1230 – Roads are gone, homes are gone, cars and trucks have been tosses around like scraps of paper, all low lying areas are still underwater, walking to work to see if the radio station and grocery store remain. There are people everywhere who look like they’ve crawled from hell back up through the earths crust. Why aren’t the dead lying bloated in the pools with the rest of life’s remains? Where is the pain when you need to feel it?
1300 – Nothing left of the station. Roof came down, my office is missing. Someone has neatly removed the roof from next door and left stacks of paper completely untouched. Grocery store across the street being looted by machete wielding Jamaicans. Reinforcements of other employees arrive to watch same Jamaicans selling freshly squeezed and stolen orange juice for $10 a ½ gallon. They decided to take business elsewhere as more start arriving on foot.
1400 – Catch ride in direction of home – hope it’s there when we arrive.
1430 – Pass downtown in back of Jeep with dog and wife. Some buildings are standing, some are missing, some look as if they never were built.
1445 – Stopped in heavy traffic on road parallel to beach, forced to bail and walk. Find out road is now perpendicular to beach. Hike in deep sand towards home. It doesn’t hurt as bad I as I thought it would to loose hope.
1600 – Walk down driveway, neighbor’s roof hanging from trees. House remains standing, roof missing, stench unbelievable. House not that bad – all furniture ruined, linens stained with the past, crack running from floor to roof separates the two new different gradients of house.
1700 – Sit on wet bed with dog, wife and despair. Nothing left to do.
1800 – Decide to go on with life, not happy about the choice. Spend night sleeping on floor in 90 degree heat. Somehow lack the liquid in my body to cry.
September 12th, 2004
800 – Walk back to town, find one of the companies inland grocery stores still standing and other employees cleaning. Pull out backups and drain water out of computers. Salvage 4 out of 20. Lines are forming outside, there is very little food in the store. People look impulsive. There is only essentials for half of them.
1000 – Heavily armed police arrive quickly for an island without any guns or reasonable transport. They take up arms at the main doors and lines for limited rations begin.
1200 – Fix satellite feed and regain internet access and voice over ip phones. Call around to inform people that we lived. Doors open, people push, gun fired, warehouse truck with complete warehouse arrives as reinforcements, push of people felt in everyone's stomach.
1400 – More shots fired. Tell boss to put wife on plane immediately. Find out runway closed. Chartered flights to start tomorrow. Vague threats tossed back and forth, I win. Decided to work, nothing else to do.
September 13th, 2004
1000 – Put Kela on a plane. She cried enough for both of us. I go back to work.
September 14th, 2004
Move into coworkers house. Sleep on floor in garage with dog and other people. Learn to sh*t in a bag, bathe in the ocean and swing a knife.
September 15th, 2004
Borrow car someone carelessly left keys in. Pack remains of house in car, drive back to new garage home and store remaining crap in locked closet in nondescript boxes. Ditch car down street, keep keys. Call wife.
September 16th until December 3rd
Spend every night on concert floor with dog, sh*t in a bag, eat whatever we can steal from store, bathe in ocean, walk to work, wish for death.
December 4th
Arrived in Maine. Met wife. Wait until she went to sleep and slept on floor.
In September of 2004 my wife and I were living on Grand Cayman when Hurricane Ivan came through wreaking massive damage and closing down the island, destroying thousands of lives, and taking most of our belongings. While the hurricane itself was fairly trying, it was the months that followed that were very, very hard. This last week we returned to the island for her graduation.
When I last left the island it did not have reliable running water and only had scattered electricity. It was still a war zone as tourists were carefully escorted down the fully restored scenic sections, making sure to never take them down a side street where people where still living under tarps in their ruined homes. Tourism powered the economy, but it was a hard sell as the grocery stores were still rationing water and milk. Being that the media is state controlled, no real information escaped as to how widespread the destruction really was.
I felt more alone than I have ever felt in my life and returning was one of the hardest things that I have ever done. Below is the only thing that I have written about the experience:
Winds of Change
Let me preface this by saying that I don't care what you think. Now that we have that out of the way we can continue:
At time I was the director of technology for a company that owned most of the grocery stores, radio stations and imports/exports on the island of Grand Cayman. The average house was built 10 feet above sea level when Hurricane Ivan rolled ashore with 200mph winds, a 30 foot storm surge and constant string of small tornadoes scattered throughout the two days it had ownership of the island. The real hell is the months afterwords. This is my account of the storm itself in hours as it fell through my brain. I have excluded the months after the storm because most of you would no longer speak to me as one sane person speaks to another they believe to be sane.
September 9th, 2004
1300 - Just called Kela to tell her that I’m leaving work. She’s invited two classmates to our home because they’ve closed the dorms. Don’t care, just want to leave the station after I do my last report on when and how fast it will make landfall.
1400 – Last one here, finishing last copy of backups. Leaving one in safe, taking one with me and putting one in a ziplock at another location. Evacuated work on bosses command via cell. Insisted all of us wrap our computers in trash bags in case the roof comes off. Dumbass.
1500 – Arrived home to find three nervous, excited people and one stupid dog. Dog obviously the only one with any sense. Decided to watch movie.
1600 – Power cut to the house. Van driving around with loudspeaker told us to leave. Loading the car with idiots and stupid. Don’t know where to go – headed back to work.
1630 – Back at work with group. Checking updates to storm online – it has strengthened. Going back on air to tell people that their god hates them.
1700 – Boss leaves own safe house to make sure all computers at work are covered. Thanked me for telling masses their f*cked and sends me out the door. He obviously doesn’t want to come back to dead bodies and spitefully uncovered computers.
1730 – Called friends down the street who haven’t been evacuated. They’re all drunk, have their elderly parents in town, kid hopped up on sugar and two dogs running crazy in carnal anticipation. This should be fun.
1800 – Two cases of beer and a couple hotdogs turned out to not last as long as we had hoped. Storm coming ashore, driving home to get supplies.
1830 – Arrived home, again, this time to waves crashing over pool and onto back deck. Decide to hurry.
1900 – Driving back to friends with reasonable amount of supplies. Small, unconscious three cylinder Suzuki Alto gains self realization to waves crashing over street, trees falling in path and finds 200 horsepower.
2000 – Arrive at friends, again, everyone already drunk – thank god.
2100 – Storm arrives fully and knows that we f*cked his sister and didn’t call.
2200 – Decided to wake everyone when water comes through front door. Everyone hurries to abandon food for essential electronics equipment in mad dash upstairs.
2205 – Reality sets in, we missed the DVD player. Everyone takes it personally.
2230 – Hunger sets in, forced to drink Jamaican Beer
2300 – Water slowly rising fast to first floor ceiling. Decided it was a good time to take a nap.
September 10th, 2004
600 – Woke to sounds of waves hitting the inside of the house, went outside on porch to pee.
605 – More Jamaican beer as I watch the waves slowly break on the second floor landing. God this beer sucks.
1000 – Realize that storm is not going anywhere and water is slowly deeper. Talked with friend about having to crawl onto the roof with 150mph winds. Talked about letting dogs in go into the raging current to fend for themselves. Talked about maybe having to abandoned friends parents to save the next generation. Tricked Kela into calling parents one last time to tell them we’re having fun. Potential goodbyes are worse then the real one.
1100 – Prepare final plan with male of friends family. Wait for seemingly inevitable.
1800 – Water has stopped at second floor. Can see very little left of surrounding homes around us from porch. Wanted to cry but everyone else beat me to it.
September 11th, 2004
200 – Nothing has changed. Going to bed.
600 – Wake and see that nothing has been missed.
1200 – Water has receded. Storm has passed. Wading out to see who else is still alive.
1230 – Roads are gone, homes are gone, cars and trucks have been tosses around like scraps of paper, all low lying areas are still underwater, walking to work to see if the radio station and grocery store remain. There are people everywhere who look like they’ve crawled from hell back up through the earths crust. Why aren’t the dead lying bloated in the pools with the rest of life’s remains? Where is the pain when you need to feel it?
1300 – Nothing left of the station. Roof came down, my office is missing. Someone has neatly removed the roof from next door and left stacks of paper completely untouched. Grocery store across the street being looted by machete wielding Jamaicans. Reinforcements of other employees arrive to watch same Jamaicans selling freshly squeezed and stolen orange juice for $10 a ½ gallon. They decided to take business elsewhere as more start arriving on foot.
1400 – Catch ride in direction of home – hope it’s there when we arrive.
1430 – Pass downtown in back of Jeep with dog and wife. Some buildings are standing, some are missing, some look as if they never were built.
1445 – Stopped in heavy traffic on road parallel to beach, forced to bail and walk. Find out road is now perpendicular to beach. Hike in deep sand towards home. It doesn’t hurt as bad I as I thought it would to loose hope.
1600 – Walk down driveway, neighbor’s roof hanging from trees. House remains standing, roof missing, stench unbelievable. House not that bad – all furniture ruined, linens stained with the past, crack running from floor to roof separates the two new different gradients of house.
1700 – Sit on wet bed with dog, wife and despair. Nothing left to do.
1800 – Decide to go on with life, not happy about the choice. Spend night sleeping on floor in 90 degree heat. Somehow lack the liquid in my body to cry.
September 12th, 2004
800 – Walk back to town, find one of the companies inland grocery stores still standing and other employees cleaning. Pull out backups and drain water out of computers. Salvage 4 out of 20. Lines are forming outside, there is very little food in the store. People look impulsive. There is only essentials for half of them.
1000 – Heavily armed police arrive quickly for an island without any guns or reasonable transport. They take up arms at the main doors and lines for limited rations begin.
1200 – Fix satellite feed and regain internet access and voice over ip phones. Call around to inform people that we lived. Doors open, people push, gun fired, warehouse truck with complete warehouse arrives as reinforcements, push of people felt in everyone's stomach.
1400 – More shots fired. Tell boss to put wife on plane immediately. Find out runway closed. Chartered flights to start tomorrow. Vague threats tossed back and forth, I win. Decided to work, nothing else to do.
September 13th, 2004
1000 – Put Kela on a plane. She cried enough for both of us. I go back to work.
September 14th, 2004
Move into coworkers house. Sleep on floor in garage with dog and other people. Learn to sh*t in a bag, bathe in the ocean and swing a knife.
September 15th, 2004
Borrow car someone carelessly left keys in. Pack remains of house in car, drive back to new garage home and store remaining crap in locked closet in nondescript boxes. Ditch car down street, keep keys. Call wife.
September 16th until December 3rd
Spend every night on concert floor with dog, sh*t in a bag, eat whatever we can steal from store, bathe in ocean, walk to work, wish for death.
December 4th
Arrived in Maine. Met wife. Wait until she went to sleep and slept on floor.
Friday, May 09, 2008
So You Want a Dumbass for President?
There is an ongoing trend that I just can’t seem to wrap by brain around. It’s the use of the word “elitist” as an insult. Thinking that maybe it’s just me who doesn’t understand what “elite” means, I searched for it on dictionary.com and found the following:
e•lite [i-leet, ey-leet] - noun - the choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons.
So an elitist would be someone who acts like that, whether it is warranted or not.
The question that naturally follows is, are we offended that someone is actually more intelligent than us or is it that we are more comfortable with someone of superior mental power blatantly patronizing us by dumbing things down to a level our little minds can understand?
I’m really at a loss on this one. Personally, I want someone embarrassingly superior to me running the country. They need to be able to make me sit back and say “wow” when they speak, I want to work harder to appreciate what it is that they are talking about, and most importantly, I want them to move me intellectually. I want someone who occasionally talks over my head to let me know that I need to work harder on my own level of comprehension and understanding. It keeps me on my toes and involved in the world around me.
Besides, haven’t we had enough presidents who are less comfortable talking on difficult matters and more comfortable knocking back beers and talking football? Isn’t it time we tried something a bit, I don’t know, better? Sure they may seem “elitist”, but haven’t the last eight years taught us that voting for someone of seemingly average intelligence, someone we can have a beer with, isn’t going to end well?
So here is my new definition of elitism: It is someone who knows more in the face of ignorance without being arrogant and condescending. And anyone who tries to lob it as an insult does nothing more than proclaim that they are a moron who will only vote for their own kind.
e•lite [i-leet, ey-leet] - noun - the choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons.
So an elitist would be someone who acts like that, whether it is warranted or not.
The question that naturally follows is, are we offended that someone is actually more intelligent than us or is it that we are more comfortable with someone of superior mental power blatantly patronizing us by dumbing things down to a level our little minds can understand?
I’m really at a loss on this one. Personally, I want someone embarrassingly superior to me running the country. They need to be able to make me sit back and say “wow” when they speak, I want to work harder to appreciate what it is that they are talking about, and most importantly, I want them to move me intellectually. I want someone who occasionally talks over my head to let me know that I need to work harder on my own level of comprehension and understanding. It keeps me on my toes and involved in the world around me.
Besides, haven’t we had enough presidents who are less comfortable talking on difficult matters and more comfortable knocking back beers and talking football? Isn’t it time we tried something a bit, I don’t know, better? Sure they may seem “elitist”, but haven’t the last eight years taught us that voting for someone of seemingly average intelligence, someone we can have a beer with, isn’t going to end well?
So here is my new definition of elitism: It is someone who knows more in the face of ignorance without being arrogant and condescending. And anyone who tries to lob it as an insult does nothing more than proclaim that they are a moron who will only vote for their own kind.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
My Problem With Hillary Clinton
The eternal seductiveness of bad ideas has always tempted those looking to suppress hard work and tough choices. It is the responsibility of those able to see a situation for what it is and recommend patience over irresponsible action that defines quality leadership. Over the last seven years, we have had a government, and by reflection a population, that sees movement of any sort as positive. We, as a country, have grown to see personal and national reflection as a source of weakness. This trend must stop, and I only see one candidate willing enough to take a stand on the side of measured response and a positive forward movement through a strict adherence to the lessons of the past. And while both Democratic candidates show the strength to right wrongs, one of them refuses to admit mistakes in her past. Her failure to address a specific major wrong undermines any other argument that she may have for experience and tenure.
It is a common misconception that wisdom comes with age. In reality, the only thing that age bestows upon us is perspective. I am not old enough to speak on perspective, but it is an easy observation for most rational people to make that an individual who cannot admit fault regarding key decisions does not deserve the trust of our vote. So as much as I understand people’s support of Hillary Clinton, I have no choice but to see her failure to admit that she was wrong in voting for the Iraq War as a fundamental character flaw, and a fatal, underlining detriment of the leader that she would be.
It is a common misconception that wisdom comes with age. In reality, the only thing that age bestows upon us is perspective. I am not old enough to speak on perspective, but it is an easy observation for most rational people to make that an individual who cannot admit fault regarding key decisions does not deserve the trust of our vote. So as much as I understand people’s support of Hillary Clinton, I have no choice but to see her failure to admit that she was wrong in voting for the Iraq War as a fundamental character flaw, and a fatal, underlining detriment of the leader that she would be.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
I am Jubal Harshaw
There are always characters in books that I wish I could be. I would love to think that I am as simple as a Tolkien character like Aragon or a happy hobbit, or more complex like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian, to even the always present, if not intellectually stifling, Hamlet. This last week I reread a book that I must have read a dozen times in my younger years, and found myself, again, reading what I perceive as myself. Having done so, I was curious if any of you have ever read yourself in a work of fiction. Or, baring a previous self-realization through a fictional narrative, who do you wish you were or were more like?
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Vaccinating Sebastian
My wife and I are at am impasse on something to do with our child Sebastian. I’m sure that it is not our last disagreement, but it’s the first big one. She does not want him vaccinated against anything and I would like him to get some vaccinations. I’ve conceded that there are some vaccines that are completely ridiculous. For instance, the chicken pox vaccine prevents children from getting the disease while they are young, but can come with a heavy consequence later in life. Adult chicken pox is called shingles and is extremely painful, whereas chicken pox in children is almost always treated with a couple days at home watching TV and eating soup. To me, this trade-off of a minor inconvenience for something worse at a later date speaks volumes of our culture, but that is another rant.
By training, I am a researcher. Too many years of school attendance in front and behind the podium will do that to you. I can spot sham research from a mile away and can become incredibly knowledgeable about minutia within several hours given the right access. So I decided to dive into this issue full-on to see if her argument for no vaccinations held up to scientific scrutiny. Afterwards, I talked with her briefly about her decision and reasoning. In the end I came to an understanding that her issue is one of faith in her gut.
Unfortunately, this puts her on the side with the hordes of mostly uneducated people who think that vaccines are controversial. Just by doing a couple of Google searches I’ve come to realize that that army of pseudoscience-believing anti-vaccine people immediately attacks anyone who points out the obvious holes in their unfounded ideas. To me, they appear to be the same type of individuals who are still arguing that the earth is 6,000 years old, Bush had a hand in 9-11, or that global warming doesn't exist.
You can always spot these people by their constant desire to fill gaps. If there is science out there that they don’t fully understand, threatens their current belief system, or just sounds bad to their limited knowledge, they work to find holes and point to those holes as proof that the lack of evidence that exists in these holes means that something bad must inhabit them. These people allow themselves to overlook the fact that a lack of evidence of something does not prove anything else.
So they look for holes, point to these unknowns as definite proof of something evil, and try to convince others of those evils. The anti-vaccine movement is much larger, and started earlier, in Europe. The fallout is already evident. Last year, the number of measles cases in England and Wales jumped more than 30%. This was the highest level since record keeping began in 1995 (BBC 2008). The Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) immunization rates drastically dropped after a now defunct paper was release that questioned whether or not the vaccine was linked to an increased risk of autism. The research was done by a man who was trying to sell an alternative to thimerosal (an ingredient in the vaccine) and every single person who was on the research team has since denounced the theory. This is the type of cold hard fact that some people choose to overlook in favor of wild guesses and unsubstantiated rumors.
What surprises me more is that despite a long history of being both successful and safe, vaccines still have very open and angry critics. There are a small cluster of parents and an even smaller faction of doctors that still question whether vaccinating children is worth what they perceive as risks. This anti-vaccine movement seems to be completely based on bad science and blatant fear-mongering of the unknown. Recently, it has even become openly vocal and very hostile.
Their original argument stemmed from the fact that mercury, which is a major component in thimerosal, is a poison to the brain due because it is a known neurotoxin. Every single argument that follows is an offshoot of this original argument linking thimerosal to autism. Almost everything is toxic in high enough doses. As many people have pointed out, too much vitamin C or even water can kill you. So the argument then comes down to dosage. Is the amount of mercury in thimerosal high enough to cause neurological damage?
The anti-vaccine side argues that the ethylmercury found in thimerosal exceeds the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) daily limit. But if actually do the math on the EPA’s website (EPA 2007) you quickly find out that there is an extraordinarily low amount in common vaccines and shots. For instance, there is 25 micrograms of ethylmercury in a flu shot, which, by those same FDA guidelines, would be safe to give to an individual every week for their entire life. By the more stringent EPA guidelines and using the same mathematic equation, it would be acceptable to give a toddler a vaccine using that same amount of ethylmercury every month.
To back up the claim that thimerosal does not cause autism, there have been a plethora of both epidemiological and ecological studies. Every single one of these peer reviewed studies showed that there was no correlation between thimerosal and autism (Parker 2004 and Doja 2006). The Institute of Medicine, one part of the United States National Academies, a not-for-profit, non-governmental American organization and part of the National Academy of Sciences, found in a review of all the available evidence of both the epidemiological and toxicological studies, that the evidence was conclusive and found no link whatsoever between thimerosal and autism (IOM 2004). And to drive the nail into the coffin of this argument further, Mitchell (2006) found that careful observations indicate that signs of autism are present much earlier, even before twelve months of age, before exposure to thimerosal.
This leaves those mercury alarmists facing an overwhelming amount of negative evidence and searching for some sort of rationalizations to keep their argument alive. What they are faced with is a solid scientific consensus. Multiple independent lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction: vaccines in general, and thimerosal in particular, do not cause autism, which rather likely has its roots in genetics. Furthermore, true autism rates are probably static and not rising.
Even despite the complete lack of evidence for any safety concern, the FDA decided to remove all thimerosal from childhood vaccines, and by 2002 no new childhood vaccines with thimerosal were being sold in the U.S. This was not an admission of prior error, as some mercury proponents claimed; instead, the FDA was playing it safe by minimizing human exposure to mercury wherever possible. The move was also likely calculated to maintain public confidence in vaccines. Since thimerosal has been removed from vaccines, autism diagnosis rates have steadily increased (IDIC 2007).
The only rationalization that the true believing anti-vaccine people had left to put forward was that there was a huge stockpile of thimerosal-laden vaccines—even though a published inspection of 447 pediatric clinics and offices found only 1.9 percent of relevant vaccines still had thimerosal by February 2002, a tiny fraction that was either exchanged, used, or expired soon after (CDCP/ACIP 2002).
With rationalization out the window, remaining stragglers have turned to desperation. A wild claim that the mercury from mortuary cremations had been increasing the environmental mercury toxicity and offsetting the decrease in mercury from thimerosal was purposed. Or that there is even more need for studies because the studies out there were part of a government conspiracy to not have to pay for damages to those who were injured by vaccines. But my favorite is that the drug companies wrote almost all of the scientific studies around the world, with different universities, and with thousands of different scientist, thereby making all of the previous studies fraudulent. Then the people who made this last outlandish claim asked for studies funded by non-scientific organizations run by lawyers who are suing over the fake vaccine controversy.
The anti-vaccines camp’s goal is to undermine public confidence in what is arguably the single most effective public health measure devised by modern science. This decrease in confidence will lead, as it has before, to declining compliance and an increase in infectious disease. The forces of irrationality are on display with this issue. There are conspiracy theorists, well-meaning but misguided citizen groups who are becoming increasingly desperate and hostile, irresponsible journalists, and ethically compromised or incompetent scientists. The science itself is complex, making it difficult for the average person to sift through all the misdirection and misinformation. Standing against all this is simple disrespect for scientific integrity and the dedication to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Right now the evidence leads to the firm conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. Yet, if history is any guide, the myth that they do cause autism will likely endure even in the face of increasing contradictory evidence. Some of these anti-vaccine groups have since taken a more general, if not laughably absurd, stance that all vaccines are now evil because of a host of either ill-informed guesses or wild speculation. With their new points of contention coming in the recent formulation of the argument that the diseases vaccinated against aren’t really that bad and/or we already have a natural immunity to some of these diseases due to the fact that our forefathers lives through the eras where those specific diseases were rampant. Both of these arguments can and will easily be dispatched by using the previous research. But none of that matters for the anti-vaccine crowd. They are hell-bent on finding excuses to believe their side, no matter what harm it may cause their children or society.
The end of my research showed overwhelming evidence that, not only are the odds greater that your children could get sick from a disease than from the vaccine meant to prevent it, but the sickness itself would be more severe in those children whose parents decided not to vaccinate them. Those people who do not choose to vaccinate their children will have a much higher rate of harming their child, and all out of blind faith in themselves. What I have realized is that the argument to not vaccinate comes down to fear of the unknown and the hard task of admitting wrongness.
The arguments above have been presented to help anyone trying to figure out if there is any validity to the claims that vaccines are harmful. There is not and I hope that you have seen this. My wife is still steadfast in her belief that vaccines are evil. She will not waver, change her mind, or see the overwhelming scientific research as proof that she is wrong. And in the end, I have had no choice but to yield to her unfounded fear. It is not something that I am living well with. To me, it seems as if she’s found some sort of goofy cult that I can do nothing but mock in the vein hope that she’ll grow out of it. But, being that she is the mother of our child, I have had to yield to her intuition. My last wish for the argument is that our son never encounters any of these diseases, so that he will not blame her for her decision.
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Taylor, B. 2006. Vaccines and the changing epidemiology of autism. Child Care, Health, and Development 32(5):511–19.
Taylor, B., E. Miller, C.P. Farrington, M.C. Petropoulos, I. Favot-Mayaud, J. Li, and P.A. Waight. 1999. Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association. Lancet 12;353(9169):2026–2029.
Taylor, B., E. Miller, R. Lingam, N. Andrews, A. Simmons, and J. Stowe. 2002. Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and bowel problems or developmental regression in children with autism: population study. British Medical Journal 16; 324(7334):393–96.
Thimerosal in Vaccines, 2008. Available at: http://www.fda.gov/CBER/vaccine/thimerosal.htm
United States Court of Federal Claims. 2007. Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Transcript of Day 6. June 18, 2007. Available at ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/transcripts/day06.pdf.
United States Court of Federal Claims, 2007. Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Transcript of Day 8. June 20, 2007. Available at ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/transcripts/day08.pdf.
USDOJ, About the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Available at www.usdoj.gov/civil/torts/const/vicp/about.htm.
Wakefield, A.J., S.H. Murch, A. Anthony, J. Linnell, D.M. Casson, M. Malik, M. Berelowitz, A.P. Dhillon, M.A. Thomson, P. Harvey, A. Valentine, S.E. Davies, and J.A. Walker-Smith. 1998.
Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 351(9103):637–41.
By training, I am a researcher. Too many years of school attendance in front and behind the podium will do that to you. I can spot sham research from a mile away and can become incredibly knowledgeable about minutia within several hours given the right access. So I decided to dive into this issue full-on to see if her argument for no vaccinations held up to scientific scrutiny. Afterwards, I talked with her briefly about her decision and reasoning. In the end I came to an understanding that her issue is one of faith in her gut.
Unfortunately, this puts her on the side with the hordes of mostly uneducated people who think that vaccines are controversial. Just by doing a couple of Google searches I’ve come to realize that that army of pseudoscience-believing anti-vaccine people immediately attacks anyone who points out the obvious holes in their unfounded ideas. To me, they appear to be the same type of individuals who are still arguing that the earth is 6,000 years old, Bush had a hand in 9-11, or that global warming doesn't exist.
You can always spot these people by their constant desire to fill gaps. If there is science out there that they don’t fully understand, threatens their current belief system, or just sounds bad to their limited knowledge, they work to find holes and point to those holes as proof that the lack of evidence that exists in these holes means that something bad must inhabit them. These people allow themselves to overlook the fact that a lack of evidence of something does not prove anything else.
So they look for holes, point to these unknowns as definite proof of something evil, and try to convince others of those evils. The anti-vaccine movement is much larger, and started earlier, in Europe. The fallout is already evident. Last year, the number of measles cases in England and Wales jumped more than 30%. This was the highest level since record keeping began in 1995 (BBC 2008). The Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) immunization rates drastically dropped after a now defunct paper was release that questioned whether or not the vaccine was linked to an increased risk of autism. The research was done by a man who was trying to sell an alternative to thimerosal (an ingredient in the vaccine) and every single person who was on the research team has since denounced the theory. This is the type of cold hard fact that some people choose to overlook in favor of wild guesses and unsubstantiated rumors.
What surprises me more is that despite a long history of being both successful and safe, vaccines still have very open and angry critics. There are a small cluster of parents and an even smaller faction of doctors that still question whether vaccinating children is worth what they perceive as risks. This anti-vaccine movement seems to be completely based on bad science and blatant fear-mongering of the unknown. Recently, it has even become openly vocal and very hostile.
Their original argument stemmed from the fact that mercury, which is a major component in thimerosal, is a poison to the brain due because it is a known neurotoxin. Every single argument that follows is an offshoot of this original argument linking thimerosal to autism. Almost everything is toxic in high enough doses. As many people have pointed out, too much vitamin C or even water can kill you. So the argument then comes down to dosage. Is the amount of mercury in thimerosal high enough to cause neurological damage?
The anti-vaccine side argues that the ethylmercury found in thimerosal exceeds the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) daily limit. But if actually do the math on the EPA’s website (EPA 2007) you quickly find out that there is an extraordinarily low amount in common vaccines and shots. For instance, there is 25 micrograms of ethylmercury in a flu shot, which, by those same FDA guidelines, would be safe to give to an individual every week for their entire life. By the more stringent EPA guidelines and using the same mathematic equation, it would be acceptable to give a toddler a vaccine using that same amount of ethylmercury every month.
To back up the claim that thimerosal does not cause autism, there have been a plethora of both epidemiological and ecological studies. Every single one of these peer reviewed studies showed that there was no correlation between thimerosal and autism (Parker 2004 and Doja 2006). The Institute of Medicine, one part of the United States National Academies, a not-for-profit, non-governmental American organization and part of the National Academy of Sciences, found in a review of all the available evidence of both the epidemiological and toxicological studies, that the evidence was conclusive and found no link whatsoever between thimerosal and autism (IOM 2004). And to drive the nail into the coffin of this argument further, Mitchell (2006) found that careful observations indicate that signs of autism are present much earlier, even before twelve months of age, before exposure to thimerosal.
This leaves those mercury alarmists facing an overwhelming amount of negative evidence and searching for some sort of rationalizations to keep their argument alive. What they are faced with is a solid scientific consensus. Multiple independent lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction: vaccines in general, and thimerosal in particular, do not cause autism, which rather likely has its roots in genetics. Furthermore, true autism rates are probably static and not rising.
Even despite the complete lack of evidence for any safety concern, the FDA decided to remove all thimerosal from childhood vaccines, and by 2002 no new childhood vaccines with thimerosal were being sold in the U.S. This was not an admission of prior error, as some mercury proponents claimed; instead, the FDA was playing it safe by minimizing human exposure to mercury wherever possible. The move was also likely calculated to maintain public confidence in vaccines. Since thimerosal has been removed from vaccines, autism diagnosis rates have steadily increased (IDIC 2007).
The only rationalization that the true believing anti-vaccine people had left to put forward was that there was a huge stockpile of thimerosal-laden vaccines—even though a published inspection of 447 pediatric clinics and offices found only 1.9 percent of relevant vaccines still had thimerosal by February 2002, a tiny fraction that was either exchanged, used, or expired soon after (CDCP/ACIP 2002).
With rationalization out the window, remaining stragglers have turned to desperation. A wild claim that the mercury from mortuary cremations had been increasing the environmental mercury toxicity and offsetting the decrease in mercury from thimerosal was purposed. Or that there is even more need for studies because the studies out there were part of a government conspiracy to not have to pay for damages to those who were injured by vaccines. But my favorite is that the drug companies wrote almost all of the scientific studies around the world, with different universities, and with thousands of different scientist, thereby making all of the previous studies fraudulent. Then the people who made this last outlandish claim asked for studies funded by non-scientific organizations run by lawyers who are suing over the fake vaccine controversy.
The anti-vaccines camp’s goal is to undermine public confidence in what is arguably the single most effective public health measure devised by modern science. This decrease in confidence will lead, as it has before, to declining compliance and an increase in infectious disease. The forces of irrationality are on display with this issue. There are conspiracy theorists, well-meaning but misguided citizen groups who are becoming increasingly desperate and hostile, irresponsible journalists, and ethically compromised or incompetent scientists. The science itself is complex, making it difficult for the average person to sift through all the misdirection and misinformation. Standing against all this is simple disrespect for scientific integrity and the dedication to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Right now the evidence leads to the firm conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. Yet, if history is any guide, the myth that they do cause autism will likely endure even in the face of increasing contradictory evidence. Some of these anti-vaccine groups have since taken a more general, if not laughably absurd, stance that all vaccines are now evil because of a host of either ill-informed guesses or wild speculation. With their new points of contention coming in the recent formulation of the argument that the diseases vaccinated against aren’t really that bad and/or we already have a natural immunity to some of these diseases due to the fact that our forefathers lives through the eras where those specific diseases were rampant. Both of these arguments can and will easily be dispatched by using the previous research. But none of that matters for the anti-vaccine crowd. They are hell-bent on finding excuses to believe their side, no matter what harm it may cause their children or society.
The end of my research showed overwhelming evidence that, not only are the odds greater that your children could get sick from a disease than from the vaccine meant to prevent it, but the sickness itself would be more severe in those children whose parents decided not to vaccinate them. Those people who do not choose to vaccinate their children will have a much higher rate of harming their child, and all out of blind faith in themselves. What I have realized is that the argument to not vaccinate comes down to fear of the unknown and the hard task of admitting wrongness.
The arguments above have been presented to help anyone trying to figure out if there is any validity to the claims that vaccines are harmful. There is not and I hope that you have seen this. My wife is still steadfast in her belief that vaccines are evil. She will not waver, change her mind, or see the overwhelming scientific research as proof that she is wrong. And in the end, I have had no choice but to yield to her unfounded fear. It is not something that I am living well with. To me, it seems as if she’s found some sort of goofy cult that I can do nothing but mock in the vein hope that she’ll grow out of it. But, being that she is the mother of our child, I have had to yield to her intuition. My last wish for the argument is that our son never encounters any of these diseases, so that he will not blame her for her decision.
References
Brown, M.J., T. Willis, B. Omalu, and R. Leiker. 2006. Deaths resulting from hypocalcemia after administration of edetate disodium: 2003–2005. Pediatrics. 118(2):e534–36.
Centers for Disease Control. 2004. MMWR Weekly, November 12. 53(44):1041–1044. Available at www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5344a4.htm.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization. 2002. Practice Records of the meeting held on February 20–21, 2002, Atlanta Marriott North Central Hotel. Available at www.kevinleitch.co.uk/grabit/acip-min-feb.pdf.
Citizen Cain. 2005. Slouching Toward Truth—Autism and Mercury, November 30. Available at http://citizencain.blogspot.com/2005/11/slouching-toward-truth-autism-and_30.html.
Deer, B. 2007. Andrew Wakefield & the MMR scare: part 2. Available at http://briandeer.com/wakefield-deer.htm.
Doja, A., and W. Roberts. 2006. Immunizations and autism: a review of the literature. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences 33(4):341–46.
Friederichs, V., J.C. Cameron, and C. Robertson. 2006. Impact of adverse publicity on MMR vaccine uptake: a population based analysis of vaccine uptake records for one million children, born 1987–2004. Archives of Diseases of Children 200691(6):465–68. Epub 2006 April 25.
Geier, D.A., and M.R. Geier. 2006. An assessment of downward trends in neurodevelopmental disorders in the United States following removal of thimerosal from childhood vaccines. Medical Science Monitor 12(6):CR231–9. Epub 2006 May 29.
General Medical Council. 2007. July 16. Available at www.gmcpressoffice.org.uk/apps/news/events/index.php?month=7&year=2007&submit=Submit.
Goldacre B. 2007. Opinions from the medical fringe should come with a health warning. The Guardian, Saturday, February 24. Available at www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/feb/24/badscience.uknews.
Gorski, D. 2007. Andrew Wakefield: The Galileo gambit writ large in The Observer. Respectful Insolence, July 9, 2007. Available at http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/07/andrew_wakefield_the_galileo_gambit_writ.php.
Honda, H., Y. Shimizu, and M. Rutter. 2005. No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46(6):572–79.
Hughes, V. 2007. Mercury Rising. Nature Medicine 13(8):896–7. Epub 2007 August 31.
Infectious Diseases and Immunization Committee, Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS). 2007.
Autistic spectrum disorder: No causal relationship with vaccines. Paediatrics & Child Health 12(5): 393–95. Available at www.cps.ca/english/statements/ID/pidnote_jun07.htm.
Institute of Medicine. 2001. Immunization Safety Review: Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine and Autism. April 23. Available at www.iom.edu/CMS/3793/4705/4715.aspx.
Institute of Medicine. 2004. Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism. May 17. Available at www.iom.edu/CMS/3793/4705/20155.aspx.
Kennedy, R.F. 2005. Deadly immunity. June 16. Salon.com. Available at http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/06/16/thimerosal/index3.html?pn=1.
Huffington Post. 2007. Attack on mothers. June 19. The Huffington Post. Available at www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/attack-on-mothers_b_52894.html.
Kirby, David. 2005. Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Lancet Editors, 2004. Lancet 363(9411).
Leitch K. 2007. Autism amongst the Amish. Left Brain/Right Brain. 22. Available at www.kevinleitch.co.uk/wp/?p=5353.
Madsen, K.M., A. Hviid, M. Vestergaard, D. Schendel, J. Wohlfahrt, P. Thorsen, J. Olsen, and M. Melbye. 2002. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. New England Journal of Medicine 347(19):1477–1482.
Measles Cases Jump to Record High, 2008. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7259338.stm
Miles, J.H., and T.N. Takahashi. 2007. Lack of association between Rh status, Rh immune globulin in pregnancy and autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics, Part A1. 143(13):1397–407.
Mitchell, S., J. Brian, L. Zwaigenbaum, W. Roberts, P. Szatmari, I. Smith, and S. Bryson. 2006. Early language and communication development of infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 27(2 Suppl):S69–78.
Parker, S.K., B. Schwartz, J. Todd, and L.K. Pickering. 2004. Thimerosal-containing vaccines and autistic spectrum disorder: a critical review of published original data. Pediatrics 114(3):793–804.
Rutter, M. 2005. Incidence of autism spectrum disorders: changes over time and their meaning. Acta Paediatrica 94(1):2–15.
Szatmari, P., et. al. 2007. Mapping autism risk loci using genetic linkage and chromosomal rearrangements. Nature Genetics 39, 319–28.
Taylor, B. 2006. Vaccines and the changing epidemiology of autism. Child Care, Health, and Development 32(5):511–19.
Taylor, B., E. Miller, C.P. Farrington, M.C. Petropoulos, I. Favot-Mayaud, J. Li, and P.A. Waight. 1999. Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association. Lancet 12;353(9169):2026–2029.
Taylor, B., E. Miller, R. Lingam, N. Andrews, A. Simmons, and J. Stowe. 2002. Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and bowel problems or developmental regression in children with autism: population study. British Medical Journal 16; 324(7334):393–96.
Thimerosal in Vaccines, 2008. Available at: http://www.fda.gov/CBER/vaccine/thimerosal.htm
United States Court of Federal Claims. 2007. Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Transcript of Day 6. June 18, 2007. Available at ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/transcripts/day06.pdf.
United States Court of Federal Claims, 2007. Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Transcript of Day 8. June 20, 2007. Available at ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/transcripts/day08.pdf.
USDOJ, About the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Available at www.usdoj.gov/civil/torts/const/vicp/about.htm.
Wakefield, A.J., S.H. Murch, A. Anthony, J. Linnell, D.M. Casson, M. Malik, M. Berelowitz, A.P. Dhillon, M.A. Thomson, P. Harvey, A. Valentine, S.E. Davies, and J.A. Walker-Smith. 1998.
Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 351(9103):637–41.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Entry for April 14, 2008
"Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing." - Eric Hoffer
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Entry for April 12, 2008
There is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
My Struggle with the Term "Atheist"
An atheist is someone who does not believe in a God or Gods. This suits me just fine, but the connotations that come along with it are those of absolutism. The lack of doubt, the complete ending of questioning, is not something of which I approve. I see the existence of God as being just as probable as the Lock Ness Monster, Angels, or Gnomes. But any time I try to completely rule out the existence of anything supernatural or incredible, I hear the voice of Carl Sagan ringing in my ears. It’s a stalwart “Well, maybe,” meaning, “there is a still a probability, no matter how small.” My belief that nothing is absolute creates the core discomfort that I have with a group that lately appears to be made up of Anti-God Evangelicals.
My struggle complicates even further when I examine the needed solidarity of those who consider themselves “nonreligious,” but not necessarily “Atheist”. Nonbelievers (whatever they call themselves) are more persecuted then Jews, Gays, or any other sect of people. And all other religious people, no matter of what affiliation, label themselves as “religious”. So there is an underlying obligation for those of us with similar beliefs to stick together and label ourselves as “Atheist,” even if we don’t fit all of the necessary criteria.
This desire is driven by the knowledge that most educated people know that your mother’s Sunday potluck at church provides a base of normality and approval for Christian extremists to kill abortions doctors or gays. Keeping the Sabbath holy or kneeling on prayer rugs eventually justifies mortar attacks and century old wars. Individuals, who define themselves as taking the best beliefs from other religions and incorporating those ideas into their own spirituality, add creditability and acceptance to the things done in the original religion’s name. This last group provides a buffer and an even wider foundation for people who would pervert religions with the goal of horrific atrocities. Again, it is the organization and labeling under a banner of religion that creates fanaticism.
Sure, anything can be distorted into raving zealotry. But history has shown us that, in order to gain the support of the people, the will of a God or Gods must be employed. It is the propagation of these organized religions and structured beliefs that allow mass horrors to be fulfilled by a willing people. Without blind faith, and their validation from those who still follow the basic tenants of that faith, there would be “no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles, no ‘honor killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give til it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues; no beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female for the crime of showing an inch of it” (The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, 2006).
So there is obviously a clear need for a presence of a united group of people who can point to a large percentage of the world’s problems as being religious in nature. Both here in the US and abroad, religious extremists reek havoc in the name of whatever God in which they are aligned. These are problems that root cause is religion and they have no formal enemy but each other.
Now I know that not all Atheists believe in the absolute non-existence of the supernatural. I’m sure that there are a large percentage of this same group who believe that the term implies ambiguity. But because the definition of an Atheist does not leave any doubt, so we cannot infer that uncertainty does exist. All nonbelievers should see this argument as the same as their old standby of, “a lack of evidence is not evidence of existence.” If the definition does not specifically cast doubt on the existence of a God or Gods, then it is not part of the definition. To pretend otherwise is incorrect. Moreover, spending your time backpedaling from the definition, or trying to redefine it further to suit your own needs, undercuts your primary argument.
So here I stand, feeling uncomfortable that I will never fully conform to the term Atheist when I know that the need for such a group is paramount. I do not know what to call myself, or if I should ever take a label willingly, but I know that this label is the closest thing that I will ever have to a likeminded people.
My struggle complicates even further when I examine the needed solidarity of those who consider themselves “nonreligious,” but not necessarily “Atheist”. Nonbelievers (whatever they call themselves) are more persecuted then Jews, Gays, or any other sect of people. And all other religious people, no matter of what affiliation, label themselves as “religious”. So there is an underlying obligation for those of us with similar beliefs to stick together and label ourselves as “Atheist,” even if we don’t fit all of the necessary criteria.
This desire is driven by the knowledge that most educated people know that your mother’s Sunday potluck at church provides a base of normality and approval for Christian extremists to kill abortions doctors or gays. Keeping the Sabbath holy or kneeling on prayer rugs eventually justifies mortar attacks and century old wars. Individuals, who define themselves as taking the best beliefs from other religions and incorporating those ideas into their own spirituality, add creditability and acceptance to the things done in the original religion’s name. This last group provides a buffer and an even wider foundation for people who would pervert religions with the goal of horrific atrocities. Again, it is the organization and labeling under a banner of religion that creates fanaticism.
Sure, anything can be distorted into raving zealotry. But history has shown us that, in order to gain the support of the people, the will of a God or Gods must be employed. It is the propagation of these organized religions and structured beliefs that allow mass horrors to be fulfilled by a willing people. Without blind faith, and their validation from those who still follow the basic tenants of that faith, there would be “no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles, no ‘honor killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give til it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues; no beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female for the crime of showing an inch of it” (The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, 2006).
So there is obviously a clear need for a presence of a united group of people who can point to a large percentage of the world’s problems as being religious in nature. Both here in the US and abroad, religious extremists reek havoc in the name of whatever God in which they are aligned. These are problems that root cause is religion and they have no formal enemy but each other.
Now I know that not all Atheists believe in the absolute non-existence of the supernatural. I’m sure that there are a large percentage of this same group who believe that the term implies ambiguity. But because the definition of an Atheist does not leave any doubt, so we cannot infer that uncertainty does exist. All nonbelievers should see this argument as the same as their old standby of, “a lack of evidence is not evidence of existence.” If the definition does not specifically cast doubt on the existence of a God or Gods, then it is not part of the definition. To pretend otherwise is incorrect. Moreover, spending your time backpedaling from the definition, or trying to redefine it further to suit your own needs, undercuts your primary argument.
So here I stand, feeling uncomfortable that I will never fully conform to the term Atheist when I know that the need for such a group is paramount. I do not know what to call myself, or if I should ever take a label willingly, but I know that this label is the closest thing that I will ever have to a likeminded people.
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