I saw this movie a couple weeks ago and really enjoyed it. He asks a lot of simple questions to people who say they have the answers and watches them fall on their face trying get out of the way of the hypocrisy of their tradition. Especially memorable was the Creationist museum, which depicts humans and dinosaurs living together in an antediluvian harmony, as well as the Holy Land theme park in Orlando, Florida, where an actor playing Jesus gets gruesomely impaled every day, to the tearful applause of the crowd.
“If there was a god, I’d still have both nuts.” — Lance Armstrong
Religion is a cultural millstone, hanging around our necks. The sooner we discard it, the better our chances of survival. People professing no religious belief are the most under represented demographic in this country, and like any under represented (and growing) group, they will not persist sotto voce for long. Kudos to Bill Maher.
In my anthropology class last week, this question was raised: Why did God put the Tree with Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden? The question was raised but not answered by either the theist or atheist contingent. I find this to be an important matter in understanding the bible, and i have rarely heard it explained. I venture this argument:
The bible has a convoluted relationship with the notion of man’s free will, but in this case is clear. Without God’s placing some kind of prohibition that could be broken, thereby generating disobedience, their could be no chance to demonstrate choice and free will. Essentially, just like any good scientist, God allowed for a negative outcome, knowing the results would be meaningless without the possibility. It would be like voting for president with only one name on the ballot.
I feel that this is a rarely articulated concept. Anyone heard it put this way before? Where did you hear it?
Some fear debut of powerful atom-smasher — CNN.com
Let me take the minority view on this one. So… what if we do actually destroy the earth by building a machine of this power? Perhaps every intelligent species has had the technology to build such a thing without the corresponding ability to accurately model what it will do when they turn it on. Maybe we’re about there’s a cosmic corner that you just can’t peek around without taking a leap of ill-founded faith. There could be a point that all civilizations reach where they self-destruct because the laws of physics are bent too far by inexperienced hands, turning curious societies into a tragic stream of dead worlds. Maybe that’s why we’re “alone;” it’s because everyone else committed technocide.
I can’t wait for them to turn it on! I’ll throw a party!
I’m live blogging at the opening ceremony of the Ashevillage Building Convergence for work tonight. Its pretty neat to be doing something so hip for work. This is most certainly a bra-burning crowd, and I would imagine that the only way to turn these people into a frenzied blood-thirsty mob would be to parade Mayor McCheese Head in here and distribute hamburgers. Anyway. It takes every kind of person to make the world go round, and most of these people really do give a shit.
Shouldn’t democracy be considered a form of user-editable government?
I think so.
Western culture prefers to simplify things into two opposing camps, black and white/red or blue/liberal or conservative/left or right. American politics have long been divided into two major parties, and I find this to be one of the most indicative signs of the trend I mentioned above. As an exercise with that thought in mind, I ask my readers, meager handful as they may be, to discuss one of these two topics.
Please do your best to prove either (or both):
- How American Liberalism is essentially REgressive.
- How American Conservatism is essentially PROgressive.
What I’m looking for is the historical view looking back, and the outlooks looking forward. As an analogous perspsective, consider Disraeli and Gladstone how the philosophies they embodied served Britain for good or bad. To keep people on the same page, please discuss the overall (macro) view and then choose one or two (micro) points to exemplify.
I consider these points to be counter-factual in reality, but that is my opinion. Even if I get no responses, you must realize that I plan on being a history professor. I think it is a natural fit for me.
Sesamstrasse; Just in case you wondered whether this ever existed.
The real point of this post:
Recent discoveries and accomplishments:
- Some of Emily Dickinson’s poems are absolutely terrible. These, however make excellent country/gospel tunes; “If I could stop one heart from breaking,” is a good example.
- Autodidact
- The Tale of Genji
- Red Guitar
- The Big Lebowski
- “Hillosophy” (folk wisdom, e.g. )
- Getting out of debt — the hard way.
- Purchase of a Victrola! A 1921 VV-50, currently on layaway. Suitcase model.
- Finally acknowledging my inherent materialism, and staging a personal revolution.
- Deduced the difference between kerning and tracking by accident when someone asked me what it was.
“Do your children enjoy jazz music? For I am here to tell you that Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and the whole weed-blowing, ginger-colored lot are merely masquerading as musicians and are in fact agents of evil. Reefer slows down the smokers’ sense of time, allowing them to squeeze in unnecessary “grace notes”, giving this voodoo music the power to hypnotize white women into indulging in unspeakable acts of degradation.”
