'Cuz nothing beats playing in a cardboard box!

In lieu of the youtube post that was taken down, I found this blog had a transcript...

Little Kitten - Lyrics to Tim Minchin’s ‘Storm’

Posted using ShareThis

I don't know if you few folks that still read my occassional updates here follow Pharyngula (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ ) or not, but the recent cracker madness there is just appalling.  

It boggles my mind that not only are some people so impressionable that they can take the Eucharist seriously--which in itself is as far as I can tell a bizarre, cannibalistic-themed ritual derived from a strangely overly-literal interpretation of a metaphorical statement attributed to a Mr. Christ at his last supper--but that they find even improper handling and treatment of these wafers the most heinous and unspeakable crime imaginable (to repeat their own hyperbole).  

I don't know about you, but I can think of maybe just a few things out there a trifle more despicable than that.  Even if I were to accept at face value the notion that the ritual involved miraculously transforms a cracker into a piece of the body of said Mr. Christ, I'd think that even he or his big ol' jealous sky-daddy would be able to de-prioritize someone doing that over, say, oh I dunno, abuse, torture, rape, murder, and so forth.   I certainly don't think he'd appreciate others stepping in on his behalf to make repeated death threats and scream outrage at said disrepsectful interloper.  I mean, that just doesn't seem like very moral behavior to me...but then what do I know, I don't even pretend to get what it's like to live a life believing in this kind of stuff.  

Ah well food for thought I guess.  I feel like eating some crunchy baked products now for some reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh0eM4tAISQ&eurl

Don't ever say now that you weren't told. 


---


Unrelated: Congrats to umiushi on completing that second AA with yet another 4.0!  Next stop, UW... 

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/03/how_do_you_prov.html

Recommended  reading!

Since it's all now official and on paper, congratulations to umiushi on getting a solid 4.0 on that programming AA degree!  Best of luck on the CS one, now...

Found this link from PZ and it blew me away. Robert Sapolsky presents a unique neurological look at how belief--and lack thereof--figures into our evolutionary heritage. Be warned, the answers he gives are rather unsettling (but ultimately rewarding) for ALL sides...

http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2003/april/index.php?ft=sapolsky

I'm a Taurus.

This means that when I was born, the Earth was positioned so the sun would have blocked the viewing of a random assortment of stellar objects in our galaxy that in turn are so far beyond our solar system, that the light from them has taken numerous years to reach us, so anything that was happening around those stars at that very moment hasn't even reached here just yet. This assortment of stars when viewed normally was apparently thought by some ancient stargazers to resemble the shape of a bull, hence the name of the constellation.

Taurus is also "home" to one of the few first magnitude stars in the sky, Aldebaran ("The Follower" in Arabic because as the Earth turns, it appears to follow the Pleiades open cluster, also "part" of Taurus), right in the middle, known as the "Bull's Eye". Not that it is actually physically in the middle of the stars that make up the constellation, that is only seen that way because of perspective. In fact, the stars are of random distances and really have (for the most part--the Pleiades are an exception) no direct correlation whatsoever with each other. Behind Aldebaran is the Hyades Cluster, the closest stellar cluster to Earth, though many times more distant. I'll be 65 when light from Aldebaran gets here from the time I was born, though I doubt I'll notice it at the time. I think it'd be nice if I was still here when the light from the Hyades stars catches up, for that matter...

Aldebaran is about 38 times the diameter of our sun and 150 times as bright. It has a small dwarf star companion, too, which orbits it several hundred times the distance the Earth does from Sol. At about the same distance as Earth's orbit apparently lies a planet about 11 times the size of Jupiter (note that by coincidence Jupiter itself is 11 times the diameter of the Earth in size). I'd imagine it was pretty freaking hot there and most likely still is. The Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which was launched during my childhood, ought to reach that particular neighborhood in about 2,000,000 years or so, though it's not likely that even if anyone was there to catch it, that they would even notice it.

Add another 75 years and the light will get here from Beta Tauri, one of the two "horns". As for the other "horn", Zeta Tauri, we won't know that news until the year 2347. It's a hot blue-white eclipsing binary star with a yellow Sol-like companion that spins like a whirlwind and has a disc of darkish material that surrounds it as it rips itself apart.

Before the light gets here from Beta Tauri, the light will have come a couple decades earlier from HD 37124, a Sol-like star which has at least 3 Jupiter-like gas giants, of which one is in a fairly habitable area of the system, analogous to where Venus is in ours. It could well have a moon that could as far as we know be inhabited by critters that perhaps sent us a "hello" around my birthdate that we'd get in about 66 years from now. Who knows?

There's also a relatively recently added feature "in" Taurus--the Crab Nebula, a quite large (11 light-years from tip to tip) red cloud of gas that formed when a star blew up (went supernova) about 7,200 years ago. It took the light from the explosion itself 6,300 years to get here and was thus the explosion was observed on July 4th, 1054, bright enough to be seen by day and be noted in Chinese history texts. The pulsar left there is rapidly distorting the gases in something of a cosmic cyclone, and the nebula itself can still be seen expanding today, almost 1000 years later, at a rate of 1500 kilometers per second.

How does your naturalistic horoscope read?

(edit: made some minor fixes)

Found this via PZ Myers:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/01/outside_the_lab.html

Man, if even so many scientists don't get it, what hope is there for the general public at all? Sigh. Still the fact there are people like this who are alerting others to problem gives some hope. It does seem lately that more and more folks are starting to stand up and say "enough is enough".

I'm one to talk, though. The full implications of the scientific method and of science itself didn't really work its way through my compartmentalized brain until at least my late 20's, even though I understood most of the principles, somthing just didn't click, the synapses didn't bridge the gap, and denial and wishful thinking reigned supreme. It's a shame that humans seem to be so hard-wired for cognitive dissonance.

I came across a co-worker's blog who has pretty similar taste in skepticism and politics to myself, and liked this October post of his below where he quotes Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy:

There's an article on BadAstronomy.com that I just found today that sums quite succinctly sums up all the problems with astrology. I recommend reading it. As for why I think you should read it, I'll answer that question with a quote from the article:


So what's the harm? Sure, astrology doesn't work, but it's all in fun, right?

Wrong.

For one thing, it's estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on astrology every year in the United States alone. That's real money, folks, wasted on something that doesn't work.

For another, astrology promotes the worst thing in the world: uncritical thinking. The more we teach people to simply accept anecdotal stories, hearsay, cherry-picked data (picking out what supports your claims but ignoring what doesn't), and, frankly, out-and-out lies, the harder it gets for people to think clearly. If you cannot think clearly, you cannot function as a human being. I cannot stress this enough. Uncritical thinking is tearing this world to pieces, and while astrology may not be at the heart of that, it has its role.

For a third, and this one irritates me personally, astrology takes away from the real grandeur of the Universe. We live in an amazing place, this Universe of ours, and it's quite fantastic enough without needing people to make up things about it. Astrology dims the beauty of nature, cheapens it.


Also, their blog is pretty good.

Well, a week after the aftermath and I'm still pretty unsettled.

Thursday night the monsoon hits Puget Sound full force. The entire region loses power all at once as the power stations and transformers go like dominoes. On its heels is a temperature drop that plunges to freezing. Over a million homes with no power, many 10's or is that 100's of thousands still out as I write this even a week later.

Trees fall and break like bad metaphors on an average livejournal. The whole place becomes a made-for-TV-B-movie post-apocalyptic setting of sorts. Gas stations able to pump fuel become a commodity earning giant queues and food begins to rot in warming fridges and freezers.

For those of us who rely on power to breathe when we sleep, afflicted with severe sleep apnea, the days gradually melt into a hallucinatory blur, mostly spent under blankets trying to reclaim fragments of the increasing sleep deficit while gasping like walking catfish, otherwise salvaging what cold food is still good before it becomes wasted...perhaps it would have made more sense to set the food on the porch in the cold than to leave it stored in the non-functional white box, I don't know. Cold food in cold rooms and cold feet and cold hands. Cold cold cold.

Otherwise we can strike out in our fortunately fully gassed and somewhat heated vehicle to see what bits of civilization still remain. We try it, and find a bar to eat at lit by candles and a small generator that is serving drinks and has managed to keep serving food thanks to a functioning oven and fryer. Not a single traffic light or streetlight functions--every junction and intersection is backed up as cars stop and go in dazed confusion. The large strip mall the bar is at is black as coal in the night with the only illumination being from the generator powered-light of the bar itself. The stars are beautiful.

As the third night approaches, I get word from my folks that they expect their power back that evening, so we take our chances, pack what we can and head there. My mom is sick with a virus.

Things become functional there, so sleep-breathing and warmth returns. The next morning we call home to find the answer machine working, indicating power was restored there early as well (living within the same grid as the main Microsoft campus has its perks, I think). My dad has some worrisome heart trouble so we take him to the emergency room. Things turn out okay at least so we take him back and head for dinner and home. By now my bad back has really begun to act up. Later that evening just before bed I get a call.

I left my insulin at my parents.

So another forty minutes of driving to get the insulin and come back. Still no rest for the wicked.

The next morning I find myself vomitting. I've caught the damn virus. It keeps me out of work for the next three days, near the end of which I finally get something like some real rest, though along the way I throw my back out worse, too.

My precious new Castlevania game I've been playing on my DS for at least some fun during this time reveals what is apparently some never seen before critical path-blocking bug. Argh. I start the game over, hoping I don't have a defective card.

I'm a lot better now, and my back recovered quicker than I expected. But the virus has a period where it remains contagious a few more days, so Umiushi's not taking chances.

I get to go back to my folks tomorrow evening for Humanlight. My brother and his family, particularly my nephew, have all caught the virus and are still dealing with it, or at least my nephew is. They want Umiushi to come too. Umiushi's been vigilant about keeping things clean and isolating the virus so he doesn't catch it. Tomorrow is when he should be out of danger. Unless he meets with my family. In which case he could well still catch it, conveniently just in time for our vacation to Canada on Monday. Good luck getting my family to understand this.

Each year, "the season to be jolly" feels more and more a sham. Nothing's real about it...if Christ existed anything like told in the gospels, he was born in Spring. The Romans moved the Christmas holiday to the 25th of December to stomp out the Feast of Saturn. Christmas trees and Santa and all that stuff are also adopted from various pagan sources--sure there was a Saint Nicholas, but he's not what the Santa imagery mostly comes from by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. The bible actually specifically condemns the pagan Christmas tree ritual in Jerimiah 10, for fuck's sake. Even freaking Dr. Suess was Jewish...the Grinch (you know, the Boris Karloff one, not the Jim Carrey one) was meant as a secular take on the topic...and Charles Shultz died a Secular Humanist. We all go through these motions with our corporate masters pulling our (purse) strings in the name of being with family...as if being forced to do so by ritual makes it more meaningful than something done selflessly on a regular calendar day. I don't think anyone in my immediate family is even Christian anymore, let alone that I don't even celebrate the day itself, but another self-conscious construct in its place.

But you can't escape it. Not at home, and certainly not in the wild. Those who aren't forcibly enlisted into fighting the War on Christmas(tm) all seem determined to shove it down everyone else's throats whether they like it or not. The fiasco at the Seattle airport...that was sheer stupidity that had nothing to do with secularists, but of course it's been lumped into our "assualt" nonetheless. A coworker told me with a straight face that she has Buddhist friends who have an Xmas tree (Buddhists do not have a December holiday and many are compelled to decorate by the local customs in order to blend, and possibly avoid being targetted as outsiders), and nearly exploded when I suggested the possibility that the trees were a symbol of a specific religion and could be interpreted as not secular. Of course I know their pagan origins all too well, but that doesn't change what they collectively represent and are perceived as and are called ("Holiday Tree" and such fooling nobody). I don't even dislike the things myself. But it's really disingenious to pretend a Xmas tree is a secular decoration, IMHO (Supreme Court saying otherwise notwithstanding). I can understand--nay, EMPATHIZE with--why a rabbi might complain to an airport that is awash in the decorated fake evergreens and other ornaments and is playing sickly-sweet carols that mostly speak of the coming of Christ that it ought to perhaps put up some decorations honoring other customs of the time of year (even if he was only refering to his own).

It's not like I hate it all...Suess, Shultz, the Nutcracker, Jack Skellington (oops), jolly old Grandfather Winter himself and many of the fairy tales and the diverse slants from other countries (yay for Krampus!), the Japanese KFC and cake (just for going to the other extreme), toys for kids (of age or heart)...these are all good things(tm) and of course that time with the relatives is important for its own sake, at least. But it's harder to take each year as the grind keeps going and the conservatives keep hammering and the thoughtless continue to be unable to imagine a world where not EVERYONE celebrates Christmas and/or all its traditions and marketed values.

This was on a conservative site, so I'm not going to link it, but I found this article via the Brights monthly bulletin:

Nearly half of Americans are not sure God exists, according to a poll that also found divisions among the public on whether God is male or female or whether God has a human form and has control over events.

The survey conducted by Harris Poll found that 42 percent of US adults are not "absolutely certain" there is a God compared to 34 percent who felt that way when asked the same question three years ago.

Among the various religious groups, 76 percent of Protestants, 64 percent of Catholics and 30 percent of Jews said they are "absolutely certain" there is a God while 93 percent of Christians who describe themselves as "Born Again" feel certain God exists.

When questioned on whether God is male or female, 36 percent of respondents said they think God is male, 37 percent said neither male nor female and 10 percent said "both male and female."

Only one percent think of God as a female, according to the poll.

Asked whether God has a human form, 41 percent said they think of God as "a spirit or power than can take on human form but is not inherently human."

As to whether God controls events on Earth, 29 percent believe that to be the case while 44 percent said God "observes but does not control what happens on Earth".

The survey was conducted online between October 4 and 10 among 2,010 US adults.


With only 2010 surveyed, it's hardly what I'd call a cross-section. But it's interesting to see both that dip in unquestioned belief and also even before, so many admitted to an essentially agnostic view. That's over twice as many folks by percentage than who listed themselves as non-religious in the last census. It makes sense though, for as any reasonable atheist must admit that gods could possibly--if not plausibly--exist (as could anything, really), so must a reasonable religious person admit that there is at least a possibility that their deity doesn't really exist--even if they don't find it likely, either. And certainly there are secular Jews, Christians, Muslims, and so on out there for that matter--folks who only follow religious practices out of custom and tradition, not faith.

It's easy for one with a naturalistic view to forget that faith is not unshakable, and to take the most zealous at their word that it is an absolute condition. Perhaps there's more hope out there than I had thought.

Still, non-religious folks can be just as vulnerable to scientifically wrong-headed ideas (or sometimes outright shams) like astrology, spiritualism, homeopathy, and so on. We must remain vigilant against superstition, dangerous memes, and misguided wishful thinking.

I really should have taken pictures--first I missed the picturesque autumn we had, now this...we got snowed in pretty badly the last couple of days, which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the way it hailed first and left a thick sheen of ice everywhere, including the fricking steps to my condo and the roads on my commute. At least I live close to work, and didn't have to get stuck in the commute nightmare some of my coworkers faced that lasted over 9 hours for some on the night of the snowfall. I made it in to work with the 4wd barely the next day, then chickened out the following day as conditions were no better and I didn't have the 4wd this time. Finally it rained last night and melted most of this stuff so the roads are relatively safe again.

Glad that's over...for now. It's not even freaking winter yet. :/

Now we've finally elected to kick the bums out of the House and Senate, I've done away with my emo black-n-grey that I put up after Junior's "re-" election.

Still, we'll see how it goes. These new dems better do what we put them in there to do.

FTB2 went out into stores on Tuesday. Yay! I also finally got my portfolio and rez looked at by the art director here, and he's having me take a modeling skills test of sorts. So I'll be working on that over the weekend in the hopes of perhaps finally getting a full-time art job once again. Right now, I'm getting myself up to speed on Maya 7's modeling UI. Almost done learning the stuff I most need to know, just need to run through the sub-division tools and see how they stack up against Lightwave 8's.

End of the big project has left me with some free time up till now. I made a small update to my anime/review blog, and have been working on scanslating the 2005 Microman manga, my first effort as a scanslator. It's pretty damn fun, even if the kanji is thick as hell. I don't want to link it on my more public blogs yet, as I'm doing it as an exclusive for the Microman fan community before I release it to the scanslation community, but I feel safe enough to link it here later if anyone's curious.

Yep, FTB2 finally hit gold. Time for a break...

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/10/13/dawkins/index.html

The interviewer does a nice job of later asking the wrong questions, which Dawkins in turn takes apart like a half-assembled tinkertoy. :D Frustrating to see the interviewer try to apply negative connotations to the wrong words, but ultimately satisfying to see Dawkins point out these errors. And while he may not explicitly use the word "Bright", he defines the greater "war" as being between Naturalism and Supernaturalism, and the lesser battle as being evolution versus creationism--which is in other words helping spread the Bright meme nonetheless. Bully for him!

Ok, I was late from lunch due to a post office mix-up, so I swung by Jack in the Box for a quick grab-n-go (I know, I know, Umiushi...). They've remodeled the place rather nicely, giving it more of a "Starbucks" feel almost, aside from the silent 2 monitors visible from some areas showing random Jack in the Box commercials and such.

So one comes on that looks like it was made for this in-house looping video that just boggled me. It went something like this...

Image: Jack on phone, picture-in-picture image of young female employee answering phone from the counter.

Jack: Hello, is this Tracy?

Tracy: Yes, can I help you?

Jack: Hi Tracy, this is Jack, you know, the guy on all your posters and stuff.

Tracy: Oh my god! For real? Oh my god!

Jack: Yeah, I do this thing where I sometimes randomly choose employees and ask them how things are going.

Tracy: Oh my god!

Jack: So Tracy, I hear there was quite a rush for breakfast this morning.

Tracy: Huh? Oh, yeah, there sure was!

Jack: What would you say was the most popular item on the breakfast menu?

Tracy: Um, I'm not sure, they all seemed pretty equally popular, I mean, everything's so good.

Jack: Oh okay, well then what would you personally rate the best?

Tracy: Uh, well, it's not really a breakfast item, but I really like the Chicken Fajita Pita.

Jack: Ah yes...I'm so glad I invented that.

Tracy: Yeah! Oh my god, I can't believe I'm really talking to you!

Jack: Yeah. Well, do you think you could wear the yellow hat for me?

Tracy: Yeah, whatever you want, why not? You know, my husband asked me the other day what my life ambition was, and I told him it was to marry Jack!

Jack: Oh..well, I guess I better be careful when I come to see you then, Tracy.

Tracy: Yeah...

Jack: All right, just make sure you ask your husband if it's okay, and I'll ask my wife if she's okay with it.

Tracy: Okay!

(end of spot)

Okay, I mean seriously, WTF??? :D

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/10/09/diskworld/

Good read on the recently discovered planet found--surprise, surprise--inside a planetary disk.

Candidate number 5 looks like it's going to be the one. We finally had a day off on Sunday (not counting my sick leave, that's 49 work days in a row, I believe is the count) and are back on 8 hr days again. At this point, we wait to see if it gets approved. Another of my co-workers gave her 2 weeks notice 13 days ago, so she's leaving tomorrow, so our team will be down to 5 people to deal with remaining patch issues and localization. Where we go after that, if anywhere, beats the hell out of me...

I saw an interesting link while I was in gmail, an ad for "Flatland: the animated movie" (www.flatlandthemovie.com). Being a huge fan of both Flatland as well as Planiverse, I thought, "wow, cool! Someone's actually going to try to pull it off!" and foolishly clicked the link.

MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!

Ick ick ick ick wrong wrong wrong! And they are going to include the text of the book with the movie on a dvd as educational material...holy shit what a joke. I didn't even watch the full trailer as it was having cache issues, but enough to see that whoever made this junk clearly didn't understand even the most fundamental elements of what the book presented about life in a 2D world. The cartoony characters and the way the world is portrayed implicitly cannot be two dimensions...characters traverse over surfaces and ride in vehicles and have eyes on their "sides" (although I could forgive that conceit if the rest were accurate, for the sake of making it more easy to understand and empathise with the characters)...this isn't a 2D world at all as things can pass over and under other things in the z axis as they move around in x and y (or actually in a 3D program it would be y, then x and z). If they wanted a 2D world where some of what they are doing could be possible, they should at least have followed the Planiverse "vertical plane" model (which really makes much more sense than the original "horizontal plane" model of Flatland. What a load of BS. What a shame this was allowed to even get made in the first place.