Messages from the Ether

Pride

OK. You gays need to get your shit together. Apparently, you've either stopped praying or you've increased your sodomy/hedonism since last year when the weather was perfect. Now, what we saw of the parade was awesome, but when we could hear the lightning above the cheers and disco music, it sounded fearsome and don't-fuck-with-the-religious-fucks-inspiring. Again, I don't know how you've pissed them off, but you better watch your shit.

Oh. Other than that: HAPPY PRIDE!!

Transparency and control

Over the past week, there's been a blog fight of sorts (BLOG FIGHT!) between BoingBoing and Violet Blue. From what anyone can tell, Boing Boing silently deleted a long history of guest posts by Violet Blue from their archives (see "That Violet Blue Thing"--beware, 800+ of comments, large page ho!--for BB's summary and apologia). They gave no explanation until the ...-osphere sussed them out and gave a collective What The Fuck?!? considering BB's lauding of openness, transparency, and ... well, those two are probably enough to bring up the oddities of such a silent attack on someone who had been a BB pal. Violet Blue's befuddled reaction is her article "when transparency does not equal erased". By the unpersoning of VB on BB, her Google pagerank--and subsequent cross-pollination from BB readers--is sure to take a hit. Browsing the writings of both sides, with the impetus still unspoken, BB comes out looking like asses, especially with Xeni Jardin's snarky defense of their silence: Blog fights are stupid.

I had my own fun with blog censorship a while back when a certified wack-o started posting heavily (relatively) to one of my posts on morgellons. She was a shrill troll whose posts had the appearance of fanaticism and paranoia. After a few rants and attacks, I deleted her very last comment (a repeat of previous rants) and blocked her from posting further. She was generally troll-like, and so I was pretty justified in cutting off her microphone. I'll chat with all comers, but my tolerance has a limit when noise outstrips signal.

The issue of whether you should be able to publicly criticize the president came up in drunktalk recently. One person had the position that it makes us look weak and therefore vulnerable to attack. This is a similar situation of transparency and control. If the government effectively controls the discussion group and can censor what it deems to be unpatriotic speech, how free is our speech? Should our government be more open than, say, the Chinese government, which regularly imprisons those who criticize them?

Finally, going further afield, I've often encountered a certain type of "secretive" co-worker. When you have public repositories of documentation and data, hiding your code or documentation or proposals is little more than an act of self-censorship whose purpose can be only to control the expectations of others. This reveals a different drawback to concealment: hiding information inhibits growth. Working within a group who shares information, the people who withhold information hold back the group. First, the knowledge they could have shared with others remains hidden and only for their own benefit. Second, the mistakes they hope to conceal remain uncontested and therefore inhibits their own growth and the chance for them to make a greater contribution to the group.

Jasper

Listening to the citizens of Jasper Texas recount how their town dealt with and continues to deal with the brutal murder of James Byrd 10 years ago, I was reminded of the distaste that people expressed for Obama as a black candidate and Clinton as a female candidate. The complaints generally followed the straw man suggestion that people were only supporting those candidates because of their minority representation in political office and not because of any political or leadership merits. What some failed to see was what the rise of qualified minority candidates represents how our country has changed. It should first be assumed that they are qualified considering that they have held strong support while in office. To say that it would be notable and noble to have a black or female president presupposes their qualifications and emphasizes instead that it would be notable to have the United States voting public finally accept such a leader. This ignores the question of whether viable minority candidates have been available before, but also ignores the fact that countries with more inequal treatment of women and minorities have had leaders from those groups. Cause won't easily be found, so I'd instead emphasize the result: this country finally has a social environment that accepts such a leader.

While listening to the Jasper story, I wondered why when it happened it couldn't have been passed off as simply the act of a few, hateful individuals that did not represent the town as a whole. Outliers. But considering that, I had to think that the citizens must have feared that somehow their town tacitly allowed such individuals to act. The killers weren't psychotic or depraved, just bigoted with the attitude that perhaps their actions wouldn't be judged too harshly. The fact that they could even act in such extreme ways suggests that--whether true or not--their society failed to put up walls against such behavior.

So, thinking now that our country as a whole can get this far, with Obama and Clinton, I think that a great deal of the bigotry and ignorance that might not allow such a situation is being push further into the fringes. One Jasper woman in the NPR story told of how she would often use the word "nigger" around her house. After the crime and after reconciliation meetings, her daughter finally confronted her and demanded she stop using that word. The woman admitted that only her daughter's demand could have opened her eyes to her own bigotry. The crime pushed her daughter to finally confront the environment of bigotry that can make violence more accessible.

End game

Caught a second-hand conversation on the environment from workers at this hypothetical company. People are still pulling out the same old macho canards: "raping the environment won't affect me in my lifetime so it doesn't matter what I do," paired with "it's too difficult to recycle so I shouldn't have to." After the initial blush of anger at such short-sighted and basically infantile idiocy (this is how adults act?!?), I realized that infantile is the key word. I should maybe look upon it like 14-year-old boys telling each other they'd like to "fuck the hell out of some chick" with carelessly offensive swagger. It's sort of a group aggression in the face of a discomforting "other". The sad difference is that the former discussion results in them actually fucking the hell out of the environment; the latter merely ends in video games and who-can-punch-the-hardest competitions.

Mike Norman

So one of the racist Marietta bar owner's many bon mots--displayed in the redneck businessman's version of Yosemite Sam mudflaps: the backlit plastic letter sign--was no habla espanol--and never will. Ignoring the recursive idiocy of such a statement (akin to saying "only kikes think I'm a jew-hater" or ... well, you get the idea), I'm just glad that I had Freedom Tortillas for lunch today and not those nasty, non-American ones. GOUSA!!

Sirens

Whatever the Miley Cyrus hooplah is about (and it is about people being uncomfortable looking at a 15-year-old girl looking satisfied, seemingly forgetting what teenagers spend most of their time thinking-about-if-not-doing, that menarche hits at 12, etc.) it's not about sending kids to war but not letting them drink or fuck. The war is the war, and I don't think that the time people are wasting being offended that VF and AL conspired to purvey the photo is time that those people would otherwise be using to protest or otherwise denounce the war.

Green it

Did anyone else throw up a little when they saw this?

Fox. Spin it. Dimwit.

Fox. Flip-flop it. Profit.

(OK, they obviously had a marketing team trying to make the rhyme difficult...)

Cam nom nom nom

Kettle

First I heard discussions on NPR with priests mincing about how the pope shouldn't be expected to apologize (for the endemic corruption of the clergy regarding the sex abuse scandal) because the issue is about Christian forgiveness and is not about blame. A more repulsive hypocrisy I can't imagine. Then, they go on to discuss the prevalence of homosexuality in the priesthood. Oh, no you didn't. I hope you didn't just try to equate the two, 'cause shit like that just doesn't hold up. Ultimately, this is from only one representative of the church and not the leadership, so maybe the church as a whole has a different position. But then, that jackassed pope tries to blame the abuse on everything but the church's leadership. I'm at somewhat of a loss.

Religion didn't invent hypocrisy, it just made it a whole lot easier.

LOLcats are dead, long live om nom nom nom

Main page for wasting time ... Thread for wasting time.

Egalite

Listening to the quality of content on the public radio media studies shows (On the Media, etc.) reminds me that it isn't the hateful patriotism of conservative talk radio that returns some power to citizens (no matter how much they crow that they are), nor is it PBS as a whole who almost without exception fell down on the job with the Iraq war, nor that idiotic Air America Radio with its reverse vitriol, and of course no more hatred needs to be heaped on the MSM. It's the media shows and media sites (FactCheck, etc.) that begin to allow the people to decide that a quality truth will get reported. Optimistically, we're on the first steps to fewer repeated lies becoming true.

Bill Moyer's special, Buying the War, showed only two reporters who researched, read, and exposed the lies as they were happening. Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel did what everyone should have been doing but were too few to be heard. However, on corporate control of the media, Landay says:

I'm not sure that the failure of major news media to delve into the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq can be totally blamed on corporate consolidation and control of big media. Knight Ridder was (and The McClatchy Co.) is the second largest publisher of newspapers in the United States and one of the largest in the world. KR was and McClatchy is mainstream media, with more than 30 newspapers and multiple websites and many other publications. But there was never a point where Knight Ridder's corporate leadership tried to rein us in or interfere with our reporting. On the contrary, we received only the strongest encouragement and unwavering support from KR's top executives. This was all about journalism. We simply did our jobs. Our editors had faith that our work was accurate and so did their bosses. [emphasis mine]

Behind this observation is repeated what many of us believed: the public was more to blame for the war--whether from misguided vengeance, investigative laziness, racism, or simple 2+2=5, bootlicking ignorance. And when I listen to Brian Lehrer or Leonard Lopate on WNYC, I hear reasoned discussions without straw men or kowtowing to a liberal audience. They treat their listeners, to borrow Jon Stewart's quote, as though they're adults. Imagine, reasonable discussions of passionate beliefs taking over the media and kicking out the, to paraphrase an Obama quote I can't find, shallowness of the past decade.

OK, enough of this optimism...

Reddit threads for great humor

• Puns on country names
• Monorail in its entirety

Expelled

A couple of weeks ago, the anti-evolution documentary Expelled, a project of intellect-wannabe Ben Stein, was previewed to anyone who would sign up. Science blogger extraordinaire PZ Myers signed up and took science writer extraordinaire Richard Dawkins as a guest. Myers was IDed (no pun) and ordered to leave the premises before he could enter the theater; Dawkins, in what is now science blogger legend, was unrecognized and allowed in. Science blogs were beside themselves with the duplicity of it all: Expelled posits that anti-evolution professors are being blackballed from teaching. Academia being too terrified of being proven wrong, they expel opposing viewpoints. Myers and Dawkins had a good laugh and mocked what sounds to be an eminently mockable film. Geesh, the subtitle is "No Intelligence Allowed," so it's like they're asking for it.

I read, laughed, and assumed that this deceitful concept would die a death of isolation, believed only by the insulated hyper-Christian clique. Alas, I listened to Marketplace today and fear that the venomous Christian self-martyrdom that took a feverish hold in the Left Behind series, moved to the Xtian torture-porn of The Passion of the Christ, will now manifest its mysteries in this anti-science documentary. The backers of the film have pocketed marketing firms to match the purchased indulgences of Gibson's Passion: cash awards for churches that have the greatest attendance at the screenings and for the best song that sings a joyful noise against the evil scientists. Have you no fucking shame?

Wikipedia's entry on the brouhaha has more. PZ Myers' first post on being expelled. Video of Myers and Dawkins talking about their respective experiences at and not-at the screening. Google search on related articles.

40 years

Listened to the American Radio Works documentary King's Last March on the way home on Sunday. Learned many facts about the last days of MLK. From the pillow fight with friends that occured just before his assassination (?!?), to the conspiracy-confirming lies that the American government tried to spread against him, King's latter-day move to bring attention to the economic inequality in our country, and the grisly cause of the Memphis sanitation workers' strike and his reason for being there. Worth a listen on this day.

The social

A few weeks back, I got in a conversation trying to argue against people who insisted that mediated socializing isn't "real" socializing. A specific comment was made that people who look for friendship online must hate their lives and hate the people they know IRL. I know: where to begin? I took the approach that having a pen-pal 50 years ago wouldn't have been considered a slight to those who you associated with in person. Phone conversations, discussion groups, emails, IM, SMS--all are fair game for connecting to others. They were not convinced and stood by their belief that our social fiber is crumbling (mixed metaphor mine).

I got in yet another argument about it today, this time with someone insisting that intellectual geeks were isolated and un-social. The mistake was perhaps getting in a conversation with such sweeping generalizations. My approach today was to point out the prevalence of discussion groups, meetups, IRC, etc. (to keep the generalizations going, I guess). Those media were declared off limits because they might involve work as opposed to private life. Beyond bland truisms (people who isolate themselves don't socialize...), not much can be gleaned from such differences-of-worldview. And again, these are tech people, not grandparents or luddites.

Lisa's in Pittsburgh/Bethlehem this weekend to see Diane, Brad, and The Baby, so I'm considering going to a Sat nite piano recital at Spivey Hall. Gilles Vonsattel will be performing some distinct and modern pieces; the Liszt is from his more ascetic period so I'm not so sure about it, the contrapuntal Dallapiccola would be of interest.

Tomorrow night (her last night in town this week) is a date dinner at Amore. We had first stumbled in for late nite drinks a month ago, and I loved the interior. A couple of weekends back we had some afternoon drinks and chatted with the owner of the bar. Fun.

This past weekend was: charity auction at the Knoxville Theater where we lost out on a years worth of free AMC movie tickets and a collection of nice wines, Lisa won the bid for a spa certificate for her and her mom, afterwards attended the B.B. King concert, and on Sunday Lisa's first 5k with a triumphant ending on the 50-yard line of the football field.

Madame

So most Spitzer headlines were phrased along-the-lines-of "Spitzer connected to prostitution ring," to which I immediately thought that he was somehow running or controlling some cat house (Prostitution, loan sharking, numbers... The kid liked to wet his beak in everything.). Ho-hum, it ends up it was the more pedestrian act of hiring prostitutes. As the Republicans call for impeachment (I know, the absurd imbalance of ire is a bit sour to the taste) they're probably just miffed that all the good Democratic sex scandals are of the opposite sex type. Still, with Spitzer the Democrats are at least attempting to match Republicans one-to-one on hypocrisy. The very Republicans that rail against homosexuals are invariably caught in the more colorful of gay and public situations; the Democrat who railed against prostitution was going behind his ... hey, very attractive ... wife's back for some very expensive action on the side.

But what really got me was this: NPR this morning had a quote from a female aide (or acquaintance?) stating something-along-the-lines-of how surprised she was because Spitzer acted like such a moral man and she'd never think he'd do such a thing by looking at him, however others she could just look at and know that they were up to horrible things in their private life. That alone speaks volumes. She didn't even--as the basic facts of reality slapped her around--come to the epiphany that no, you can't just look at a person and know whether they are moral, immoral, or otherwise. She registered the shock but was impervious to knowledge. You think people in the public eye don't know when they're expected to look pious and know specifically when they have an audience of those that only respond to the appearance of piety? I don't deny the hypocrisy of the event, but I deny the prevalent attitude that you can sniff out hypocrisy specifically (and ee-vil generally) simply by appearance alone.

Deer

Overheard on the The Brian Lehrer show this morning on WNYC from a caller describing the consumer and new media: the deer have guns now. He couldn't remember the source, but there are many references to Gordon Borrell, CEO of the online market research company Borrell Associates, using the phrase What do you do when the deer have guns? Get into the ammunition business. Just searching for any of the variations on the deer phrase brings up interesting media tracking sites: unmediated, TV News in a Postmodern World, Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog, Social Media, etc. This is a good spelunking technique I hadn't thought of: in order to find sites that cover a specific area of interest, search for a notable quote from that area.

Anonymous

Childish? Yes. But man, I hope these guys that have declared war against Scientology keep up the fun:

• "Scientology's secret documents hacked by /i/'s Splongcat" posted on Digg, docs down now, but the Digg comments include the now-classic It's like.. written in some kind of secret upside down moonspeak.
• "Press Release, 'Anonymous Declares War on Scientology'" (what type of "hacker" has press releases?!?), and comments from Reddit
• "Message to Scientology" video, comments from Reddit

Child rules

Children are coddled by: "politically correct" editing of shows and movies, too many safety labels, awards for losers. So says the angry right/middle-class.

Children are endangered by: predators that are everywhere, suggestive shows that involve sex (though violence is OK), foreign toys that are too dangerous. So says the angry right/middle-class.

So what is it? Are kids rotting with liberal caution or liberal permissiveness? Or maybe it's just immigrants.

CoS

Went to A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant at Dad's Garage last night. It was around an hour of complete hilarity with the right balance of good child actors (a second surprise after the great child actor in The Golden Compass), silly songs, and an absurdly straight-faced telling of the Scientology story. It felt much like the South Park telling of what the Scientologists and what the Mormons believe: just give it straight and these wack-o religions skewer themselves (of course, you could do that with any religion and expose the silly underbelly). Best actor of the evening was the girl who played the Scientology auditor. Not to take away from the wonderful kid playing L. Ron, but she had the perfect mix of cute and creepy that is the heart of the show. Sure, they were preaching to the choir, but it was a good sermon.

We had gone to Santaland Diaries several years in a row; I think this show has superseded it as the go-to Christmas event.

Ho Ho Hubbard

We just purchased tickets to the December 20th performance of A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant at Dad's Garage (AJC's B- review here). Ahhh ... now I'm finally feeling the Christmas spirit!

Pope Benedict is a cock

Take this gem from his recent encylical:

It is no accident that [atheism] has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice...

The ignorant will fall and have fallen for that crap argument; there is no simple death for such deceit. Should we point out the greater multitudes of cruelty that religion has brought on society? No, because that's a crap argument too. "Good" and "bad" can come from anything. Religion's biggest problems are its unfounded and harmful assertions (such as curing through prayer), its rewriting of history (such as ignoring its own acts of torture and killing), and its moving target doctrine where any sect at any point in time may pick-and-choose which statements to follow and which to ignore.

And the best he's got is a grade school rebuttal to atheism? This is what passes for Catholic theology today?

Magic Sky Daddy brought some rain last night

Next up: I'm prayin' for alcohol sales on Sundays...

Holy Force

Religious fanaticism and intolerance being pushed at the Air Force Academy. It's like parochialism has to resurface every 50 years and take us two steps back...

News bites

CNN was on the TV in the exercise room yesterday and some blowhard newsy (Lou Dobbs?) announced that the next story would be about a recent study on bias in the news media. OK, self-reflection is good. Then, he immediately goes into sarcasm mode (because that's what respected reporting is all about) and says "the study comes from Harvard, so it must be correct." Anti-intellectual much? They're not even trying anymore.

Funny responses to the "nothing to hide" argument

Via Why, Even If You Have Nothing To Hide, Government Surveillance Threatens Your Freedom > University Law School Professor Daniel J. Solove's essay:

• Do you have curtains?
• Can I see your credit card bills for the last year?
• I don't need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant.
• I don't have anything to hide. But I don't have anything I feel like showing you, either.
• If you have nothing to hide, then you don't have a life.
• It's not about having anything to hide, it's about things not being anyone else's business.
• Bottom line, Joe Stalin would have loved it. Why should anyone have to say more?

REBILDN

Seen in traffic on a Louisiana license plate:

Scaffolding

Understand that "predictions" of the future are usually "warnings" of the future. Orwell probably never believed that 1984 was a prediction. He was saying: let's play with the idea and take it to its extended possibilities. Art is generally a riff on potentials, not a science of predictions. Art as prediction says more about the artists' current world-views than the future. Assuming this, viewing current events as realizations of prescient art is, at best, unfair. Predictive art is philosophy, not fortune-telling.

Top Flr

Went to Top Flr after seeing Eastern Promises [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] last night. Top Flr: every dish we had was excellent. Mixed green salad with lavender honey dressing and figs, lamb skewers with tsatsiki and cauliflower couscous, gnocchi with spinach and garlic, and pork tenderloin (plus a couple of vegetable sides). The pork and gnocchi were the stand out dishes of the meal. Prices were between $5 and $12. The pork was the only entree we ordered, the rest were appetizers or sides. All had very good flavor. Where Da Vinci's used to be.

Another example to make you doubt the intelligence of the average American

I've always considered creationists to be just one step away from flat-Earthers. Here's new proof that they're possibly equivalent: "Video- “The View” co-host doesn’t know if the world is round or flat". Also see comments on Reddit and Digg.

And you can just see the other hosts squirm over how to approach this discussion and not lose core viewership. I'm not sure if we blame religion (with its "four corners of the Earth" line that was so convincing 1000 years ago) or socio-economic self-oppression (with the "I've got kids to raise!!" canard that seems to absolve her from learning day-to-day science), or maybe she just saw that she was being lured into an argument equating creationists with flat-Earthers. I've never said this before: Woopi Goldberg is my hero.

Hopefully my last entertainment-related post

Emily Gould of Gawker Stalker fame goes on Larry King and gets abused by an ignorant and sanctimonious Jimmy Kimmel. The video gets posted on Digg and the gang of 12-year-olds also known as "Diggers" ignorantly trounce on her some more. A few, however, do post her lucid well-written NY Times opinion piece reflecting on her shabby treatment on the show. Watch the video then read her editorial. Everything she says (e.g. new technology is redefining the concept of public and private) should have been praised by any supposed web 2.0 critters. Instead, they bleated out accusations that made no sense in context to the actual material.

Kimmel first complains that the information that Gawker readers post isn't accurate, then that their information could be used by psychopaths obsessed by celebrities. End of credibility. The only mistake Ms. Gould made was being thrown off guard enough to miss that. Her excellent point that publicists are losing power hit home tonight when I saw some red carpet trash TV interview where the celebrity-person spent the whole interview praising the brand of champagne that was being served at the event. That type of farce may be losing its cash value.

Whiney

Listening to tech talk on WREK on the way home and they were cracking my shit up. Some quotes:

• Kanye West is a whiney bitch
• Both Kanye and 50 Cent's music is garbage
• The Kanye/50 Cent feud was just bull shit marketing/subliminal messages
• All pop music is garbage (amen)
• Country is white man's blues

It was definitely a hip hop scene with maybe one white guy and one black chick. Very wacky group. I'm glad to hear that others hate poprap.

More silly entertainment news on this, the 11th of September

In an attempt to appear even more ignorant than Britney Spears fans, the Catholic church (in conjunction with E! television?!?) has condemned as hateful Kathy Griffin's acceptance speech. What's not to like?

A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now.

So: preening, duplicitous adulation to Jesus is acceptable when receiving a golden idol but mocking the emptiness of such statements is offensive? Meh.

SS @ VMA

This was a perfect moment of cultural self-loathing. MTV knew what they were going to get from Sarah Silverman and expected such an act. Hell, she probably pulled some punches and disappointed them. MTV also knows the mentality-shall-we-say of their viewers whose sense of humor comes from the hateful antics of reality TV. Although where reality TV's transgressions merely allow the viewer to revel in the flaws of ordinary people play-acting as entertainers, Sarah Silverman's schtick makes you feel uncomfortable reveling in the flaws of actual (needs scare-quotes?) entertainers. Sounds pretty boring since it's what every tabloid, Best Week Ever, The Soup, and everyone-at-the-watercooler has been saying anyway.

However, I do love the comments on her site! Up to 583 right now with sentiments such as I wonder if Brit might consider a lawsuit for the emotional damage your comments may cause her children in the future ... PS you are butt ugly… your shining moment was your impression of a vagina. Maybe we can get lucky and your face will stick that way! and PIECE OF SHIT! GO TO HELL! YOU SHEMALE!!!!!!!!! This almost demands that people start posting wildly overblown criticisms on her message board a la the Amazon reviews of David Hasslehoff CDs (a god is in our presence...). Maybe.

Customer relations

This is how it's done. Jobs give $100 store credit to early adopters. People were grumbling, they'd still stick with Apple, but Jobs still makes the move for appeasement and with absolute honesty. Favorite comment from Reddit: WOOT! I can buy a spare battery for my... oh wait.

Most sardonic headline of the day

Who Is John Galt? Nobody Very Qualified - Company Working On Building Where Firefighters Died Was Nearly As Fictional As Its Namesake

Bacos (definition)

The cool kids have decided we need a new word (bacn) that's so web 2.0 you're sure to hate it in a week. I, however, will begin hating it now by mocking the impulse that it takes to fabricate such a useless word and, non-ironically, invent my own word: bacos (n.) an idea that sounds good at first but once examined is revealed as contrived and unnecessary.

The other side

Reading "The age of endarkenment" from Guardian Unlimited, my main preoccupation was with how I felt that other countries also have to deal with irresponsible and flagrant ignorance from their citizens and politicians. I know I know: people are the same everywhere, but my focus still makes me feel that the degree to which America can cultivate ignorance is out of proportion compared to the wealth of knowledge that is freely available in this country. I would like to say "ah, we suffer the same as others," but instead I lose heart for the fact that there is no model to measure against to say "see, a society can act with informed wisdom instead of irrational conviction."

Anonymous

As Wikiscanner gets outed to the citizens-at-large and Wikipedia spin jobs (like Fox editing Al Franken's article to their benefit) start embarrassing those in power, expect to hear demands for anonymous surfing move from the pages of Slashdot to the pundits at CNN.

Relative standard

An odd idea that gets resurgence every election is the Great Return to the Gold Standard. Earlier today, I was reading about the bank shenanigans that were recently occurring in Second Life. The bank Ginko Financial was attempting to--IIUC--purchase the AVIX stock exchange using IPO funds from AVIX. I always think that financial systems are like the Ouroboros anyway, so this just seemed horrible and appropriate to me even though the deal was quickly squelched. /. picked up a related story about a bank run on the same bank after it had been robbed by a former employee. To this, gold standard proponents naturally came out of the woodwork. There were many interesting financial threads, but one poster provided two good links on (1) an argument against gold by Paul Krugman and (2) Creating Money by someone I'm unfamiliar with. Both good reads.

Reciprocal

You know, as I watch wave after wave of muscle-bound-cinema-hero modelled as far back as the Heracles/Hercules of 2500 years ago, I have absolutely no sympathy for the whiney bitches (oh, I went there) that say females are imposed an unfair metric by a society that demands they be "voluptuous yet slim."

Beautiful ideas

Sam Harris at Aspen Ideas Festival. Three was particularly good.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7

Two recent Onion articles that were a little too believable

Revised Patriot Act Will Make It Illegal To Read Patriot Act - Bush also proposed extending the rights of states to impose the death penalty "in the wake of Sept. 11 and stuff."

American People Shrug, Line Up For Fingerprinting - Said Amos Hawkins, a Rockford, IL, delivery driver: "I guess this is another thing they have to do to ensure our freedom."

Maybe I'm being a little pessimistic.

Pot

I've always thought that there were two classes of people: alcohol people and pot people. I'm the former and don't understand the latter, however I don't understnad why the latter are being assaulted by weird propaganda. Thus:

The animation's cute, but the message sucks. Get over yourselves, govt.

I'm on the hunt

OK, Old Spice is soo 1940s, and lounge rock is sooo 1990s, but Bruce Campbell can do no wrong:

Hey! My first YouTube embed!!

No means yes

I keep reading about Sam Harris's statement to-the-affect that religious moderates have perverted the word of god because they attend it only selectively. That is to say: the fundamentalists are the true believers. I haven't been able to find the source of this reference, but the intent is compelling. The most timely If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives. seems to be adhered more than the most humanist (and Christian) thou shall not kill. Is diplomacy inappropriate for absolute truths?

I don't even want to deal with the idiocy of ignoring For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him. I'll leave that to their feeble consciences.

Finally, I look at the quote from Eric Hoffer's The True Believer:

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunity for both.

How do I determine from that quote if my hatred of ignorance is more valuable than their hateful bigotry? So many questions. Maybe questions--and not Three Stooges movies--are the true abominations. Maybe?

G'pride

Gay Pride Parade on Sunday, and I'm embarrassed to say that it's the first we've attended since we've lived here in Midtown (~7 years?). The weather was perfect (dare I say god approved?) and the parade was entertaining if a little less flamboyant than we'd hoped. A good turnout even if we couldn't match the 3 million that showed up in Sao Paulo. The sunglass sisters were there:

It was rather late before the first disco ball made an appearance:

And we ended the day at The Vortex:

The only "activism" we saw was a plane buzzin' around with a Christianny/judgemental banner saying that Jesus Christ offers "hope for homosexuals." It's all wacky fun until you come across this garish piece of offensiveness that bubbled up this morning [ via PZ Myers ] (don't watch, it's vile). After I watched it I truly wanted to just pass it off as the product of a hateful hateful minority until I encountered the same hateful minority at the office and had to re-think my Pollyanna ways. After regaling my co-workers with the tale of my first Midtown GPP, all were entertained but one who--and I completely am not fucking you with this quote--said "they're an abomination, it's a shame that our city puts up with that."

(Yeah ... let that wonderful statement of human kindness sink in ...)

You may mock me for my complete bemusement at the existence of anti-evolutionist in the tech industry, but the sheer hatred and unlettered ignorance of that statement is on a whole 'nother level. It's one thing to ignore first-grade science to satisfy your voodoo belief system--appalling in its willful ignorance, but not out-and-out hateful--it's another thing to denigrate a class of people based on your shallow world-view. I try not to assume the worst w/ you religious types, but the scales keep tipping.

I quickly dropped the discussion to avoid any further revelations.

On a lighter note, my new favorite word outside of the office is abomination. "This bran muffin is an abomination!" "The Three Stooges In Orbit is an abomination compared to Sing a Song of Six Pants." Ah, it just rolls off the tongue.

Crash

Lisa got me Snow Crash in a buy-2-get-one-free frenzy at Barnes & Noble and so I gave it the One Page Test (tm), part of which contained:

SACRIFICE ZONE

WARNING. The National Parks Service has declared this area to be a National Sacrifice Zone. The Sacrifice Zone Program was developed to manage parcels of land whose clean-up cost exceeds their total future economic value.

This after seeing photos of the worlds most polluted river and Darryl Hannah sullied by big oil in Equador. What's a good word to describe when the line plot of fiction starts crossing the line plot of reality?

Fate

How do you eulogize someone who (1) had power over others and (2) was morally offensive? Be careful how you answer.... Who's a parallel to Falwell on the left/center? The fascist hate of religious extremism, the likes of Falwell being the sine qua non, is possibly matched by socialist extremism--a single will versus a loss of will--but living deep in the heart of the heart of capitalist country, it's hard to say just who represents the boogeyman of malignant socialism. And in the shadow of a single, malignant will, it's hard to see how that would be so bad.

One thing I know: too few people voiced the evils of Jerry Falwell at his death. Leave politeness to hold its tongue for noble men.

urr...

ELAINE: The balance beam?

JERRY: Could we stop?

ELAINE: (gasps in mock surprise) Not the pommel horse?

JERRY: All right. Let's just drop it.

Gymnasts. Pfft. Now, pole vaulters...

News

The IPCC is in and it's everything we expect. As the BBC reported, science has finally won out over politics. However, some will still ignore it, and there are those I've spoken to who still doubt it's even a serious concern. Astounding. One random thought I had was that such "kooks" as Ed Begley Jr. and his ubiquitous bicycle will soon be forgotten-yet-mimicked. It's also heartening to hear the emphasis that the cost of ignoring global warming is muchmuchmuch more costly than addressing it.

Sad that it looks as if Ségolène Royal may fall behind Sarkozy in the French elections this Sunday. Let's hope for the best (and not just because she looks better than most politicians in a bikini--but should still lose the baseball cap).

We discovered, sadly yet with not too much surprise, that most Republican candidates would revoke Roe v. Wade and plant us in Iraq for who-knows-how-long. Interestingly, Ron Paul made a good showing in a post-debate-poll on MSNBC (take that for what it's worth). Respondents felt he both answered the most and deceived the least.

Israel's PM acts more petulant and pouty than Bush (if that's possible) and defies a 12% approval rating and a populace that demands he resign. His response, simply: "it would be wrong to resign." Pair this--with no connection necessary--with a diplomat from the Sudan, who has recently had a powerful member of the government indicted by the ICC for war crimes, the diplomat insisting that the US has proved that abuse of the ICC does not result in expulsion from the world community. Nice model we're providing.

Oh, and the LAPD suck dick. Fuck you, assholes.

Null

"A Brief History of Disbelief" is supposedly coming to PBS, but I haven't spotted it yet. And apparently some conservative Xtians are afraid that we're taking over, yo. Don't worry, that won't happen until we learn to decipher television listings.

Internet radio to dry up, part 2

There's hope for internet radio. Instead of paying for each song * users listening, the offer is on the table for internet radio = satellite radio. Although, as a /.er had commented: they probably just got what they wanted in the first place.

A million hours

It's hard to overstate the importance of the BBC's decision to put one million hours of archival broadcasts online [ via Tim Rutherford-Johnson ]. Free access. Expect wikis and blogs to pop up indexing the interesting and historical similar to those travelogues for Google maps or their Usenet timeline, but considerably more important. This is just going to be reallyreally amazing.

Internet radio to dry up?

"Internet radio dealt severe blow as Copyright Board rejects appeal"

Internet radio stations currently pay a flat yearly fee + percentage of their profits; new law will have them paying for each song * users listening. Yipes.

More lies

Sheesh, this week needs a round-up of all of those things people repeat as true that are, simply, not. Thanks to Reddit and Digg for reminding me that for every 10 idiots, there's at least one smart person ready to take them down:

• The Bush administration's dismissal of 8 U.S. attorneys was politically motivated and has no precedence in prior administrations' actions.
• Science is routinely under attack by the Bush administration, as is well documented by its interference with NASA reports on global warming and the Big Bang.
• There never were fears of global cooling.
• Al Gore never said he invented the internet.
• Just as Edwards has been attacked as an evil trial lawyer and shouldn't, Gore is being attacked as hypocritical and isn't.
• The McDonald's coffee lawsuit was in no way frivolous.
• Oh, and Sparta sucked according to the always entertaining and informative War Nerd. But, as one Reddit comment said: Sure, it's a thinly-veiled propaganda movie for the NeoCons, but it was still pretty good.

RIAA?

The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade group that represents the recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of a large number of private corporate entities such as record labels and distributors, who create and distribute about 90% of recorded music sold in the US. ... The RIAA was formed in 1952 primarily to administer the RIAA equalization curve. This is a technical standard of frequency response applied to vinyl records during manufacturing and playback. ... The RIAA also participates in the collection, administration and distribution of music licenses and royalties.

Art lie, now with more science fiction

Neal Stephenson calls 300--now get this--Classics-based sci-fi and that behind critical complaints lies politics and not aesthetics or history. 300 came out of the Rotten Tomatoes starting gates strong but has since fallen to 60%/51% where its defenders revel in its action-fluff and its detractors see merely fluffy-action. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon sets the tone for most of the complaints:

A recent, characteristically beard-stroking New York Times article pondered the way reporters at an international press junket for the computer-generated extravaganza "300" zealously attempted to read the movie as a metaphor for George W. Bush's war on Iraq. ... The bigger question to ask about "300" is why, for a supposedly rousing tale of heroism, it's so curiously unaffecting.

And I baffle at Stephenson's sucking up to his readership by turning 300 into some sort of a techie history that it is not. I guess he'd consider A Knight's Tale to be included in this new form of sci-fi with its heavy metal soundtrack and Hollywood-based history.

I wonder if the TMNT adaptation will have as many fervent defenders?

MM..Food

The short piece on Morning Edition this morning about Bush's visit to Latin America read like a Jon Stewart piece, and in fact may have stolen one of his running jokes. Highlighted were Bush's odd comments--at each stop mind you--on his anticipation to try some of the delicious local food. The final clip even has him chumming with the Guatamalan president thusly: ¿Tortillas? ¡Que bueno!

The untimely death of Rob Cordry

To anyone fortunate enough to not have watched Rob Cordry's new sit-com: that laugh track they play every 10 seconds is not used ironically. And it continues--at least for the 5 minutes that I watched--throughout the show. Eww.

Video request

Please, please, please, someone upload to YouTube the "Prom night dumpster baby" song from tonights Family Guy. It was as offensively hilarious as it sounds.

In the future

We'll all swear like characters do in HBO shows that are edited for basic cable. Begin getting comfortable with phrases such as "forget you" and "we hugged like wild animals." Made for TV swearing will be all the rage.

Hate < Love

So I went to watch some video of some comic that people love/hate. Dane Cook? I had never heard of him and so read through the YouTube comments beforehand to get a sense of what I'd be watching and what to expect. In YouTube comments?!? I know, I know. As I scrolled through the fans saying how great he is and the non-fans saying how badly he sucks, the last comment caught my attention with something-along-the-lines of "if you hate him so much, don't watch."

What's with the odd rule that you can praise freely but you can't criticize freely? I think this is the same flawed impluse that forces people to demand relativism in Art analysis. Certainly, Entertainment--and however it may be different from Art--puts a spin on the issue. Still, after the relativism bomb gets dropped, only positive remarks become allowable. And that's kinda stupid.

Tell me of your homeworld, Usul.

(original found in comments here)

An option for YouTube

Amidst the tens-of-thousands of take-down notices that YouTube seems to be getting every other week, I realized that one possible future for them would be to steal shows from the networks. The first, obvious choice, is Jon Stewart. How cool would it be for him to drop TV entirely and be the flagship show on a YouTube network? Separate from cable yet competing. Something like that might legitimize internet audiences like Howard Stern didn't for XM radio.

(boom)

New t-shirt: ATHF is the bomb, with an image Ignignokt fipping us off [ via BoingBoing ]

That about sums up the stupidity of the initial over-reaction, and then the (Govenor's?) speech after they knew it was just marketing was someone falling for an obvious prank and then getting angry at the prankster to cover their own stupidity.

In the words of Jerry Seinfeld upbraiding Kramer and Newman: idiots.

Updates to EventNett

New features added to EventNett this month:

• Added a Map view that plots the current search results in a Google map
• Included a map in event and location pages
• Added iCalendar files for downloading into Outlook, Sunbird, etc.
• Enhanced event schedule entry when adding a new event
• Added a Location view that lists all locations and the number of events at each
• Added a thumbnail calendar view of each event's schedules in the event page
• Added a FAQ page

Avenue Scrubs

The Scrubs musical airs tonight. Music and lyrics by the guys who did the-painfully-hilarious Avenue Q. I stopped watching Scrubs because I got tired of Braff's over-coy mugging, but this could be a nice diversion.

Ye olde videowe gamme

Listened to The Long View on BBC 4 today. The show centered around the similarities between this generation's view of video games and 18th Century's disapprobation of fictional novels. Both sparked fears of a distracted and decadent public more intent on self-entertainment than societal responsibility. I've often said that reading is as much as a consumer act as watching television, but I completely agree with the humorous warning contained in the BBC show's comparison. They spoke specifically of the novel Pamela (note that The Long View has been added to the end of the Wikipedia entry for Pamela), which apparently had a following in 1740 equivalent to today's popular TV shows.

This "fear of corruption" seems to me to be equivalent to the absurd concerns that television is getting so amoral that we'll soon be watching hardcore porn on prime time. If you can agree that banning navels and banning the word "pregnant" goes too far, then you've already been corrupted beyond what the 1960s would allow on TV shows.

Jay-walking-crazed Tufts historian harrassed by Atlanta police

Reporter's Notebook: Highlights from the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association

What is that, like five or six cops that have him pinned to the ground?!? Truly, there's nothing more deadly or dangerous than the Wiley Historian.

EventNett, a community-maintained events calendar

I created a new web site called EventNett. It's in beta and open to anyone. Try it out.

EventNett

EventNett is an events calendar modeled after the openness of Wikipedia. Anyone can add new events or edit existing events without having to log in or provide any personal information. There are no advertisements so you don't have to click through multiple pages or scroll past banner ads in order to view event information. More importantly, there is no central control. A single company or individual doesn't decide what gets listed or what gets prominent placement. Shows at your community theater or drink specials at your neighborhood's corner bar are as important as stadium concerts or wine tastings--all based on what you want to see.

The intention behind EventNett is to allow you to quickly find what you're interested in or to add what you think others might like. EventNett brings events to you with as little intervention as possible.

The big idea came around a year ago when Lisa & I were at a restaurant that had an advertisement behind their bar for 1/2-priced bottles of wine on Tuesdays. It made me consider the countless other events like it that may only have a few local flyers and no internet presence. Creative Loafing and Access Atlanta have advertising models that just don't accommodate such notices, so I thought that an open-community site might be useful.

Details on how to use EventNett are on the About page. The important point to remember is that you can edit anything. Don't be afraid to add information to existing events or locations, or to delete an event you think has been cancelled. Bad edits can be rolled-back to a correct version, and deleted events can be restored.

Currently, EventNett contains items that I've added and that the EventNett web robot, Yoink, has "liberated" from the AOL Atlanta events calendar (minus any copywrited content). Feel free to contribute, request features, and report issues. This is a beta, after all, so expect some oddities and down-time as the kinks get worked out. If, to consider the unthinkable, you feel EventNett is useless and rather silly, try one of the similar sites instead like Upcoming.org or Eventful.com. They're more polished, but somewhat less open.

Hopefully, EventNett will help you find at least one 1/2-priced wine special to make it useful to you.

Notable features

These are what I feel are the most useful features of EventNett:

• Everyone has control over all content
• Keep track of new and updated events - You can view what's been added in the last week under the Recently Edited tab.
• Each venue has a link to a map of its location (using Google Maps, of course)
• Each venue has a link to directions to it - You can store a "from" address when you create an account or add a temporary address when you're browsing anonymously.
• Permalinks to events, locations, and custom searches - I.e. you could create a search for "jazz" in "Atlanta, GA" and bookmark the link.
• Searches with keywords will automatically include synonyms - I.e. "theater" will find events tagged "theatre" or "drama". Keywords and synonyms are editable by everyone.
• Search within categories - EventNett creates 10 high-level categories from the most popular keywords. These mimic the fixed categories present in some other events calendars, but they are generated dynamically from user contributions.

Upcoming features

These are features that are being developed:

• Private events - accessible only to you or your friends
• Event groups - I.e. group together dinner, a movie, then drinks, or maybe several bars for a Saturday pub crawl
• Live maps within EventNett instead of a link to Google Maps
• Show multiple locations listed in a single map - useful with event groups
• Email notification of upcoming events
• Access from PDAs and phones - So it's easy to find a local event when you're already out
• Import and export iCalendar files - For use in Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.
• RSS feeds for events - Based on a location or a custom search
• Any suggestions?

Text (beware, a rant)

The more dealings I have with the religious, the less tolerant I become. My abstract desire for objective equality falls away when confronted with their gross flaws. That's the way it is with any prejudice, isn't it?

GrrlScientist's Carnival of the Liberals 28: Christmas Edition includes an examination of one aspect of my prejudice with a link to Meaning in the Constitution and the Bible from World Wide Webers. The post examines the author's recent reflections on text and intentionality. I realize--as I've probably come to realize many times before--that some of the greatest conflicts of modern man stem from the contention of literalism and (vaguely) relativism. In essence: anyone who's used the phrase "activist judges" is guilty of subjective literalism by considering their reading of a text the reading of a text.

The relevant and punchy quote from WWWs' post is here:

Hence such gross inconsistencies as Bush v. Gore. Or, on the religious side, the fact that virtually every fundamentalist Christian ignores dozens of rules laid out in Biblical books like Deuteronomy and Numbers while exalting others to the status of shibboleths. For example, Leviticus 19:19 says:

Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

About a page later, Leviticus 20:13 says:

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

Right-wing Christians are forever quoting the latter text, since it's one of the very few Bible verses that share their obsession with homosexuality. But they never quote the former text, because they have nothing personally against linen/woolen blended fabrics.

It's as if a whole generation had never heard of New Criticism.

And thus my intolerance. It's not such a bad intolerance, but I just wish that people wouldn't live up to it. For every ignorant and dogmatic theist I have dealings with, I'm really put at odds with my desire not to be so prejudiced. Something I've (probably) heard from Dawkins recently (and paraphrased): how can you trust someone who puts an arbitrary limit on where logic can be applied? No one denies gravity, yet 50+% of Americans want to deny the equally-well-supported evolution. How can one not be prejudiced in the face of such arrogant subjectivity that clothes itself in faux-pious objectivity?

(introverts)

A nice overview of introverts unfortunately titled "Marketing to Introverts." My impulse is against declaring as a group those people who hate to be in groups, but many of the points were accurate enough. I'm also cautious about any generalization that elicits a hey-that's-me! response; that's usually a sign of merely being told what you want to hear. Worth a browse at least.

The war on trees

Ben Stein gets a little testy because someone's avoiding use of the moniker "Christmas Tree." He's saying that, as a Jew, he is not offended by our culture throwing around the C-word, and so it's silly for companies to replace it with the H-word. I'm trying to wrap my brain around the irony. Irony's the right word, isnt' it? He's getting upset over the use of a word, and justifies it by saying that people shouldn't get upset about the use of another word.

Or something like that.

Peace rabbit

Peace symbol = The Devil. The funny thing is that I just had a co-worker tell me that my niece's drawing of a peace symbol (with a rabbit on top carrying a flag that says "peace!") represented witchcraft. A software engineer that doesn't understand the mutability of symbols--it took all of my energy not to kick him in the nuts.

Lenny Bruce comments on Michael Richards' predicament

Are there any niggers here tonight?

Can you turn on the house lights, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving for a second? And turn off the spot. Now what did he say? ''Are there any niggers here tonight?'' There's one nigger here. l see him back there working. Let's see. There's two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there's another kike. That's two kikes and three niggers. And there's a spic, right? Hm? There's another spic. Ooh, there's a wop. There's a Polack. And then, oh, a couple of greaseballs. There's three lace-curtain lrish Micks. And there's one hip, thick, hunky, funky boogie. Boogie, boogie. Mm-mm. l got three kikes. Do l hear five kikes? l got five kikes. Do l hear six spics? Six spics. Do l hear seven niggers? l got seven niggers. Sold American! l'll pass with seven niggers, six spics, five Micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop.

You almost punched me out, didn't ya?

l was trying to make a point, that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig. lf President Kennedy would just go on television and say ''l'd like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet.'' And if he'd just say ''nigger, nigger'' to every nigger he saw, ''Boogie, boogie, boogie, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger,'' till it didn't mean anything any more! Then you'd never be able to make a black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger in school.

(applause)

Kooky-talk

Michael Richards apologizes. It's as uncomfortable as the original video but for different reasons. It seemed like a sincere response to me. Seinfeld (the show) often dealt with all of the discomfort of prejudice and yet handled it in the most G Rated manner. Just look to what Family Guy does to get an idea of a more incautious approach to humor that challenges racial mores. This is not to say that Michael Richards was responsible for the writing of such Seinfeld scenes as Jerry Makes Stereotyped American Indian War Cry References, or George Gets Hyper-sensitive About Acting Like All Black People Look Alike--but he was part of a team that addressed the uncomfortable awareness of stereotypes. They joked that we all know these crude thoughts exist, even if we are uncomfortable about acknowledging that awareness.

The importance is that the humor of these shows is a delicate approach to the taboo. Now, add improv to that and add a few trouble-makers in the audience, and I can see the potential of that tightrope going terribly terribly wrong. How many times might this have happened to unknowns?

John McWhorter on NPR is having none of it. He compares Richards' apology to that of Mel Gibson. Think about that. Mel Gibson is very likely a Holocaust denier; Michael Richards got angry at hecklers and used the N-word. I normally respect linguists, but get over yourself McWhorter. To compare these two infractions and apologies is assinine. Comparing a harsh word to blaming all of the wars in the world on a single group of people is ... well, it's an argument that goes beyond the simple hatred of racism. To make such a judgement is to revel in your own hatred a little too much.

People have a tendency to be apologists for the "nice guys" and demonize the foibles of those not-so-nice. I don't think that tendancy is at issue here if we forgive Michael Richards his moment of insanity.

Media guide

I'm tired of going to Rhapsody to look up a CD, RealPlayer to look up personal CDs on my local drive, SHOUTcast.com to browse what's currently playing on those pirate stations, podcasts to see what content is available from NPR or anyone else, and RadioWave to see what's being broadcast on the (handful of) internet radio stations that it indexes. I want all of those to provide a single (open) interface that a client could connect to and browse within. Browse by artist or browse by time or genre or tag.

Things are converging, and this is going to happen.

Not collecting stamps is my hobby

Atheism is making a comeback, but then maybe it never really went away. Dawkins' new book is out, and his videos are all over YouTube; Wired's recent issue takes up the atheism buzz and talks with Dawkins and Sam Harris (who, like Dawkins, also published a new book in September); Gene Expression discusses Harris's ideas in relation to the minority position that atheists must take; and finally, Pharyngula opens the boards for a discussion on an atheist logo (that's not a Darwin-fish). I like the *, but Ø and ♮ are also nice even though finding them in a unicode chart is a bitch.

As an artist, I understand the power and mystery of symbols and ritual. Creativity is part skill and part fleeting evocation, so as much as the commenters in the above threads insist that they're atheists because they lack some trait that would allow them to understand myth: I have that trait yet I still get frustrated when others allow it to infringe on the sciences. Although Dawkins' book is getting lukewarm reviews on the basis that it states the obvious, there's an undeniable need for some obvious-stating. Of course religious belief doesn't hold up to rational thought: why then do we allow it to so often tread in that realm?

Maybe this is all part of a pendulum correction. That'd be nice--if only to get back to a more sane norm.

Dawkins on Colbert

The most revealing moment was when Richard Dawkins said You're an atheist about [Thor and Zeus and Poseidon], some of us just go one god further. A great line that he's used before, and yet the audience basically booed him. [ via YouTube ]

So much for an intelligent viewership.

Another missed opportunity

Over a year ago, I had a genius idea to create a wiki events calendar. A few average attempts popped into existence since then, and I sort of lazily worked on my own version. It's written in Java and bulkier than a LAMP-like equivalent, but the experience helped me hone my skills enough to get an actual Java position.

The original idea came when I realized that all of the local restaurants' happy hours and meal specials were only being advertised at the restaurants themselves. Or at best, buried in one of the neighborhood free papers. Well, I began coding it and goofed around with re-writes and experiments and along comes someone publishing atlanta drink specials on Google Calendar.

Still a good idea though.

Scott Adams

First, Scott Adams mocks the death of Steve Irwin as if he got what he deserved, ignoring that the cause of his death was in no way related to his other more daring actions. People often swim with stingrays and only very rarely does an attack occur. Adams quickly took down the post.

Now, he tries to crack some more eggs of knowledge on our collective heads re the Foley scandal by pointing out the fluctuating age-of-consent mores throughout Western history. Thanks for dusting off our high school text books, Scott. Quite informative. I can only imagine his position on the kidnapped Austrian girl; after all: women were once possessions and slavery common.

Maybe he's just trying to be controversial (or more appropriately: "controversial") with no real point, but his standard mode is social criticism so we should assume intent. With his Dilbert empire, he has an instant audience (that he rightly deserves). Unfortunately, he's too often nothing more than an AM radio talk show jackass.

Richard Dawkins: The Root of all Evil

YouTube links to the entire the documentary The Root of All Evil? by Richard Dawkins:

• Part 1.1 (18:06)
• Part 1.2 (16:29)
• Part 1.3 (13:14)
• Part 2.1 (9:44)
• Part 2.2 (9:33)
• Part 2.3 (5:31)
• Part 2.4 (6:12)
• Part 2.5 (9:26)
• Part 2.6 (7:46)

Total running time: 1:36:01

I just heard a short interview with him on Talk of the Nation Science Friday. I'm in the camp of middle-grounders that he's trying to convert.