The Return: In Which our resident idiot returns with his diatribes.*

This video is at the end of the day not entirely the result of a man who is innately misunderstanding the foundations of logic. Despite that being true, it’s really the nature of everyone to move towards fundamentalism when you wish to make your point in this world of 140 character limits. It’s also a reaction to what has been termed as “The New Atheists”.

Quick run down for those unfamiliar with the debate. The New Atheist movement is effectively a fundamentalist movement, but instead of being religious it is atheistic in nature. Although I agree with many of the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and so on), I don’t particularly find their rhetorical style to be something I can endorse. By my nature, I abhor fundamentalism. Fundamentalism shuts down dialogue, in my eyes being a fundamentalist requires you to be so dedicated to your platform that you are not willing to consider the other side. It’s particularly pervasive in religion, which has caused atheists since we tend to be in the minority to react by becoming more opposed to religion, spawning in my eyes a radical new breed of atheist that disregards the other. Which is disheartening.

Anyway, here’s the video that has got me all twisted up and banging my head against my desk: 

The first part of my reaction is why on earth is this dude shouting. Though Dawkins vehemently opposed religion, I can’t think of a single moment that he’s ever shouted despite some of the truly evil things said straight to his face. Sin one: volume does not help your case.

Ignoring the dichotomy of absolute truth for a moment solely to avoid that discussion and focus on the real nature of the video by looking at it’s first blatant attack on atheists. It’s not even an argument, it’s a character attack to demonize atheists. Let me start by first doing exactly what he says I can’t do: I condemn genocide in all of it’s forms period. While I can admit that an atheist has participated in genocide (Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin), I’ll not stoop to the level of throwing genocide in the face of Christians because I have better taste than that. Throwing down a gauntlet like that is meant to trap an argument in petty name calling and dirt throwing which is frankly time consuming and running in circles.

The reason that I condemn genocide is not just an issue of morality. I believe it to be morally wrong and incorrect, however you can remove morality from the discussion entirely. Here’s one way of looking at it: if you are attempting to advance your species group, it is not evolutionarily prudent to exterminate vast numbers of the species for any reason. Natural selection is survival of the fittest, and yes we do select how that works (if you don’t think that’s true, stop dating and looking for “the one”, your qualifications for the one require selective breeding and therefore are controlling natural selection). Genocide can be seen as an extension of this selection, but I disagree on the basis that genocide has entirely different motivations: largely the imposition of one group’s will over another group and culling ideologies.

Time after time, however, genetic diversity has been the key to a species’ survival, and lowering the percentage of candidates in any gene pool will destroy that species. Looking at dogs, so called “purebreeds” are absolutely riddled with genetic insufficiencies due to the fact that selective breeding has been taken so far that genetic diversity is restricted to the point of shortening life spans, lowering quality of life, and in some breed’s case effectively killing them. This is somewhat the case by the destruction of human life on a genocidal scale. It’s just wrong.

That’s his “argument” against atheists, really, in this video. To look further at his claim, it is up to me as an atheist to prove that something does not exist. Which is logically impossible. It’s why the criminal justice system is based on the theory of innocence until guilt is proven. I can’t prove that I did not commit a crime, it’s up to the person accusing me to prove that I did commit that crime. It is not up to me to prove a negative, it is up to the claimant to prove a positive. While New Atheists jump up and down and assert that they have proven God does not exist, those claims are just as ridiculous. It simply cannot be done.

So, I issue my own challenge to this man: prove to me that Odin does not exist. The Allfather saw the world taken over by Ice Giants, cast forever into a state of constant winter. We have evidence that our planet was plunged through a complete Ice Age, proving consistency with that claim. Odin battled the frost giants and expelled them from their rule on this earth, restoring the natural seasons and saving us from eternal winter. In human history, we have never had to return to such a wretched way of living, despite how much fun snowboarders would have. There exists no record of the frost giants return, further supporting the claim that they have been permanently banned from our world. As we developed as a species, Odin no longer needed to intervene as much and has returned to seeing over other places in his domain. So, if Odin has done all these things, I issue the challenge to this man to disprove his existence, and there’s a hundred grand on the line.

You see, it’s absolutely ridiculous of me to issue this challenge. I look like an idiot doing it. I invite you to laugh, because it is quite funny. On the one hand, it betrays a very large lack of knowledge about Norse mythology. It’s also very petty and antagonistic. And it’s attacking people I actually care about. There’s no point to it other than to push out my chest in pride and say “I WIN!” while not actually winning anything but contempt.

Listen, if you want to believe, I beg of you: do so and have spirited discussions about it. Challenge me, challenge your friends, challenge strangers. It’s healthy, it’s important. Humanity will only get better with a diversity of opinion. There’s no point in shutting out any avenue of discussion at the end of the day, although some are more fruitful than others. Learn about new ways of thinking, explore all manner of ideas and ways of living. To borrow a Biblical metaphor, set fire to the steel and hammer it down removing the dross and impurities you find there. Engage Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Taoists, and so on. There’s a wealth of human experience. Press other people to think, but always press yourself harder. Know and understand what you are arguing about so that you can learn more and grow on your end and help me grow on mine.

And for the love of whatever you find binding, please stop being a fundamentalist. It really harshes my mellow, man.

*Resident idiot is effectively me, I’m coming at this from the perspective of being fully aware that it will not change any minds and yet I’ll still go ahead and spend time on it.

Where I blow the dust off the mic…

I like hunters, I truly do. In many ways, hunting is sort of that last connection we have with our ancestry. I, for one, do not hunt and until the forthcoming apocalypse have no need to learn. Guns are expensive and I’ve got other hobbies that don’t involve gutting and cooking things. I’d rather go head to head over someone over the details of what happened with Ungoliant in the first age of Middle Earth’s mythology, but I am also a nerd. I have come to terms with that.

Let us also take a look, briefly, at why I think that hunting a lion in the modern context of the idea is really a crappy and cowardly thing to do:

http://imgur.com/gallery/59N0c

First and foremost, let us dispel a myth: hunting big game in Africa is a joke. You roll in driving a gas guzzling Land Rover, lean out the door, put a forty plus caliber round in the closest piece of big game, the rest of it’s pack scatters, and you pick up your fallen prey. I know hunters, I like hunters. they spend hours stalking their target at four in the morning. They use high tech equipment to spot their prey, they use time honed sense to track it for miles, they practice woodscraft like the true champs and bad asses they are, and they eat their kill. That is hunting, and hats off to you guys and have a nice cold beer back at camp relishing a day well spent. But if you ask me to join, I will not because to me the primary step for skinning a cat involves googling a local taxidermist. What this girl is doing is to hunting as a midnight run to Wendy’s is to foraging. Hunting is hard work, it is troublesome, and it involves no small amount of hardship on those who actually practice the art. I guess in all fairness, the Land Rovers in Africa probably did not roll out with air conditioning, so, I guess there is that.

While this is essential to understand my rant, allow me to be crystalline clear: it is not the bulk of my rant. It was, in truth, my first thought when I heard about the news story, but it is not my final thought. While reading about the situation, I was hit smack between the eyes with exactly why I had to revisit my blog. She draws a comparison between herself and the most bad ass president of all time. Oh yes, ladies and gents, Teddy Roosevelt. Let it sink in for a second and boom, head explodes.

Teddy Roosevelt earned the right to shoot whatever he wanted in Africa. He sailed their in 1909 (you read that right, sailed) with a ton of folks to explore and find specimens for the Smithsonian Institute. They collected hundreds of samples that included everything from insects to god knows what. The closest thing to a jeep that existed at the time was the Ford Model T. Go read about it, it’s absolute trash in the jungle. Seriously, not even enough torque to get through your front yard if you happen to go two weeks without mowing it. No, freaking jeeps were at least five years away (really, Jeep was founded in 41 during the second World War, and a cursory glance at the history puts the closest that I can get to it being armored cars but they still don’t have the wheelbase to support a jungle trek). What does that mean? It means that Teddy waded into the jungle elbow deep with a few pack horses. Allow me a second of admiration: “Damn, dude.” So, when I said that he can go out there and shoot what he wants, it’s because he’s actually hunting. There’s no vehicle to get him into the jungle or savannah safely and there’s no way in hell he will receive medical treatment in the event of tragic mauling.

Second point of contention: Teddy Roosevelt packed three guns. All big game guns by their standards, sure, but let’s take a look. The .405 Winchester famously called “The Big Medicine” (because when you’re Teddy, you can name your gun that), a 30-06 m1903 (predecessor of the M1 Garand for those who need the Call of Duty point of reference), a Winchester Repeater 1905 model (by repeater, it means you can reload by using a lever action set up to clear the cartridge and slide another into the bolt) and a .500/450 model by a company I don’t know in Britain. The absolute largest clip size he’s got is five. Five. And it’s not a semi automatic (for the none-gun savvy, semi-automatic means that the next round enters the breech in some manner from the excess force created by the charge in the shell), it’s a pump action. That means that if Teddy boy misses, he has to take the gun from his shoulder, pull the lever, reshoulder the rifle, sight down again and take another shot. Semi automatic never leaves your shoulder if you miss. And that’s assuming he’s using two out of the five guns he brought. That’s right, the others are single shot rifles and they were his preferred rifles for the trip. And rifling was in it’s early stages. Meaning, you were far more likely to hit where you aimed with these guns than, say, a musket, but not like the guns we have today that you can reliably use a laser scope with.

This is leaving out entirely that she compared herself with Thomas Jefferson’s hunting prowess. Teddy Roosevelt was Buck friggin Rodgers compared to Thomas Jefferson. He also hunted rabbits and foxes, though, so that’s way less interesting and bad ass than Teddy Roosevelt. The point, really, is that comparing yourself to Thomas Jefferson as far as hunting just means you’ve lost absolute touch with reality. The two types of hunting are not even close to being the same thing.

So, there’s my rant. Hunting is awesome, as are serious hunters. This girl is not one of them. She pays for the privilege (which, frankly, in my opinion if you’re truly participating in conservation work, why the hell are you paying 320k for the privilege), she trucks out into the middle of nowhere, she uses high grade guns that if she didn’t hit her target would be incredibly disappointing, and she’s using it to jumpstart her own hunting show. Listen, if you want a hunting show, great, awesome. There’s entire channels dedicated to it and frankly it would probably be awesome to have a female hunter showing that it’s not just the good ol’ boys wandering around in the woods for four hours drinking beer. But don’t make yourself look like an idiot by shooting a lion and calling it hunting and definitely don’t say you’re like Teddy Roosevelt.

Unless I’ve missed something entirely and she did actually pack out on foot and stalked the lion with and single shot 30-06 with iron sights and a fancy Panama. Then, frankly, have at it.

The Atheist’s Guide to the Bible and other religious texts

So, I’ve been doing what I do, always exploring and thinking about things. One of the biggest things that I’ve been struck by almost constantly in the past two years is the consistent hostility between those of belief and those without. There’s a strong sense of resentment between the two, and it seems to stem from gaps in understanding between the two. The biggest of which stems from how they treat the Bible.

I understand the atheist’s standpoint on the text, there’s a lot of stuff in there that without some serious hoop jumping are at best barbaric and medieval. There are even passages that are glaringly antagonistic towards each other at first and even third glances. However, I think there are some things in it that are quite important to how we should live. It would easy to let this by no means new idea of mine become faith bashing, but it is not my intent to do that. It is, however, my attempt at bridging a gap that needs bridging. 

The explicit intent of the idea is to look at how we live and how we choose to live. The Bible is a text with a lot of good guidelines and a lot of good ideas. These ideas deserve just as much publicity and emphasis as whatever bad press is out there. Atheist friends, take a look at what I have to say and weigh it with your usual rigor and skepticism. These are the reasons that I love the way you all think. Religious friends, take these things to heart to, but also challenge me on my assumptions. It is only in the multitude of voices that I think wisdom is found. 

The first thing I’d like to do is talk a little bit about one of my favorite passages. It’s Philippians 2:3:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

There’s a lot that we can all agree on about this passage. It’s actually a lot longer, but this section right here has the meat of the matter. The commandment from Paul is to live life in humility and to set aside our personal ambition. Ambition is good to a point, but it should not be our central motivating factor. 

Ambition is a powerful driving force, especially for a strong will and stalwart mind. The greatest thing about ambition is that it strengthens hard work and sharpens focus to a dogged level. However, if ambition is limited solely to your needs and goals, it will blind you to the people around you. This is how you begin to lose objectivity. If you’re focusing solely on your goals, it will begin to erode other’s faith in your allegiances and loyalties if you let it swing too far out of control. 

This is where I really like this verse. The original way I learned it was “esteem others better than yourself”. Which, as a kid in middle school seemed sycophantic. The confusion stemmed a bit from the parlance of his majesty King James. By moving some things around, it makes a little more sense. At first, I had assumed that it meant to treat your betters well. Thus the “better than yourself”. But, as it was explained to me, it meant more along the lines of live humbly and treat everyone as your better. Not as being subservient, but out of respect. Respect everyone and realize their humanity. Treat them better than you feel you should be treated. How awesome is that? Well, from a self-seeking perspective, this would be pretty much the worst case scenario. Treating others with respect and kindness, however, betters the lives of those around you. If it becomes your hallmark, the lives you touch will be the better for it. 

This can only be done through humility. Humility is a key character trait that I’ve found lacking in the world around me. In everyone from our leaders to our peers, there’s a stunning lack of it. There’s a reason for the label of iGeneration, and it’s not just the fact that we all grew up using iPods, iPhones, and iMacs. While we talk a good game about social justice issues, it’s become harder since our college days to focus on what we once found important. We are more and more concerned about our future, where we will find our next job, how are we going to make it having the highest college debt by far of any generation, having to compete for jobs and housing while trying to just find our place in the world. These are all important things, and they deserve our thought but it’s not like people aren’t noticing. TIMES Magazine wrote an upsetting article on it. I’m sure you read it. It’s not pretty, but given that we were so adamant about social justice and fixing the world, who can blame TIMES for noticing when we got distracted with ourselves. Humility is more than being ironically self-effacing, it’s about the whole picture of caring for others and serving them.

This is why I love this verse. It’s a constant reminder every time someone shouts over something at work that I need to choke down my impulse to become upset. It’s a personal attack, sure, and they by no means are listening to verses like this. But that is not an excuse. It’d be easier to give in to the level of volume and send them on their way. It’s a lot harder to look at life and see myself as a person and reach down deep to try to raise them above me. Again, not becoming subservient, but to treat them with the respect they do deserve despite their disregard of humility and patience. This is why I’m never short a word of encouragement or patience when someone in the world is doing something for me. Yes, waitstaff are paid for their work. Yes, the dude at Best Buy is there being paid to check product availability for me. But that’s not at all the way to view it. It’s far easier to see people who are doing service level work as minions and pawns, but the reality of it is they are no different from anyone and they work hard. 

This maxim to the Philippians could also have been the credo of many of the people I’ve come to respect in my life. I also chose it as the first one for this new adventure because it’s completely altered how I drive in the DC metro area, and while that’s not a miracle, it’s about as close as possible. Despite the fact that there were no laws of physics interrupted, this area just breeds bad habits in that department. 

Anyway, that’s the first one. There’s a comments section if I remember correctly. Drop them off there or on Facebook and let me know what you’re thinking. Definitely wouldn’t mind suggestions from anyone on where to take things next, christians and atheists alike, this is for both. 

The infamous “Summer Reading List”, or perhaps more appropriately, my personal self-imposed Everest.

So, every now and again I get back into reading. Like many pursuits that are reactivated interests, I tend to dive face first into it without much thought given to the subsequent consequences. And since more often than not it’s just a hobby that I’m rediscovering its not a situation with disastrous consequences. This summer reading list is about as unusual as I, so consider this a 101 on the stranger things I like to read about.

First off, the all important selection process. Almost as important as the books and activity of reading, my process of choosing what to read is an exercise that demonstrates the intricate and arduous manner in which I process my interests. Step one is always going to the library. These institutions are near and dear to me having grown up going to one on a biweekly basis. Once this step is accomplished, the process of selection that has been honed from years of visits begins. On the surface, the methodology I follow is at best thoroughly haphazard and scattered. Digging deeper, the thought process and algorithms my brain courses are no more organized.

Starting with the front door, I analyze the layout of the library and scan the flow of the stacks to determine the most efficient lay out as well as the basic density of the different sections. If you know the Dewey Decimal system, this task is easier as the stacks are usually labeled that way. I always double check the reference poster to recalibrate my sadly thinning remembrance of the system because let’s face facts: unless you’re a librarian, you never use this system enough to remember all the twists and turns. After this crash course in crushingly accurate numbers and letters that now borders on the arcane, it’s time to execute the sweep. The sweep begins in 0.1, the technology corridor. I scan the stacks for titles that I’ve read before, locating an old friend here and there to position myself in the great expanse of human knowledge. This helps me gravitate to the shelves I know hold the most prevalent areas of interest.

After the recognition that I am in the right spot, a closer scan of the shelf will bring out new titles that catch my eye, potential new friends to meet. I grab two or three and scan the jacket, seeing if anyone I have read has had anything to say on the book. If they give accolades, then the book comes with. If these accolades are absent, that is not putting the book down for the count, but it does go for round two. Round two is the actual opening of the book and reading the first three pages and then an arbitrary three later in the book. This is for fiction and non fiction. The thought process is that if an author is excellent at what they do, I will be hooked from reading the first snippet, but I also want to know if they can maintain that level of writing throughout the book. If it passes, it goes into the pile. Repeat for the entire row of stacks. This sounds like an intense process, but trust me when I say it took me five minutes to amass a stack of ten books. Next is the elimination phase. This one is thoroughly arbitrary. I scan the list of what I have, and think about which ones hooked me the hardest. If I have second thoughts about any, they are immediately eliminated. Even if it’s as silly as “I don’t like the cover typography”. I will more than likely remember the ones I put back on subsequent visits. Actually, two of the books on the list this summer were skipped last library trip. My system works!

So, here is the final list and a little blurb about why they were selected, pursued in a manner most snarky for your entertainment!

Being and Time by Matin Heidegger – Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re nuts. You can’t just dive into Heidegger. You need to lay some groundwork, study philosophy for a bit, get into what other people have to say about Heidegger, and then once you’re opinion is all right and proper, then read the original manuscript. To that I say this: what part of “I approach things face first at high velocities” is complicated? Besides, he wrote a whole book trying to define being and time! How awesome is that? Bueller?

The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Ecidence by Peter A. Sturrock – “Woah, woah, woah, this guy’s a ufologist? Unsubscribed.” Wait! Come back! Let me explain! Ok, they’re gone now. I like Ufology. I have watched the X-files from start to finish four or five times, let alone my favorite episodes and the mythology arc. Because of that, UFOs have always fascinated me. I love extraterrestrial movies and stories of sightings and the whole campy business. Do I believe in extraterrestrials? Listen, the cosmos is absolutely huge, to deny that sentient life is out there somewhere would be kind of silly. Do I think they’ve made contact and are abducting citizens to probe them and make alien-human hybrids? No, but it’s still fun to read abduction cases. I’m curious, ok?!

Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku – I love this man. I haven’t read a single sentence of his (well, I’ve read the preface, but that can’t possibly count). This summer that ends.

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – I have glaring gaps in my reading pedigree. The biggest of which starts at 1920. Seriously, I hated modern authors when I was putting down books the way frat boys suck down Jeager Bombs. So, again, this ends this summer.

EON by Greg Bear – I know virtually nothing about this book. There was a home made trailer for a fan film that was made years ago that I saw and flipped out on. It laid out the basic premise but didn’t get much further. And the premise was stunning. Something about an astroid that has a corridor that allows for instant transport through wormholes or whatever. I really don’t know why I’m reading it, but I finally am.

The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil – This guy is crazy go nuts, but I love him. He is an author/futurist/inventor/does-whatever-he-wants. A truly modern Renaissance chap. His ideas fascinate me, especially anything revolving around the future. Do I think we will transcend our biology anytime soon? Eh, not entirely. Do I think we will eventually take control of our evolution? We’re already heading there. Anyway, this was the only book my library had by him, so I grabbed it and put it on the stack.

Boom! There’s the list. That’s around 2100 pages, that’s not intimidating. There will be deviations, I’m sure, but this is the list. Here goes!

The Purge is an awful movie concept.

So, for those of you who are as unaware of horror film culture as I am of…uhm…dentistry, there’s this new movie out called The Purge whose premise is that humanity’s problems are solved because all crimes are allowed for 12 hours. You can do anything you want, even murder, and as long as it’s done during those 12 hours you’re good, you’re covered, off the hook, and so on. The thought process is that we all want to commit these horrible things and keep the inner monster locked up inside all year, but that allowing it to happen once a year allows sort of a release mechanism allowing society to function by getting it out of our collective system. The first thing I’m going to do is show how this premise is flawed using the film’s logic. The second is to show how it’s flawed given my thoughts on the subject. Then to illustrate a point, I will attempt to give an example of how ludicrous it is.

 

First things first, on it’s own merit. This is tricky. The biggest assumption is that all of humanity has this raging compulsion to do horrible things. At our very core is this monster, and we simply put on a good face for society. If it were truly the case that we were as a species compelled to do these things, does anyone really believe that it would be limited to those twelve hours? If our nature was so warped that we long to do these things, we would do them regularly. Case in point, crime today. People who commit crimes very rarely are unaware of the fact that what they’re doing is against the law. So, if that’s true (I’m pretty certain it is, but I have no reference for this other than a gut instinct), the movie has to account for the 8748 (8754 hours for those who want to get technical with leap year, which I did) other hours in the year in which very few crimes are committed. Which, it really can’t. The premise contradicts itself. Compulsion would not be controlled for 8748 (8754) hours and released in 12. It’s not how it works.

 

Second, if anyone had done any reading about behavioral patterns and how they develop, they would realize this is a classic case of reinforcing the wrong behavior. While in college, I read a little bit about how people develop into the sort of people who hit the people they love. In addition to genetic factors, it almost invariably started with the idea that it’s ok to lash out in violence when you’re upset. The example being when you’re angry, go punch a pillow. It harms no one on the surface. Except that it harms you. It reinforces the idea that it’s ok to hit something when you’re upset. Same thing for shouting at inanimate objects. It causes a pattern of behavior that becomes a part of you. This “purge” is an annual reinforcement of the worst types of behaviors. If someone wronged you so much that you wanted to kill them, just wait and plan until The Purge and then have at them. Really, it’s just a recipe for the construction of a society of sociopaths. It validates the feelings that someone deserves whatever you’re going to do, the only thing that’s wrong about it is the timing. It’s not really wrong, it’s just poorly timed if it happens in one of the 8754 hours of the year.

 

Now, moving to my opinion of human nature. I don’t honestly think that every single one of us is a sociopath just waiting to crack the surface and do something awful. I think the core of humanity is good. Case in point, let’s look at this: how many of you really thought “I’m going to kill X person”? I’m willing to bet that almost no one thinks that. We say it, in what I believe to be a poor choice of humor, but we don’t mean it. A study done on soldiers in WWII showed that about 10% of the soldiers shot directly enough to land killing shots. Which means about 90% of the killing was done by shots that were just shot in the general direction of the enemy. The exact number escapes me, but it was higher in Vietnam because the training was different. It was found that the 10% in WWII that shot to kill had sociopathic tendencies. The rise in the number is accounted for by the corrollary of new training methods and language shifts that had soldiers shooting at human shaped targets and instead of “people”, the language largely shifted to that of “package” and “target”. Amongst many other htings, this would indicate to me that only 10% of society would really want to harm someone enough to kill them, and they’re not necessarily “all right” as it were.

 

If we were to counter that and say that there has been a rise in criminality amongst people for things like media piracy, frankly that’s fundamentally different. The vast majority of media pirates are not bit torrenters but rather those who pirate and sell it on the black markets overseas. There is also a sense that media piracy in the States is a “victimless crime”. The reason this is fundamentally different in my eyes is that people change when they are face to face with the person they are confronting. I work a customer service job, and this is extremely true. (No, customers don’t try to assault me on a daily basis and heap violent threats upon my head) When people call over the phone, they tend to shout, use direct accusatory demeanors, and all in all fail to recognize that they are talking to someone. It’s a wall they run into since you are a disembodied voice over a magical wire. But, when that same person comes into my place of business and sees my face, there’s some weird loophole in our psychology that gets closed up and they return to the normal state of talking to another human being. Or at least they are a little bit less of an aggressor. You could say that it’s that they are out in society and visible to the public, but trust me when I say that no one really feels that pressure in my area and it is not that conscious of an act on the person’s side. It just happens.

 

And lastly, here’s the real deal. If “The Purge” actually existed, here’s what I would do: go out and paint some wall some cool colors, play guitar off my back porch at full volume at 3 am, base jump off of the Empire State Building, draw a mustache on the Lincoln Memorial, loiter by literally standing on a cop car, pick my nose while staring at a traffic cam, duct tape everything, draw myself in a chalk outline in front of someone’s house, organize a swing dance under the capital’s rotunda, finally learn what is that statue on top of the US Capital Building, launch fireworks from off the top of some sky scraper, call 911 and try to order donuts, wear two different types of plaid and go frisbee golfing inside the mall, play dodgeball in The Louvre, street luge Lombard Street, play polo with a tennis ball and Vespa in Central Park, finally learn what the Liberty Bell tastes like (like Barney Stinson), play Halo on the jumbotrons in Time Square, watch traffic from the top of Big Ben, squirrel suit off of the Burj Al Arab, and so on. This is not a comprehensive list, really it’s just an off the cuff “these are hilarious things I can’t do because they’re illegal or of questionable legality”. This list, at worst, indicates that I can occasionally be a minor annoyance. Really, if “The Purge” was a reality, I’m very sure that the world would look more like Burning Man than Lord of the Flies. Just a bunch of happy people doing really silly and stupid things.

Because I said this would be random

Hey y’all. I haven’t posted in what already feels like forever. I need some sort of writing schedule I think. But to keep you all entertained with the random things that go through my head, here is a list of times I find fascinating and why. This is as random and strange as I ever am.

0:00 – Ah, military time. I love this because the clock literally says zero and I have a few apps that ant read it. So it just says “undefined” for sixty seconds.

1:23 – Six times a day, the clock organizes itself. How do you not love that?

3:15 – This time has a lot of mysticism surrounding it. The legends are predominantly Christian. The fascination is this is a time in the morning strongly associated with fear. Which intrigues me to no end.

4:04 – The nerd in me freaks out when it sees that. “Time not found” is all I can think of.

5:02 – Another situation of wanton nerdery. “Bad gateway”.

13:00 – The second most unlucky time on the military clock.

13:13 – The first most unlucky time on the military clock.

13:37 – My nerdery knows no bounds. For those who don’t get it, it means “leet” and is short for “elite”, meaning your nerd Kung fu is top notch.

8:34 – Because I am whimsical and have no reason. It just sounds like a good, solid time. The way “oak” feels in your throat: hearty and strong.

5:00 – Yes, the association is what you think.

6:17 – The “cellar door” of time phrases. It just dances right off the tongue, or for you linguists the teeth.

So there’s my update. It’s been randomly whimsical! Something of substance will be written shortly!

Lambesis…

I have no clever title. This is really just a grip it and rip it blog, so there may be points during the reading of it that you might get confused at the grammatical structure. I will try to keep it above Stephenie Meyer’s apparent gramatical prowess, but there are no promises here.

I’ve never understood the draw of celebrity. The pull to see and hear about what someone who has no connection to your life in any direct manner has never been something that’s been part of my experience. I have, however, come to admire and respect certain bands and people who have been influences in my life for the better. They’ve almost all been creatives who have made some sort of impact on my way of thinking. One of the biggest bands that have done this by releasing albums that immediately shoot up to the top of my “Most Listened to” playlist on iTunes is As I Lay Dying. It’s been this way since I heard “Forever”. That song hit my iPod and was immediately the first thing I went to when I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to hear. “Frail Words Collapse” may as well be considered my soundtrack in high school. Well, that and all things Thrice and a few others. So I guess, then, there is a cult of personality that I do subscribe to.

Tim Lambesis has been the driving force behind this band since it’s inception. His lyrics and choice of vocal style set the tone for the album. Nick Hippa and Phil Sgrosso both shape the tone as well, but as the front man, Lambesis is one of the first things that I ever associated with the act. Especially when I first started listening to them, I couldn’t understand how someone so skinny had such a brutally heavy sound come out of him. I still don’t. People who are just hearing them for the first time are seeing him post pump. Seriously, he was crazy skinny and making that sound.

He’s been the first artist who gave a crap about Africa that I saw it impact how he wrote and viewed the world. Bono, sure, he cares. But he still wears designer sunglasses that could pay for a village’s water supply for a year and a half. Lambesis visited Africa, became horrible affected by what he saw and started a clothing company that provides funds for orphanages in Africa. And then he adopted three kids. Sure, there are plenty of US kids and whatnot that need homes. I am the first person who says that, and I’m an ass for it. He put his money where his mouth was.

His lyrics have been a constant presence in my life in a way that is rather unlike anyone else. Yes, anyone who stands around me and talks about music for longer than five minutes is going to know the first thing I talk about is Thrice. The close seconds are As I Lay Dying and Haste the Day. If there are three bands that can be said to be close to my heart and have never left whatever music player I have nearby, it’s these three, and probably always will be.

I don’t understand what is going on. I mean, I literally know the facts of the situation. Tim Lambesis was allegedly caught in a sting operation to catch him in a murder for hire and his arraignment is tomorrow. What I mean is, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me that this is happening. It’s just a shock to the system. For those who don’t see it because of how his band is portrayed in the press, it’d be like finding out Henri Nouwen was a Nazi. The fact of that situation would hit you and there’d be no real way of making sense of it.

His lyrics are very much a part of why I am still alive today. There’s very few people in this world who you can point to directly and say “this guy, because of him I’m still alive”. And this band and their message very much hit me at a time when I needed to know there were more people out there like me who felt like I did and that it gets better. And it did.

Tim Lambesis has always been an inspiration to me through his lyrics, and his recent fitness choices have also influenced me. I work out because if a skinny guy like him can be that huge, then a fat bastard like me can get into great shape too.

Regardless of the outcome of this situation, I’ll never stop listening to As I Lay Dying. The messages of his lyrics and the songs that group has written are too important and positive to me to ever let go of it. I sincerely hope that this whole thing is a horrible misunderstanding. Or at least a nightmare from which I’m still trying to awake.

Ah, the Alma Mater.

So, I will admit that I’m responding to something I’m seeing blow up my Facebook feed, and odds are it’s blowing up yours too and the last thing you might want to deal with is another “Josh Ritter is awesome” or “Down with Josh Ritter” blog post. Well, tough luck, I’m doing one. You can just wait til the next one if you’d like, I really won’t be offended.

I’ll skip the summary as it’s no doubt been beaten to death. The first thing that I’m troubled by is that people seem to be thinking that Josh Ritter called them a bigot. He didn’t. He really didn’t. That would look like this: “The student body of Messiah College needs to work past their bigoted attitude.” What he said was that the policy was bigoted. As a point of fact, he said that the student body that was there was open to change and should continue to work towards changing the institution. So, really, where in that did you get that he was calling you a bigot? If anything, he was saying that the students are under a system that isn’t what it should be, he saw they were trying to change it, and should continue to do so. He was also surprised about it, which means from his interactions with the students he’s seen that the opposite is being lived there. Repetition for emphasis: he was surprised because he had interacted with the students and knew their opinions and was shocked to find their institution had a different policy. Sure, he asked for the student body to pursue openness and change, but he also said to continue to do what you were doing already.

What truly gets to me though is this discussion of “intolerance” vs. “tolerance”. I know Josh Ritter stepped it up using words like “bigoted and exclusionary”, but firing back a volley of “intolerant” is really not the greatest way to redeem the conversation. Frankly, in my eyes it makes you look silly and unable to rise to the occasion. I understand the impulse, but say what you mean. That’s what Josh Ritter did. He didn’t couch the issue in politically correct dialogue, he said what was on his mind. Is the policy bigoted? Sort of. I personally think “bigoted” is a little harsh, but not by much. It is, most certainly exclusionary.
Bigotry is literally disliking a group, behaviors, or what have you and believing that your opinion is superior. That means you believe that others are inferior. I don’t necessarily think that the rule that has been raised is bigoted, but it certainly comes pretty damn close. Those defending the rule are claiming that it’s just an issue of sex and that heterosexual intercourse is forbidden as well. While those two issues are stated side by side in the handbook, it is by FAR the opposite of the truth. It’s not that engaging in homosexual intercourse is forbidden, homosexual behavior is forbidden. This opens up gay and bisexual students to a higher degree of scrutiny than straight students will ever be under. For example, if you’re openly gay, that means that you cannot date anyone from your gender. You probably should avoid going over to their dorm to watch movies too, because that’s a whole other level of potential chaos, especially if you don’t have someone there to witness your side of things. Also, just in case there’s a doubt that the intention is towards all homosexual behavior and not just gay sex, read pg 159 of the handbook. It very clearly states that any patterns of homosexual behavior are not appropriate for Christians.

The handbook never clearly defines what should be considered to be “homosexual behavior” either. It just states that it will be determined on site by the authorities present. There are a series of appellate hearings you can go through, but then that brings you before progressively more and more of your peers, trotting out your perceived indiscretion and subsequently having to discuss your behavior with your crush before progressively higher levels of appellate boards. So your options if you’re gay and are caught behaving in a homosexual way is be subjected to someone’s interpretation of homosexual behavior, then subsequently subject yourself to other’s interpretations of homosexual behavior, with continuously finer grain inspection on your actions as a gay student with increasingly heavier penalties.

To say this is the same as what heterosexual students are subjected to by being prohibited from having sex is preposterous. An entire group of people have the potential to be scrutinized on a level that extends well beyond that of other groups. That’s discriminatory, and that’s where the argument of bigotry comes from. If the true heart of the situation was that students are prohibited from having sex, then the rules preceding it about extra marital intercourse would suffice. Instead, it singles out a group and leaves plenty of leeway for someone to decide something is homosexual behavior. This is truly where bigotry accusation really comes to bear. Homosexuals are a wide array of people, just like heterosexual people. What this rule is doing is trying to enforce heterosexual normative culture without looking like it.

Which isn’t to say that Messiah and those enforcing the rules have abused them. I personally never saw or heard of any group ostracized while there, but there is discomfort amongst some who came out during my tenure there. Amongst their close peer groups, things were fine, but because of the clause being relegated specifically to any behavior, there was some tension with what that meant and how much they could truly be themselves. On the whole, I found the faculty and students to be very accepting, which is why I wasn’t a fan of having the whole school labeled as bigots. For the most part, they’re not. It is like any school though, and there are no doubt those who are. I don’t remember anyone ever feeling like they were actually being singled out for being gay, but the policy did not make them feel very welcome. These are probably the issues that were left out of Josh Ritter’s sound byte, and simply responding by calling him “intolerant” is, well, we’ve covered that dead horse.

With all this said, it is a private college and a Christian one. The school’s formal response was right in expressing surprise that Ritter was shocked to discover their policy. Traditional definitions of marriage are very much understood to be the norm there. The school has the right to set and enforce whatever rules they deem necessary, and I don’t question that. Those who buck the Community Covenant should know full well what that means for them, and accept responsibility for making themselves accountable to it. While it doesn’t mean that the Community Covenant is right, it does mean that you do agree to live by those rules during your tenure at that institution. By no means is this college approaching anything Orwellian, either. The standards they have set are the standards they truly believe will make their students better people.

Which is one of the reasons I find the backlash from both parties annoying. Listen, Josh Ritter believes differently and is behaving in a manner he considers appropriate: no longer performing at the school. The school will take this the same way they did a few years ago when a student claimed he was expelled for being gay. (Which, was patently false, by the way. But the institution’s reasons for expelling him were sealed on their end, so they couldn’t defend themselves because they were protecting his records. They took it in the teeth defending his personal information, which is actually commendable.) The school will issue that one formal statement then take it in stride and not change. Eventually, the school will change, but I am doubtful it will at this time. You have to keep in mind the school is beholden to donations and it’s board of directors to run, and they are all rather set in their collective way of viewing the world. The standard will not shift until they do.

So, there’s my $.02 on the matter. If you’re looking for the sound byte form to streamline my opinion and string me up for it: I agree with Josh Ritter, but it’s still Messiah’s prerogative to let things remain the way they are.

All the world is mad.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the best way to ensure the efficiency, accuracy, and accountability of a system is to put around ten or twelve people with no expertise relating to that system in charge of it, preferably if they underperform on their current responsibilities. Haven’t heard it before? Perhaps I phrased it oddly, that’s my fault. Let me try it again. A congressman from Texas is introducing a bill that will put the final say on the validity and accountability of scientific papers under the purview of the United States Congress. Does that make any more sense? Of course it does Or maybe I’m confused.

For those of you who are lost here as to why I’m flipping out, here’s a breakdown of the peer review process. You receive grant money. You party, because now you have a job. You enter the lab, trench coats in hand, and begin fiddling with test tubes and wrenches. Then you mix some chemicals around, smash a few atoms, have people take a few surveys, collect some delicious data, fill some spreadsheets, make graphs, drink coffee, sleep in the lab, make faces at the lab monkeys, achieve tenure at a university, hang out with grad students, and then write a paper about it. (There are some subtle nuances I’ve missed, I’m no scientist.) Now, in order to publish in the hallowed “peer review journals”, that process has to be repeated and critiqued by other scientists who do what you do and do it well. Thus, “peers”.

You see, before things were peer reviewed, your research fell under the purview of your patron or your dean. They got to decide if your work was valid and worth the time of the scientific journals they published. This lead to some of the findings tending to back up whatever the patron/school already thought, which is odd since patrons/schools are not often scientists. This got people thinking, “Hey, I’m seeing a pattern”, and they started to have it reviewed by peers in a blind manner. You had no idea who read your paper, tried the experiment out, critiqued it, and sent it back to be published or tried again or edited. This way, theoretically, someone who was your peer intellectually, but had no direct oversight in your work, would be able to say, “Hey, you missed a comma and eight moles of cobalt in your calculations you dimwit. The way you’ve written the formulas would probably get you killed if you used those measurements and then titrated.” That’s right, I know science words like “moles” and “titrates”. This peer would cause you to reflect on what you’ve done, correct your errors, and then re-submit and some other peer would blindly review your work and offer their critiques.

To get into why the congressman’s idea is just plain awful, let me explain something about human nature: no matter how unbiased we try to be, no matter how hard we try to eliminate our bias, it’s still there. If you know the validity of your paper is going to be judged by someone, and that someone holds the purse strings that determine whether or not you still have a career, your biases become worthless, but those of the fund givers will matter. What I’m saying is that if Congressman have the final say on the validity of your papers, you’re going to give him what he will deem to be valid, and it’s 1640s Venice all over again.

Now, for the fun part where I rant on and on about the guy who thinks this is a good idea. And while it seems like I’m randomly character assassinating someone, it’s my blog and I’m ok with that. His opinions of science are important. So let us go down the rabbit whole of promised cynicism, you’ve all waited long enough!

First of all, the dude’s a “Christian Scientist”. Not a scientist that practices the Christian faith. This means, amongst other things, he believes that the only true reality is the spiritual and that anything material is an illusion. So, that’s great. Really, anything that science studies, by his religion, is an illusion. That’s a pretty high view of the material so far, I’m liking where this is going. They also believe that Jesus never actually died, but was fully conscious in the tomb and regenerating. Kind of like going super sayan. Much like Scientologists, they do not believe that illness is anything but “error” or “incorrectness” and is best treated with study and prayer, not things like antibiotics and Advil (my ibuprofen of choice). Evolution is just our shifting perception of reality, barely more than a figment of our imagination and that there was no big bang. So, I really wonder what they do about things like particle physics. I’m cherry picking here, but these are some of the more interesting ones.

So, technically he believes you should eschew medicine, reality is illusory, and evolution just another thing in a long line of things that we’ve made up about reality that looks real, but is illusory. This is they guy we’ve got suggesting that we should hand over the keys of our scientific journals to Congress. Of course he does, he thinks science is a illusory and misguided down to the core of it’s existence! Which is baffling since his stance on science (found on his web site here) is that science is our guide to a brighter future and that we should allow technology to expand our lives insofar as that it still protects our privacy. Woah, wait, hold on, he sponsored CISPA and SOPA. I am so confused right now, it’s not even funny.

So, a man who subscribes to an ideology, which contradicts his stated beliefs and ideology, is interested in having the people who pay for the grants that scientists live on have final say on the validity of a study that they know next to nothing about, which most assuredly will not affect the scientist’s attempted lack of bias in favor of those who govern them? I’m not terribly surprised, he is, after all, a congressman.

Justin Bieber vs. Anne Frank: The Internet going nuts.

So, I’ve been following this whole Bieber and Anne Frank as much as my brain will allow. Frankly, it’s really about as much brain space as I usually allocate towards pop culture: very little and attention is paid insomuch as it wafts past and I can do nothing to control my awareness of it as it floats by. And if I can be candid, my level of fandom of all things relating to Bieber errata is no doubt well established as being bordering on passive aggressive distaste.

But seriously, he’s a kid. He’s what, 18? 19? And he posted something stupid online. Is that not par for the course? All he said was that he had was that he hoped she would have been a fan! We’ve got far more important things to dedicate our brain power and loathing for. I understand the impulse to dislike him for that, on one level he’s taking a hugely important historical figure and reducing it to the dichotomy of “Belieber” and “not belieber”, a dichotomy that threatens the very balance of our society. But he’s young, and the world is giving him itself on a silver platter, I think we can all forgive him if it goes to his head a little. Our culture, after all, is his creator. So, if he’s being vapid and self focused it’s really our fault as well.

Which brings me back around to another point: why all the Bieber hate? Granted, his music isn’t my cup of tea, but I have musical tastes that cause others to think I’ve got more than a few screws loose. How many other people do you know who have gone straight from Scar Symmetry to Owl City to City and Colour to Katy Perry and not thought something was amiss? His music has a well defined market: tween girls. If you’re not in the target market, really what were you expecting? It’s like being a fan and critic of post-impressionistic art and wandering into an ultra-modern exhibit and calling it all trash because it’s not your bag.

Here is my formal two cents on Justin Bieber and his music: at some point in time, we’ve all had the artist that got us into music and we will never listen to again. I grew up on Petra and Carmen. Go look them up, in retrospect and by comparison to what I listen to now, they’re awful. Appallingly bad renditions of metal and hip hop respectively. But they got me into music. I became hopelessly entrenched in the habits of listening to new music, of anticipating that new album, of never turning off the radio. I learned how to make music because I fell in love with it through the likes of Steve Green and Sandi Patty. In hindsight, they’re no Led Zep, but if it wasn’t for “Beyond Belief” by Petra, I’d never have found my way to “The Artist in the Ambulance” by Thrice.

I mean, let’s face facts here. There was a time not too long ago where girls would greet artists with screaming and passing out. They would shout uncontrollably and be just plain unruly because their favorite artist was in the building, let alone playing music. These artists built progressively louder amps and eventually had to stop playing because of it. And that was The Beatles. And while he’s no McCartney, for some tween girls out there, this guy is introducing them to the wonderful world of music. And that’s something special enough for even me to find some modicum of an excuse to shed some of my cynicism. Not a lot of it, but some of it. Working in a music store, I see what pop sheets get sold. The people who were buying “My World 2.0 for Piano/Vocal/Guitar” are now buying “Mumford and Sons” and “One” by Metallica. So, that happening has given me enough of a reason to not hate anymore.

It’s a little early to pass judgment on his whole career. He’s what, three, four years into it? Some day his voice will change and he will try to make different music. I kind of hope it’ll be a horribly received rap record or an aptly name dubstep EP that will be titled “Biebstep” which will fall flatter than a pancake that’s a Planke length deep. Because that would continue to entertain my deeply cynical side. But that guy’s a bit of a bastard.

But back to the Anne Frank thing briefly before I wrap up here: if you’re couched in the lap of luxury and surrounded by people that protect your delicate ego 24/7 and everyone is invested in building your self esteem, really how do you respond to a story like Anne Frank? How do you cope with something as horrible as the concentration camps of WWII Germany while wearing a hoodie that costs six hundred bucks? You post about how Anne Frank was truly inspiring and was a “great girl”. And then wonder if she would have been a fan. Seriously, with a fan base like his and a social network like his, we should all be far more shocked that he took the time to go to such a place that would be so heavy.

In conclusion: a nineteen year old said something stupid online. Those who are shocked have been dubbed “morons”. And now, I’m pushing this topic back to the edges of my consciousness. The opinions of this blog have been mine and mine alone and have, as is often the case, been prepared with the amount of research the post deserves. In this case, thirty seconds online to double check that it was “Bieber” and not “Beebs: The Destroyer of Worlds”. The keys are just so close to each other, I can’t help it.