Discussion

As I watch “Jesus Camp”, “Expelled”, and “The God Who Wasn’t There” (see contextual note at the bottom of this article if you haven’t seen them, and for my impressions as a context of this article), I see a certain lack of acknowledging self-bias, or at least a respecting the opposing viewpoint and giving them more than a straw-man representation. These three films are incindiary – the viewer will see things that will probably upset them, whether or not they are for/against the viewpoint advocated by the film. Opponents of each of these films’ viewpoints will feel misrepresented, and proponents of the films’ viewpoint will feel vindicated, but perhaps with a lingering sensation that the other side was presented unfairly.

I see these three films as prime examples of people expressing their perceptions of the ‘other’ – the group that they oppose, feel persecuted by, or are otherwise fearful of their overwhelming power in some institution of society (e.g., religion, academia, politics).

In “Expelled” and “The God Who Wasn’t There” which prop up pet theories by examining some isolated bits of historical/scientific evidence, I see an extraordinary lack of self-scrutiny. Both prop up their viewpoints by interviewing and interjecting quotes from experts in appropriate fields that are biased toward their side, and then compare these answers to those of laymen representing the opposition. Neither seriously grills their experts. Both think of good follow-up questions for the opposition interviewees that scrutinize the last answer to a question, but instead of asking the interviewee this question, they snidely ask it in a voice-over in the film, giving no chance for rebuttal or an answer to the question by the interviewee.

“Jesus Camp” is only slightly better – it does not provide direct editorialization other than by showing some footage of a radio show host who opines about how the evangelicals are a scary conservative social movement that wants to turn everyone to their side, that will not be tolerant of a liberal minority when the conservatives are in political power. Other than this commentary, the majority of the film is spent observing prayer meetings / sermons or interviews of the children they follow. The editing style gives a sense of casual observation – just poking a camera into this microcosm of evangelical children and seeing what these kids experience. Fairly neutral.

These three films all portrayed a group of people that opposes the film’s viewpoint, and all are unfairly biased – and I qualify biased with unfairly for this reason: While everyone may express personal bias, I believe it damages the trust (“the space”) between two opposing sides when we try and caricature the other side without asking that side how they feel about that caricature. I do believe that caricatures are a necessary evil since discussion requires brevity of expression to communicate big ideas. So it is important that we ask the ‘other’, is it ok – is it sufficiciently accurate – for me to summarize you as being this way? None of these films do this. They caricature without backtracking to ask the people they interview, “Is it okay if I edit the interview down to these snippets? Is there something I can do to better represent your view in a reasonable amount of time?”

Many of the controversial discussions I happen across on the internet or in person seem to end up getting sidetracked by the issue of one (or both sides) having to correct the opposing party’s view of themselves. The “angry atheist”, or the “bible-thumping christian” are not fair characterizations for a lot of people, and it really just ends up wasting time when we keep reinforcing modes of thought that stem from a couple mental biases:

1. Ingroup/Outgroup Biases: We like to to think of the ingroup as rational, logical, reasonable, civilized, compassionate; we like to think of the outgroup/other as emotional, irrational, unreasonable, uncivilized, mean-spirited.

2. Confirmation Bias: we search out evidence that confirms our own position, and don’t spend much time looking for support of opposing viewpoints or evidence that contradicts our theories of interpretation.

Often enough, these biases misguide us into a supposition about our evidence/theory, or about the motivations of the other as less than noble. This damages “the space” – the trust that needs to be firmly established between opposing groups before meaningful discussion and mutual understanding can begin to take place. I’m disappointed when I see such damaging conversation take place in so much of the media (internet, TV, newspapers, editorials, etc.) I can find about issues important to me – religion, civil rights, politics, science. I’d like the discussion to rise to the level of making progress, instead of just being inflammatory.

I want discussions to take the next step: for people to think of their favorite group to hate on an ideological, poltical, or religious issue – think about the possiblity that they might have some noble motive, some good reason for feeling the way that they do. Truly believe that the opponent has a legitimate set of human feelings and reasons for thinking what they do – that perhaps, if in their shoes, you would maybe have the same feelings too. Think about why the argument is taking place, rather than the exact logic of an opponent’s argument. Ask why you both care about the issue at hand. Are these noble endeavors and emotions? This, I hope, is the context of good discussion.

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Contextual Note – here is a summary of each movie, and my impression of what view I think the film/film-maker(s) were advocating, so you have an idea of what stuck out for me in these films:

“Jesus Camp” is a documentary that follows around a few kids that go to an evangelical bible camp in the summer and some related church rallies/activities.

My impression: The film-makers view the evangelicals depicted in the film as a political/social threat to religious freedom in the U.S.. The film features numerous clips of the christians making fairly totalitarian statements about controlling the law of the land by using their voting block to sway elections and their children to sway peoples’ hearts. It also seemed like the film-makers wanted the viewer to see the evangelicals as a bit extreme, and with silly spiritual rituals or beliefs – there were many clips of speaking-in-tongues, singing, laying on of hands, etc.

“The God Who Wasn’t There” is a documentary/commentary film by an atheist that discusses some history related to the timing of the writing of various parts of the Bible, interpretation of the Bible, and his personal education in a private christian elementary school.

My impression: The atheist is antagonistic towards fundamentalist christians and thinks their beliefs are untenable by the standard of historical evidence, thinks moderate christians should be fundamentalists (they’re liberal ideas about interpretation are just silly), and feels the school he attended was wrong in indoctrinating / forcing the children to believe in christianity if the principal admits to the possiblity of being wrong about his choice of the ‘correct’ religion.

“Expelled” tries to make the case that the ‘Intelligent Design’ movement is being unfairly kept out of school curricula because of a sheer bias by the academic community towards naturalism / evolutionary / darwinist thought.

My impression: The film-makers viewed “Big Science” as an academic establishment based upon atheistic/anti-religious values that is bent on supporting evolution being taught in schools regardless of scientific evidence that supports or is contrarian to this theory. This view is supported by interviews with various scholars who prop up the idea that the ID movement is a generally persecuted by “Big Science” for bad reasons – e.g., scientists are too narrow-minded with their set-in-stone ideologies to allow for other possible theories to even be evaluated by the scientific establishment. The film also strongly implied that science leads to a society with a moral vacuum, whereas religion brings people to God and helps them to play nice with each other.

I’ve been working on a lot of projects lately that interweave a fair amount with my work. These are some notes on ideas/designs for some things I will be building in short order, as well as generally useful information for procuring materials on the cheap related to these projects.

Flash Circuit Spark Gap, High Voltage Pulse Supply for a Coil Gun

There are a lot of things you can do with the flash circuit from a camera, since it functions as a charging unit for a 330V 120-150 microfarad capacitor, as well as provides a 3rd high potential electrode for creating a spark gap (which is usually a xenon tube, but if the other two electrodes from the capacitor are closer together, it can go through air as well).

Buying a disposable camera for $4 is probably the most convenient option for getting these circuits, however that starts to add up if you’re experimenting with several or want to put some in parallel for more power. The main advantage to using disposable cameras is that you would get a uniforml, exactly the same circuit every time that you would know how to hook up, as well as a camera enclosure that is easy to take apart.

I’ve read suggestions on various websites that say you should go to a film developing shop and ask nicely, and they may give you the used electronics minus the film they developed for free. However, the three places I went to all refused – even when I offered to pay for them at less than the cost per unit of getting a brand new camera.

Since I’m something of a cheapskate/thriftshopper, I went to my local St. Vincent DePaul’s thrift store and a few Deseret Industries stores and found plenty of flash cameras priced for $1 a piece. I’ve taken apart about 6 of these so far, and each one is a pain in the ass. They all have different placements of screws, use waaay too many tiny screws that are wound in there pretty tight (I had to use some Leatherman pliers and a precision screw driver to get some of them to even start to come out), and some of the cameras have some fancy features related to focusing, red-eye reduction, etc. that means you will find a a few big circuit boards inside that are rather complicated looking. The flash circuit itself is fairly simple and doesn’t take up much space, and sometimes it is on it’s own PCB and can be cut off from the rest. The bare circuit pictured above had two other small PCBs attached and was thankfully pretty simple to figure out. You’re best bet for finding cameras with simple circuits inside is to avoid ones with lots of features (variable ISO, any sort of automatic focus, etc.). Focus free cameras are a good bet. They will sometimes have a motor inside for winding the film, but this circuit is easily disconnected and ancillary to the main circuit board that powers the flash. Just make sure you test out the camera before hand to make sure the flash works (all the cameras I’ve run into don’t need any film in them to do so), and take it apart slowly and observe what the various external buttons and switches do internally to trigger things. If you do this while taking it apart, it’s a lot easier to figure out what wires to cross or put switches on later in an enclosure.

The nice thing about these $1 cameras is that, although they are harder to take apart, they often contain a lot of extra components that you can use later – small DC motors, LEDs, switches or brush contacts, small plastic lenses, and photodiodes.

Spark Gaps

As an atmospheric air spark gap circuit, you can generally get a good zap that can easily scare the shit out of me when I’m not expecting it, and even when I am sometimes. The good thing about such a spark is that it can reliably ignite vapors of alcohol! At work, we’ve been working on a large potato gun that has had trouble firing when we use a BBQ piezoelectric sparker on a long cord (for the safety of the guy with the trigger.. you don’t want to be anywhere near this potato gun when it goes off).

The main problem with using this circuit for an igniter is that you must make absolutely sure there is sufficient spacing between any high voltage wiring, otherwise there will be invisible sparks inside the launching circuit or along the 3+ ft. cable that goes to the spark gap inside the potato gun. However, the piezoelectric igniter only makes a small spark, and corrosion of the electrodes makes it even weaker every time, leading to an unreliable ignition when you push the button. This is partly why I wanted to build this spark gap – it should make a very good igniter for any combustion chamber we can hook it up to.

At first I wanted to use a standard 3-prong extension cord to connect the flash circuit enclosure to the endcap of the potato gun, which has the spark gap built in; however, this did not work. My guess is that the 3rd high potential electrode sparks to one of the other electrodes somewhere along the line before it reaches the spark gap. Using short alligator clip wires from Radioshack worked perfectly fine, so it would appear that there needs to be a bit more insulation for that wire in whatever cable you make, or you need to have it run along a separate cable that can hang freely away from the other two wires that are connected directly to the 330V capacitor. In a prototype I made, the 330V lines run along some speaker wire with thick clear plastic insulation, and the high potential line is connected to a 3rd red wire with similarly thick insulation that is allowed to hang a bit away from the speaker wire. This has worked with mixed success, though the prototype circuit was a bit banged up by this point and wasn’t working that reliably with short wires anyway, so I will have to do some further testing with this.

Coil guns

The circuit can also be used as a power supply for a pulse of high voltage current for a small coil gun. There are several instructables on making such devices, so I will not repeat this information here, however there are a few design considerations for using the same circuit that I’ve been considering.

First is that a coil gun device only uses the capacitor’s electrodes, and there is an immediate problem with this: discharging the device. From what I’ve been reading, and from personal experience, it is probably a bad idea to use a standard small on/off switch on one of the wires connecting the capacitor to the coil, since the sudden high voltage and current is likely to do some welding inside the switch. This requires something a bit different – a relay of some sort where switch contacts come together by a trigger that uses mechanical or electromagnetic means.

Since I prefer to avoid mechanical parts due to the fact that they wear out sooner, I started looking for options. Here’s what I found:

Reed Relays: uses an coil of wire that creates a magnetic field that will either close or open a reed switch (two ferromagnetic contacts inside a hermetically sealed tube). The main consideration here is whether or not you want to have to power a switch as well as the main circuit. If the voltage for powering the circuit happens to match the relay’s coil voltage (the voltage needed to close/open the switch), then this works out just dandy. Of course, this type of switch also necessitates having an extra on/off or momentary switch for the power supply of the reed relay itself.

I found a 5V 0.5A reed relay at Radioshack for $2. The flash circuit I’m using is powered by 3V, so hopefully that spec is a bit off and the reed relay can be triggered by a bit lower voltage. If not, I can just use it for some other project.

Magnetic Reed Switch: This is a reed switch that is triggered when a magnet is placed near it. It’s a bit simpler solution than the electomagnetic alternative since it doesn’t require it’s own power source to work and you can use anything from a ceramic magnet that’s right next to the switch to a neodymium magnet that’s capable of turning on the switch from several centimeters away. I happened to find an LED light intended for drawers that has a default-closed magnetic reed switch inside it. By placing the “magnetic sensor” right next to it on some part of the drawer that will move, when you open the drawer the LED will turn on automatically. I plan on taking it apart and seeing if this circuit can be used as a switch for my higher voltage application. Since I don’t know the specs for the components involved, it’s possible I could fry it, but considering I got it for $1 at Dollar Tree, I’m not too concerned about this.

Resistance Switch : This kind of switch is something I’ve always thought was really cool. You can convert a wall-powered lamp’s metal body into a capacitance switch using a kit that costs about $20 at Ace Hardware – i.e., to expensive for this project. However, I found a small desk resistance switch light with 2 small orb electrodes sticking out at Goodwill today for $2, so I grabbed it. Hopefully this circuit can be used for this type of application as well. We’ll see. I’m not sure how I’ll find more of them, but I sure hope there’s some store online that sells them for cheap because I’ll probably buy a few more if they only cost $5-6.

My hope for this type of switching system is that the switch itself works as an isolated electrical relay, so touching those resistance electrodes doesn’t mean I’ll be shocking myself if I hook up the switching mechanism to something with more than the fairly harmless voltage of a small lightbulb (3-6V).

Power Supplies

Of course, these projects are convenient because they can be run off of batteries – a low voltage, low drain application. But wouldn’t it be better if you could plug it into the wall if you were doing a lot of testing, or you happen to be using it indoors more than out?

Personally, I’d like to make mine to last, and something that can be powered by battery for portable use and wall-power if it’s going to be used indoors much for personal entertainment. So, I started looking around for some AC-to-DC power supplies (wall-warts) that were the appropriate voltages and currents. At Radioshack, most of the standard power supplies will run you about $16-$20 depending on voltage, amperage, or if you get a variable voltage power supply. This is kind’ve steep, so I started looking in thrift stores. I discovered that most cell-phone chargers are 3.7V 700mA power supplies, and a few are 5V 700mA. Also, Deseret Industries has a lot of electronics that are really underpriced for their actual value. I found a few 3, 4.5, 6, and 9V Radioshack branded, in-the-original-box power supplies for $2 each. Since I only really needed 3V for this and 6V for another project, this is what I grabbed.

The one thing that is unfortunate about using standard power plugs/jacks for this is that unless you happen to find an adaptaplug for your radioshack power supply in a thrift store, you’re stuck with buying them individually for $6 a piece or $14 for a set of four. I bit the bullet and bought a size M adapter for a $2 port (also at radioshack) that I could integrate into an enclosure for the circuit.

For another project involving speakers, I’ve been looking for a 12V 3A power supply to be used for the amp system. I already have a fairly nice stereo system that uses this type of adapter, and when I plugged the adapter into some amplified computer speakers I found at the Idaho Youth Ranch, it actually worked fairly well, so I figured I should find another power supply using these specs if I were to have an independent system for taking places. Before noticing that I needed 3A, I bought a 12V 900mA DC power supply at Idaho Youth Ranch for $2. This didn’t provide sufficient power to the amplified speaker system I bought for $4 there, so I kept looking. I stopped by an estate sale yesterday and happened to find an electric train track 12V 2A DC power supply for $5, and grabbed it. When I got home and tested it with a multimeter while it was plugged in, I found that it actually produced about 19V, with a knob for varying the amperage. It’s rated for 2A, but I was able to turn it up to about 5A before the Overload indicator turned on and there was an immediate drop in current. Since this thing is fairly ancient and starts to heat up after a few minutes, my guess is that it’s probably a good idea to not stray too far from the 2A on the box, but I think it could conceivably put out 3A for a while. Nonetheless, I’m not sure I want to hook it up to my speaker system for fear of frying some part of the amplifier circuits or otherwise damaging them by putting through too much voltage. So, I will have to keep looking for a 12V 3A supply or perhaps use a high wattage resistor to lower the voltage drop across the speaker system. I’m not sure if this would work since I don’t know much about electronics, but given that’s what is usually done to change the voltage drop across an LED hooked up to batteries that are higher voltage than what the LED is rated for, I’d guess this would work. Not sure, but I also I don’t have a high wattage resistor for trying this out.

Back to the flames…

As a sidenote, I’ve been looking into some cheap sources of flammable stuff for igniting. Butane lighter refill canisters are a good option, or even butane lighters – the gas can be pretty easily trapped in bubble solution or soapy films. It’s pretty fun to light that stuff inside a cheap wine glass with a lighter – the flame is fairly impressive.

Alcohol isn’t too hard to come by either though. I found a bottle of rubbing alcohol that is 50% ethyl alcohol at a Family Dollar yesterday. I also found some gel hand sanitizer that is 62% ethyl alcohol. The gel lights on fire pretty easily with a lighter, but I’m not yet sure whether it can be lit by a spark gap. We shall see! Either way, it is fun stuff to play with. A glob of it on a metal plate will burn down to a small amount of watery residue in a few minutes. The flame is mostly blue, so I think it is burning very efficiently and produces a fair amount of heat – I could easily burn my hand just holding it a foot above the small flame.

Another Sidenote on Unreliable Spark Gap Igniters: Use Matches

I’ve been working on some prototype spark gap igniters with the flash circuit in simple push light enclosures (the kind that look like a big staples “Easy” button) that can be easily had for a $1 at a thrift store or dollar store. It takes some modding, but it can be done. Best of all, the button for the light can be turned into the ignition switch! It kind’ve has a cheesy, cheaply made feel to it but the switch inside is quite reliable. Just be sure to exchange the switch for a momentary rather than the on/off kind typically in there.

In any case, as I was working with flash circuits and trying to put them inside one of these push lights, the first couple circuits got a bit banged up while I was figuring out the wiring and learning how to solder these things up. They were still capable of producing a smaller spark, but they just don’t do as well as a circuit that hasn’t been messed with quite as much. I’m not going to take the time to rework these and make sure there aren’t any shorts and such, but to get it to at least work for the purposes of lighting some alcohol in an ignition chamber, there is a simple solution: rub off some of the phosphorous from matchheads onto the spark gap electrodes. While the spark isn’t quite as big anymore, it does seem to be enough to ignite the matchhead stuff, which in turn is easily enough to light some alcohol vapors. This trick may be useful for a spark gap using a standard piezoelectric voltage source as well. It requires a bit more work than just having a reliable battery powered circuit, but if that’s what you’ve got and you need a solution in a pinch, this one seems to work fairly well.

Well, last week’s been better than Christmas!

Marvin (a friend of my Dad’s from way back) bought me a Samsung SyncMaster2253LW LCD! It’s wonderful. 21.6″, 8000:1 contrast, 2ms response… I’m lovin’ it! Watched a movie and quite a few Star Trek TNG episodes on it already :). Now that I’ve got a big external screen to use, I broke out the old Black Friday $20 after rebate Logitech RF keyboard/mouse combo that I had in a storage box. No need to use an RF mouse (already have a bluetooth one that connects automatically that’s convenient for travel as well), but having the wireless keyboard and big display is very nice since it has media controls (volume, mute, etc.) and launch buttons.

Plus, since I’ve waited patiently for 2 years, Sprint gave me a $150 credit towards a new phone. I got the LG Rumor for about $50 after the credits and rebates. It has a slide-out qwerty pad that makes texting soooo much easier. I’d say the only failing of this phone is not having the bluetooth A2P profile for mp3 compressed stereo streaming audio. It supports mp3’s and a bevy of other formats that you can store on a microSD card in the phone and use it as an mp3 player. If it had that bluetooth profile, I probably would. Otherwise, may as well stick to my Creative Zen V Plus that I already have for wired listening.. But, I still love this phone! It’s pretty slim for having a slide out keyboard, and the interface is fairly nice. I love texting on it. It’s really just an excuse to use twitter that much more now that tapping out my status won’t take for $*(#ing ever using T9, which I was never that quick with.

So, after all this gifting/buying frenzy, I had to buy a microSD card for the phone, which I did at buy.com since they had a sale on a combo package with mini- and -SD and -USB adapters. I’m not sure what I’ll use it for – maybe just storing pictures of the people in my contacts book. And probably the “Red Alert” klaxon sound from Star Trek for my ring tone ;).

I also bought a 4gb Kingmax superstick so that I could make one of those shredded USB cord flash drives. I plan on putting a portable linux environment on it. Probably Puppylinux, since Marvin recommended it – apparently it was designed to be run off of a flash drive and to minimize writing to the flash in order to extend the drive’s useful life.

In other news, since I finally have an external monitor of some sort, I can finally work on getting my old 800Mhz desktop running again to maybe function as an internet-accessible fileserver for my external HDDs. I ordered a USB WiFi card for it a while back that came in the mail a few days ago. I assumed that it had an integrated graphics card, but upon further inspection, found out this was not the case. Ugh. @*()!ing ugh. Now I have to scrounge up a video card from somewhere to get this thing running. Maybe I can ask for one from my Dad – I’m sure he’s got a few spares somewhere.

Things are certainly looking up! My room’s finally coming together and I’ve got a well put together entertainment system with loads of media. Now, to find someone to share it with. :)

I just read a few days ago another article by Greta Christina that I couldn’t help but comment on. It’s another one of those essays that eloquently puts into words a lot of meaty argument that I’m generally not good at expressing myself.

Here it is: Born or Learned? Sexuality, Science, and Party Lines

I will make the tacit assumption that you, the reader, are familiar with the typical problems associated with this question: Is sexuality innate (genetic) or environmental (pre-natal conditioning / variation in genetic expression during basic development + how the child is raised)?

I liked this article because it elaborates some basic points that I’ve agreed with for a while now:

• The origins of sexuality is an interesting scientific question.
• The answer(s) to this question are completely irrelevant to any discussion regarding equality of rights / civil status of queers in society.

Why do these two statements have nothing to do with each other though? Well, because we’re human. And we live in a secular society. It’s really a simple matter of human rights.

However, others beg to differ, and this is where the rub comes in. The reason others differ in this respect is because they are not a-ok with the idea of sexuality other than straight-and-narrow-minded. When queerness is viewed as a problem, rather than an incidental characteristic, then it can’t be viewed as a civil rights issue. If it had such a status, it would imply that such a characteristic were tolerated, or even, *gasp*, valued.

I think this is really where the battle lies. Because, after all, finding out that, say, gay parents are more likely to have gay kids, wouldn’t matter – nobody would care. Nonetheless, studies show that kids seem to turn out gay/straight at the same rate regardless of whether they have gay/straight parents. While an interesting fact, this is a non-issue in politics if queerness is acceptable.

It seems that on a baseline, this issue is not really about fighting religious dogma. It is more about easing the sociologically narrow-minded into the idea of queerness, but only queers that marry as virgins and stay together *forever*, just like straight people. We just happen to like the same gender. After that, ease into the idea of plural marriage. Or polyamory, or sex before marriage. Yep, it’s a moral slip-n-slide. It just takes time. I can understand the resistance of the social conservatives – it would mean they’d actually have to change their values! It seems like the word conservative almost universally means holding stoically to a (possibly ancient) arbitrary code of values. Perhaps not so arbitary sometimes.. after all, the Ten commandments *is* the perfect basis for a legal system… it covers all the bases. (*wink*)

I’m happy! I got to do some *science* today! Here’s the story:

I’ve been working with various people in the ISU SPS chapter on a solar panel research project for about a year and a half now, and we finally have some data to analyze! This project has been plagued with various institutional/procedural/equipment failure hang-ups that have kept us from getting anything done for months now, so it’s nice to see some numbers finally.

The basic idea behind it is to measure the atmospheric optical thickness by analyzing a full 24-hour cycle of the current output of a solar cell. In order to normalize the data, we have to calculate the vector normal to the surface of the solar panel and the vector position of the sun relative to the earth’s surface in order to figure out the sensor acceptance at different times of the day. This involves applying some Calc III and trig techniques that I learned last semester, which is pretty exciting since a lot of the stuff I (and students in general) learn in college doesn’t get to be used right away.

In any case, the professor that has been consulting with us on the project had a meeting with me and a friend today and told us a bit about sensor acceptance and the math involved, and sketched a graph of what the relationship should probably be for our solar panel. Lo and behold, when I got through inputting all the algorithms in excel to calculate it, the graph looked markedly similar to what he had predicted! This is probably super-nerdy to anyone outside of science, but for me it’s a rather exciting thing to have semi-crap data (we’ve had problems with cloud cover interfering) to play with and actually get some good results with the data analysis.

Check it out!

This is a full day’s cycle – sunrise to sunset with each data point a minute apart. The y-axis is computed as the current (I) divided by the cosine of the angle between the normal vector of the photovoltaic and the sun’s vector position – I/cos(theta).

The Idaho State University Society of Physics Students (ISU SPS) chapter did “Something Destructive” on Wednesday of this week (03-05-08). A legacy activity of the club that we decided to revive this year started off by soaking various things in liquid oxygen and then lighting them on fire!

I happened to have my Powershot A620 handy, so I took some footage. Check it out!

Here it is, edited down to the length of a Singing Science Records song “What is Chemical Energy?”:

Footage cut down to just before Dr. Steve lit something up (no music):

The uncut footage (several lulls/slightly boring parts between soaking something and lighting it):

My personal favorite is the unsuspecting care bear that went up in flames in about 0.2 seconds… ;)

I had a thought last night: why is it that the liberal christian explains God as a unifying force of the universe, and this is how he is omnipotent/present/scient? Why do we assume that something “super”-natural is necessarily powerful in our world, that such a thing is capable of large-scale effects?

Maybe this is just my own mistaken assumption of how the supernatural is usually thought about by religious folk. I should wonder what it would be like to have a religion where we believed in unseen forces of spirits that had as much power as a human being, and, perhaps, mortal in their own way as well – just existing in some in-between dimensional brane that makes them impossible to detect yet possible for them to interact with our universe?

Perhaps this is what the older pagan religions were really like. Spirits and gods fighting amongst each other, hierarchies and internal social orders of their own. And then came along Abraham, with a monotheistic religion that seems to be so attractive compared to this alternative for some reason… that I really can’t imagine. This puzzles me…

Context: Greta’s article on the importance of your partner having a matching libido and expectations about sex.

Commentary: This is one of those articles where I almost constantly thought while reading it, “Gee, this is exactly what I think, I just haven’t been able to articulate it so clearly before!”

Anyway, the two basic premises that I completely agree with:

1) Waiting until marriage, or otherwise a very long time to have sex with someone that you want to be in an long term relationship with is probably a bad idea.

2) Waiting is not necessarily more “virtuous” than not waiting. Having sex within the first few weeks of a relationship isn’t a matter of promiscuity, it simply admits humans’ general horniness.. not to mention that finding out how well your sexual chemistry works with the other person is important if the relationship is to last in more than a platonic manner.

I think it is rather interesting that we have this almost universally held idea that anyone who wants sex early in a relationship is somehow a whore. Why is that? Isn’t it possible that someone could be interested in both your mind and body? Isn’t that the point of being more than platonic?

Ted @ notablogtm.com posted a list of bad arguments used by atheists against the christian version of God, similar to the list written by August Berkshire of bad arguments used by theists for God (PDF).

I love this kind of commentary that critiques our own ability to argue a point in the atheist-theist dialogue because it is rare and, in this case, poignant and useful. The list of arguments and accompanying analysis, however, only covers 5 main points.. and I’m sure there are more to be made if we were to sit down and try to write a comprehensive list that generalizes to all religions + pseudoscience + general superstition, etc. I think it would be an interesting project that atheists/theists could work on together that would really improve the quality of this conversation. It’d be nice to avoid rehashing old exchanges that led nowhere in the first place.

I’ll have to start thinking about what needs to be added to this list.

A momentary lament: I suck at writing introductions to what are essentially rants about religion and atheism. I pretty much write what I’m thinking as I go along, so there is no intended structure to this, nor an ultimate point sometimes. I’m just trying to get these thoughts in my head out in the world so new ones can fill in. I certainly wish the writing could be better, but I hope of what I write that at least someone will find it insightful and interesting…

I watch a lot of atheist vs. theist debates (via youtube or otherwise), and I’ve seen various cards pulled by both sides that are somewhat vacuous, or at least don’t have much visible, developed meat behind them (e.g., I hear the line… and it’s a good thought, but the thought is never developed further).

One of these lines is the Christian retort that being religious does not necessarily imply that a person is irrational. Or at least, they aren’t making an irrational decision to believe in their particular religion (they may be highly irrational in other areas of their life.. since we can all compartmentalize quite easily.. atheists do this too). In other words,They believe in their religion for perfectly rational, good reasons that convinced them. Shouldn’t they convince me too then?

I’m not really convinced of this idea that belief in a religion can be rational. But somehow, it seems wrong and insulting to say that all religious people are irrational in their belief. Nonetheless, I find the idea of a virgin birth or resurrection to be, frankly, ridiculous. I have no compulsion to respect someone’s belief in this, or other miracles. Occam’s razor quite easily excludes them from rationality. I’m not interested in the debate that easily ensues from this line of conversation however – what is good historical evidence, why one should believe writings that are 2000 years old and have been badly translated along the way, etc.., because it requires a vast amount of expertise in a broad array of historical information and analsyis and the debates that still rage over small phrases and quotes. It ends up being a hair-splitting contest that goes nowhere.

However, there are a few Christians who are willing to concede the point of historical accuracy or literalism, and are capable of discussing the more important metaphysical and sociological consequences. I can have a more interesting discussion about metaphors, theology, or why they even really believe in Christianity in particular… I consider them to be the real intellectuals of Christianity that deserve respect, because they face the fact that to anyone outside their religion, the evidence is really quite poor for a solid foundation of belief in their religion involving true supernatural intervention by God.

This type of Christian is rare, and as a consequence Sturgeon’s Law applies to the Atheist-Christian conversation going on: around 99% are about establishing the basic factual crap that should be resolved in 5 minutes with a literate, thinking person. About 1% is actually spent talking about the more interesting metaphysics. I think it’s disappointing that we remain at this level of sophistication in our debate, that we must still battle the idea that 2 millenia ago God incarnate came to earth to save us from ourselves by letting us murder him.

This also brings me to plausibility analysis of stories we tell. I’ve always found it to be a fun mind game to think more about the general plausibility of various aspects of religious stories in order to evaluate their truth content, as an alternative studying where the text came from, what original copies, we have, etc. etc.. mostly because this can all be done by thinking, and I’ve got plenty of spare processor cycles ;).

It makes me wonder why anyone really believes in the Adam & Eve / Garden of Eden story. I’ve hashed this out a few times before in a manner that could be rebutted rather easily (implausibility doesn’t necessarily mean disproof of a story’s historical accuracy, after all). It just seems inscrutable to me that someone could simultaneously believe in the “loving, caring, kind, fatherly” type God and that Eve *really* did eat that apple even though it obviously wasn’t in her best interest. Any way you hash it as far as how innocent she was (e.g., didn’t know what it would do), or whether she knew what would happen, God ends up being a rather cruel bastard overlord given our current situation.

It also makes me question God’s method of bring us back into his fold. Why couldn’t he have forgiven Adam and Eve, or perhaps allowed them to feel the consequences (child-birth pain, weeds, mosquitos, disease, injury, etc.) for a few years, and grant them the mercy to go back into Eden? Why the millenia of suffering and pain of generations of people who never did anything wrong but be the descendents of two phenomenally stupid humans? It makes me question the very humanity of Adam and Eve, and the very humaneness of God. Where is his infinite mercy? Why are there all these weird rules about how he can forgive us, and heal us of the wound we brought upon ourselves?

All these theoreticals I can play out in my mind quite easily… mindgames of pretend, of hypothetical cause and consequence predictions are something I have been playing out since I was a kid… a hobby of sorts. Of all the things that possibly could, I believe it is my imagination that has made me an atheist of the Christian God. He would seem to be a psychotic if He were real. And I have never had reason to think there is something supernatural to the world that matched with christianity, or any other religion… so I remain, fundamentally, an agnostic of spirituality. I simply don’t know how to explore this realm while holding onto rationality.

Can natural laws be broken?

Quite frankly, there is no reason to think they cannot be. However, the enterprise of science largely depends on them being a constant force, otherwise we would have a largely inexplicable universe with largely random phenomena.

This dependence on natural laws being constantly reliable is not a disproof of the mere possibility of miracles though. Because of this, a Christian can claim the plausibility of the virgin birth of Christ while at the same time having a PhD in biology. I think this is an interesting concept, however, that we would think such exceptions are acceptable only in the case of religious miracles, or that more generally we don’t expect such things to happen in the current age – when we finally have the technology to confirm such a miracle as a true physical phemomenon, pure charlatanism, or as something empirically explainable.

This is not necessarily a problem for those of faith. It can be accepted without the need for definite proof, as long as the religion as a whole provides a plausible storyline. However, it is one of the things that atheists think is generally a rather weird idea. Why would miracles not happen today? We ask this question more rhetorically, because, quite frankly, if they happened in the past, there is no self-evident reason why they should not occur today. This quickly leads to our impression that God hides in the shadows of bronze age mysticism, when we had the ability to write but not enough knowledge and equipment to scrutinize some ideas and rumors of the time. It would be quite easy for God to appear on stage today and convince everyone in the world of his existence, and the specific desires of what he would like us to be doing – how to live our lives, worshiping him, etc. Yet God doesn’t, to our disappointment.

But I also think this problem begs the question: how important is it for Christians to interpret the Bible literally? Moderates claim that the more fantastical portions of the Bible are metaphorical, and that we shouldn’t necessarily take it as historical record. This makes the Christian position a bit more tenable if such a proposition is accepted. It at least settles some of the arguments over creation vs. {big-bang, abiogenesis, evolution} cosmologies. Science can reign in that story. However, at this point the debate moves toward a more crucial point: the divinity of Christ and his crucifixion. If a Christian accepts the supernatural portions of any part of Christ’s life (virgin birth, healings, resurrection, etc.) then we must provide for a disruption of natural laws caused by a divine being.

This is where the rubber meets the road. If, ultimately, you believe in divine miracles in which God temporarily bends the rules of nature, then I think you must ask why he does not do so now. If not, then you are left with an ancient, rich metaphorical story of human intrigue and strife that can be helpful in constructing a personal philosophy for living a good life. But it is nonetheless something that you consider to be no more historically accurate than a fairy tale. This does not belittle the gospel, but merely places it in a context where we can judge its importance as a guiding text in life by how well it matches reality/history, rather than by the accolades that wash over us in our culture from those who have chosen to follow its message. We need not listen to the sales pitch if it has no more content to it than “this is good”, when there are modern alternatives that work just as well, if not better at helping us improve ourselves personally and live our lives well.

In the case that the Bible is merely metaphor, we are left with something close to the position of a Unitarian: religions are interesting, their books are nice, and maybe we can learn something from them, but let’s not take it too seriously, and it’s ok if we accept or reject principles from them that we like and don’t like – there is no metaphysical warrant to keep genocide, honor killings, etc. in our traditions since we have already faced the fact that there is no God who has commanded us to do them.

However, I don’t think the majority of christians in the U.S., or elsewhere, think in these terms. More likely, most everyone who considers themselves to be a christian or a catholic holds onto the thought that at some point in time a divine being really did suspend the laws of the nature. At this point, I believe atheists and christians are left at an impassable divide: The Christian believes in the miracle because of their conviction, and the atheist cannot be convinced of such a conviction, nor the historical miracle, because God simply isn’t present in the here and now.

I think this is the most unfortunate of divides, because it can never be resolved and it will spur on a cultural debate that will not end because of this underlying current that is not really discussed – of difference in conviction based solely upon what evidence we are willing to accept. This is, ultimately, where our divide spawns from.

Perhaps the most interesting discussion I can think of that could spring from this divide is why anyone would be willing to believe in a God who chooses to lie down in the mists of time, and allow mankind to write books about him without so much as an editorial comment of his own. This seems like the oddest kind of God to me, and I’d like to know more about why God would behave in such a way. It is one of the things that seems to me blatantly unexplainable, when such a Creator is trying to convince us of his love and wants us to follow a specific doctrine (whether from the Bible of the Q’ran, or whatever text you should choose). This is also the fundamental problem atheists confront that a Christian does not: Why would I believe in the specific God that you talk about, when there really is an infinite number of possible characteristics God could have? What convinces you of the truth of the characterisation of God that you believe in? I know that most theists believe in God because of “feelings” of Him/Her/It, but I’d like to know – what made you believe specifically in the religion that you believe in, versus the plethora of options available to you in the world?

I’ve been looking for some podcasting equipment for a while that will produce a good, quality recording of an interview with one other person, but I’m rather disappointed with my options. There doesn’t seem to be any low-cost solution that will produce a decent low background noise, mid-range quality audio reproduction. If I were to get the equipment I want that will produce this minimal level of acceptability (actually, it’s probably better than what I really need, but it’s what I want..), I’d end up spending about $150-$200.

What equipment am I talking about?

1. iRiver iFP-899 mp3 player (60+ + S&H = $60+ ) – an unfortunately discontinued model that has a line-in jack, as well as an internal (slightly noisy) pre-amp. This is the biggest model available (1gb), is super-portable and only takes 1 AA battery. I’d really like this player, but it is currently selling on eBay for upwards of $60 on a regular basis. More than I’d really like to pay for an mp3 player at the moment. One feature unique to the iRiver series in particular though, is that they are capable of encoding in mp3 on the fly (vs. a compressed .wav) at high bitrates (320kbps). This is rare compared to the standard internal mic with low-bitrate compressed .wav recording typical of flash mp3 players sold today.

2. omnidirectional powered stereo mics from giant squid audio labs (90 + 15 + 6 + S&H = $121+) – these are some really excellent microphones that would be perfect for my intended purpose, since I could just clip one mic to my lapel, and the other to the interviewee. I prefer to get the mics that come with a pre-amp, which is more expensive, as well as have them detachable from the pre-amp ($15 extra) and the right angled plug ($6) that will fit the iRiver recorder.

I found a sample recording using a combination of the squid stereo mics and the iFP-899 at this forum thread post (see direct link to the audio sample), which sounded quite good, though there is noticeable background noise that I think is coming purely from the internal amp, so hopefully that can be eliminated by using an external battery box that will power the mics, rather than relying on internal amplification of the signal after the fact. Even if I still had to run the internal pre-amp (i.e., record in mic-in mode rather than line-in), a battery box would give the recording more dynamic range and clarity, and allow for a lower volume setting for the iFP’s pre-amp.

Realistically then, I could end up spending about $200 on this equipment altogether. It’s rather disappointing to think that you would have to spend this amount of money for a “beginner” kit. I would’ve thought the market would drive the prices down for these products since so many more people are podcasting. Minimally, I would’ve thought more manufacturers would be making a quality mp3 player that had such recording features as the iFP-7xx, 8xx series do. It is beyond me why they discontinued these product lines, much less why anyone else isn’t providing the same bevy of features all in one package at such a low cost. All I can find currently are models that may have one or two of the required features, but not all in one (1 GB of memory, line-in/mic-in recording, high bit-rate mp3 encoding on the fly).

I did a bit of wandering in the Godless Carnival #77 the other day. Here’s some of the articles I liked (no particular order to according to preference):

• How the Religious Mindfuck Really Works – not necessarily revealing to me, but this is a very good summary of a lot of points on how the general religious imperialistic attitude leads to various conversion tactics.

“…Religious propositions and claims we encounter in our mostly Christian culture generally have a low probability of being true. But religions like Christianity and Islam make up for their low probability by plugging into the most extreme hopes and fears that you can imagine. Those hopes and fears alter the way you estimate probabilities and how you collect data. Your imagination can be overloaded.”

“…Supernatural fantasies are generated when the Bible reader speculates on the meaning of the text. And these fantasies are given implicit support by a media that tells us our politicians, presidents, generals, and celebrities are mostly Christian; a media that rarely contradicts the Christian assumptions of our culture. As the Bible reader reads of miracles, the promise of life everlasting, supernatural powers, angels, transcendent realms, and magical healings his desire and fantasy, his fears and hopes, will motivate, develop, and grow as he continues his studies. (One of the darkest aspects of religion’s appeal to hope is its appeal to the desperate. To the terminally ill who seek to be healed.) Talk to any Christian and you’ll find out that they’ve created a very personal vision, a private reality map that is uniquely their own. While different Christian groups with different labels, such as Pentecostal, Fundamentalist, Charismatic, or Evangelical will advocate different interpretations of this supernatural fantasy each individual creates his own particular vision out of the mix of possibilities.

I think this is a pretty common thing in the religious realm. Any religious (or any person in general really) will have their own version of metaphysics and what lies beyond the measurable world. The funny thing about trying to answer the metaphysical/supernatural questions is that they require information that cannot be gathered via direct observation or objective inference (logic/mathematics/statistics/scientific method/etc.). We pretty much all become armchair philosophers in this discussion.

• Why Religion is like Fanfic – a great little article employing a very good metaphor that further trivializes analysis of the myths that religions take as truth.

“…It reads exactly like fan-written blueprints for the Enterprise in “Star Trek.” Or fan-written explanations for discrepancies in star dates, or why the Enterprise has completely reliable lie detectors that they only use in three episodes.”

“…Given the rough outline of a narrative, human beings are unbelievably good at filling in the gaps, fleshing out the characters. And if the basic outline of a narrative has flaws and inconsistencies, we are unbelievably good at creating explanations and rationalizations and apologetics. We are unbelievably good at making the inconsistent consistent, making the indefensible defensible.”

“…Put this all together, and the whole history of religion looks an awful lot like a two-thousand-year long attempt, by some of the most brilliant minds in human history, to explain why it was so easy and commonplace to beam people to another spaceship, but so difficult and dangerous to beam people to another room inside the Enterprise. “

• My Biggest problem with Biblical Morality – whenever I start contemplating the question of whether christianity should be taken seriously, I have to start thinking about their sacred text, the Bible. When it comes to that, it inevitably leads to justifying horrifying acts of genocide in the name of righteousness. I’ve thought about this sort of thing before, and I have to say that while it may not disprove the christian god, it certainly makes him look like a complete bastard to outsiders with any kind of conscience.

“In a nutshell, God decides that He’d like to give a wonderful “promised land” to His chosen people. I imagine that — being God — He could have used His omnipotent powers to turn the wilderness into a land flowing with milk and honey. Or perhaps He could have anticipated this and reserved a wonderful land for them (by guarding it with cherubim or something). Instead He chose to give them a land that was already inhabited: all the recipients had to do was massacre the inhabitants, every man, woman, and child. What a wonderful gift!

This story looks like a tale from a pagan polytheistic paradigm where the one tribe’s God happened to be demonstrating that He’s more powerful than the other tribe’s God. But let’s suppose this really is a tale of an act performed by the one and only God of all humanity. Imagine a child in one of the less-favored tribes — terrified by the violence and pillage going on all around her — desperately praying “Heavenly Father, please save my mommy and daddy and me!” and receiving as an answer “Sorry, I can’t help you. The privilege of killing you and your family is a special gift that I’ve given to someone who will be arriving at your house shortly.”"

To repeat her point: Genocide isn’t right in *any* frame of reference.

A few other things I found on the ‘net that were interesting (not related to Godless Carnival):

• A History of Religion in 90 seconds – a flash animation of the spread of the major world religions as majority populations. Pretty interesting, and downloadable as an *.swf!

Other links that were in the Godless Carnival that I haven’t read yet but looked interesting:

http://templewhore.blogspot.com/2007/10/proud-atheists.html interview with Steven Pinker + someone else

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2007/09/thank-you-mother-teresa-youve-shown-me.html – teresa has shown me a new way to frame atheism

http://theradula.blogspot.com/2007/09/altruism-evolution-and-atheism.html local and universal altruism

I ran across a hilarious post by “The Exterminator” on his blog No More Hornets. He asked a friend who used to teach the 4th grade to have her kids write compositions based on the prompt “What Atheism Means to Me”.

It’s not easy to pick a favorite, but this one is definitely near the top of the list (emphases are mine):

I Am a Atheist by ihatejesus
“I am a athiest but my parents are Christains. When I told them I was a athiest they nearly had a heart attack but they did’nt. I’m glad they did’nt but I’m sorry they did’nt get a little bit of a pain some place on their body because they washed my mouth out with soap and that made me throw up. They did it when I told them I was a athiest. They said I did’nt even know what it means, but I do. It means I hate Jesus, that’s what Billy told me. And I do hate Jesus because I got bad presents last Chrismas . My parents said thats not Jesus’s fault its Santa’s fault but I do’nt believe in Santa because it makes no sense.”

A close second:

It’s in the Bible Atheists by sixdays
“Atheists don’t beleive that God made the world. I would like to ask them who did? I bet they can’t answer that one! Even a forth grader like me knows the answer to that but atheists are too stupid to know how to look it up in the Bible. I know how to look it up in the Bible because it’s write at the begining. It says God made the world in six days. And then he rested on the seventh day. I don’t know why God needed a rest because he can do everything and it’s not hard for Him. Maybe he just wanted to watch TV. I know there was no TV in those days but I bet God was able to see into the future. I wonder if he saw atheists. Why didn’t he kill them if he saw them? Mom says you can’t question God but I would like to. I would like to know why he made atheists who don’t believe that He made them. And I would also like to know why he made brussel sprouts because I think that was a big mistake. “

Aaah, the unquestionable and infallible logic of young children. They see things so clearly.

Go read the rest! They’re all fairly revealing of some aspect of the atheist<->religion interaction.

I own a Toshiba Tecra M7. Today I noticed my power adapter was being a bit finicky. I had it plugged in, but after a while I noticed that my battery was draining again. I’d had this problem before with a Compaq M2000’s power adapter – wiggle the power wire connected to the computer, and it flickers from charging to battery draining. With the M2000, I eventually figured out that there was an internal break in the wire that goes from the power adapter to the computer (i.e., the wire that is not replaceable and is part of the brick itself) since there was a point in the wire where I could pinch it with my fingernails, and an indentation would be formed – one that it was quite apparent was only possible if there was no internal wire at that point – hence, the theory of a break.

This time, all I had to do was wiggle it near the end connected to the computer’s AC port, and the AC Power/charging light would flicker off on the M7. Bend it back to straight behind the computer, and it would come on again. It was quite apparent this is the same problem again.

Incidentally, both of these happened a little under a year since the purchase of the computer. My Tecra M7 was shipped on 10-09-2006 (which is the official “date of purchase”), and I just called Tech Support (1-800-457-7777) about five minutes before writing this post (today is 10-06-2007). I think this is one of those things about laptops that most people don’t know – the power adapter will almost certainly wear out within 1 year of use.

Fortunately, this is an item that is covered by most standard warranties, including the warranty of my previous M2000 and my current Tecra M7. Since I’ve run into the problem before, it was much easier to help the customer service representative (CSR) “diagnose” the problem. Granted, he had to go through the standard list of “Do you see any damage around the AC port, or the cord itself?”, “Is the power brick overheating?”, etc… The call was maybe 20 minutes from the time I dialed, through the process of navigating the number menus for an appropriate category, and getting a real person on the line. All this at about 7:30PM on a Saturday. I’d say that’s certainly acceptable service, and no more than I would expect. They’re shipping me a new power brick right to my door! And, since I bought the ServiceExpress Warranty package, it should be here within 2-3 business days.

[Update: 2007-10-09]

I received the replacement part today, however it is the *wrong* part. I was sent the detachable AC cord that plugs into the power-brick and the wall socket. What I *actually* needed was a new power brick. I’m not entirely surprised by this, since I suspect that the CSR I talked to was located in India, and it can be somewhat confusing which cord is being talked about sometimes. Or, maybe he was just ignorant about the product he’s supposed to be providing technical support for. Either way, I’ve had to make a call again tonight to tech support. I’ve spoken with another CSR at this point, and he’s doing whatever virtual paperwork has to be done to fill out another order for the correct part (I think he understood what I actually wanted this time). For a period of about 10 minutes the call-waiting music even went dead! The call took 45 minutes from start to finish this time (including navigating through the routing menus at the beginning).

I would note that this time the CSR actually said initially that he was going to charge my credit card for the replacement part. However, once I questioned him on this (since it should be covered considering I payed $200 for 3-year standard warranty + SystemGuard Accidental protection + ServiceExpress), he put me on hold for a minute and came back saying that I would not be charged. Yay! The customer triumphs for once…

[Update: 2007-10-10]

I just received the new power brick today! It was apparently overnighted – probably because part of my warranty is ServiceExpress. They also gave me another cable that goes from the wall socket to the power brick for some reason. I guess these are shipped as a kit. Either way, I’m happy!

There’s been recent talk about whether non-religious peoples should use the term “atheist” to describe themselves, or what word is best to self-identify with. There is a plethora of terms that have accumulated: secularist, humanist, agnostic, freethinker, bright, etc..

The primary reason any of these terms have been invented or popularized is simply for the purpose of moving away from the ‘image problem’ that the word “atheist” has. Somehow, using a different is thought to be better. Let’s think about this situation for a second:

• A term used to describe a class of people has a negative or pejorative common usage among the majority of a population
• You consider yourself to be a member of this class, or a related classes that is often miscategorized or identified with this negative term.
• There is common misunderstanding as to what you “really” believe, and you wish that everyone outside of the class (“outsiders”) could better understand what it means to be inside this class of people – the philosophical, moral, every-day, intellectual, etc. implications.
• You wish to have a civil discussion about your differences with the outsiders, but it’s hard to do so without immediately inflaming their senses by merely mentioning this class you are a member of.
• What do you do?

There seems to be a few possible approaches here:

1. Re-educate the meaning: tell people what that term really means to you, and why you chose it. Try to dispel some of the negative connotations (unless they’re actually true, of course)
2. Change the term: usage of a neologism generally forces the other person to ask, “Hey, what did you mean by that word <x>”? This allows you to give them an impression of what you really are, that impression being the first on the ‘blank slate’ of what that word means to the other person.
3. Sarcastically embrace the stereotype: basically, you’re not in it to change people’s impressions, so you don’t care too much about what they feel. Act very xenophobic, and advocate the destruction of all others that don’t follow your path of justice, reason, and the correct way of thinking.

Approach #2 seems to be the basic movement as of right now. People are trying out the “bright” term with some success, but ultimately I think “bright” just underscores one of the more poignant philosophical points of atheism vs. theism: how we deal with and define the supernatural and/or magical thinking. As the “bright” term ages, I think it will gain the same connotation as “atheist” as soon as people catch on to what it means. The Bright’s creed is summarized quite well in this quote which I picked up a long time ago on the ‘net:

“There is no point beating around the bush. Supernatural concepts have no philosophical warrant.”
- Owen Flanagan

Perhaps an interesting conversation could start from this point, but it isn’t one I would want to have with every christian passerby. Once “bright” is explained, I believe it will offend the sensibilities of any christian just as much as “atheist”, so I don’t see much point in the re-branding.

Approach #3 I think is the basic idea behind much of the ‘New Atheism’ wave of books coming from Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. I am more partial to Sam Harris in this respect – he tends to stay more in the philosophical realm, and has done enough homework on the history of religions to generally know what he is talking about. He engaged in a very entertaining debate with Andrew Sullivan (gay catholic) that I enjoyed. Nonetheless, I see his public image as of a person who likes sticking a hot-iron prod into a christian’s side. His commentary – especially in the debate with Andrew Sullivan – is cutting and uncompromising; it is the rare individual that will voluntarily endure this as Sullivan did. I don’t see it happening in a face-to-face conversation.

Approach #1 probably gets the least attention, mostly because atheists consider this a lost battle. There’s just too many christians that perpetuate the evil-sardonic-atheist stereotype. There is perhaps good reason for this – generally, neither side is good at being diplomatic since our fundamental inclinations are in such conflict that it’s hard not to end up in a yelling match without a concerted effort. I’m pretty sure I came off as this stereotype when I approached some evangelists on the quad, but what can I say… imperialist philosophy really pisses me off. Then again, imperialism is the mission of said evangelists, so I guess I just stepped in dog shit either way.

However, at the end of the day I think such a campaign of re-education could be the best thing for atheism. Understand, I don’t necessarily feel the need to make sure that every christian knows what I mean when I say I am an atheist, but I would certainly like that information to be more accessible and less offensive. Also, I wouldn’t necessarily advocate a tolerance of “liberal” christianity as a valid philosophical position. Fundamentally, I think discussion about why we think what we do about the world, life, love, and everything is a good thing. There is definitely a growing amount of atheist media and discussion in this vein of thought:

• Hemant Mehta’s I Sold My Soul on eBay (amazon), and his blog FriendlyAtheist.com.

• Jim Henderson and Matt Casper’s Jim and Casper Go to Church (amazon), also see some of the blogs run by Off the Map, including the Church Rater, the eBay atheist.

• Norton and Emery’s A Christian and an Atheist podcast.

• I’d include Uncomfortable Questions in this category, partly because Sue Grandys doesn’t “discriminate” necessarily in who she interviews based upon their religious stance/ideology, though most of the interviews are more on the atheistic than religious side. It’s the kind of non-confrontational sort of conversation that I’d like to see more of.

I’d like to see more in this channel of thought. I hope I can contribute to it. Perhaps some interviews will be my first step into the water here.

To get back to the original point of this post though, there is great disagreement among atheists and their opposing counterparts as to the meaning of the word “atheist” / “atheism” is. I believe I should start refining my own personal expression of what it means to me.. this was the original thrust of this post but I’ve spent enough time writing the context of what I was going to talk about that I’m no longer sure what I was going to express here… so perhaps later on you will see an update here once I think this over again…

I watched the TED video of Bob Thurman tonight, and was struck by the depth of his philosophical insight. There’s something refreshing about having someone critique the very basis of our view of what humans are, and how our interactions are governed by our personal philosophies, and the prevailing fundamental assumptions of a society such as the U.S. Based upon this video, I would say his wikipedia article very accurately describes him in being “…highly-regarded for his lucid, dynamic translations and explanations of Buddhist religious and philosophical material, particularly that pertaining to the Gelukpa (dge-lugs-pa) school of Tibetan Buddhism and its founder, Je Tsong Khapa…” (wikipedia article).

Whenever I find someone like this that has such insight, I try to find more of their material. Here’s what I found:

• Bobthurman.com – while this isn’t the best designed page, it has a fair amount of material including some essays. I started reading the one on Human Rights and Responsibilites (*.pdf) – fascinating stuff.
• Podcast – already up to show #38 right now! The RSS feed only goes back to Show #15, unfortunately, so I suppose I’d have to go to the website to manually download previous episodes. I’ll never understand why people set media rss feeds to have only a certain number of items in the line… makes more sense to just have everything there. A blog, on the other hand – such as Boing Boing, with its enormous turn-over rate – I can understand having a limited number of items…
• Vidcast – subscribe through iTunes, blip.tv, and even a subscription link for the democracy player (now Miro)!

I haven’t yet listened to / watched any of this additional media, but I’m downloading all of it I can get!

In any case, I’m cautiously optimistic that Buddhism will influence me in some ways. The essay on human rights touches a fairly core issue for me as an agnostic, and the entire discussion of whether individuals should have inalienable rights (an idea of locke’s) or whether happiness/liberty/etc. are something only attainable through a culture of ingrained duties and social contracts is interesting. Some of what he talks about I don’t quite understand since it gets more into the abstract about what humans are as beings / compassion, etc… but I’m sure this has more to do with me just being unfamiliar with this line of thought.

I’m somewhat skeptical of buddhism since I’ve seen some strains of thought there that are purely based on some assumptions which I don’t consider to be necessarily universally acceptable, but we’ll see. Buddhism is a fairly fragmented concept since it has permeated many cultures in asia and meshed and evolved with newer politics and philosophies, so perhaps I’ll find something new and more acceptable in Thurman’s strain of buddhism. Anyway, cheers to enlightenment!

I’ve had a good discussion with my friend Orlando tonight, and as often happens when I voice things out loud, I progress in a line of thought I’ve had for a while and get some fresh ideas.

I’ve been thinking about what I would like out of a dialogue with religious people (aka, christians in the U.S.), and I’ve noticed a convergence of various information streams in my life.

One is a podcast I’ve always enjoyed listening to – Uncomfortable Questions. It has already reached show #57, which is a considerable accomplishment for any podcast by an independent person. The interesting thing about this show is that it is essentially a very deep, quick look at one individual’s life philosophy and impressions about their own personal experience. The host, Sue Grandys isn’t confrontational with any of the interviewee’s answers – just asks them a fundamental question like “what is the meaning of life?”, “what is evil?”, “does god exist?” etc., lets them answer and makes interesting conversation with them. Over the course of 57 shows, she has in some sense done anthropological research. The majority of the people interviewed are what would be considered nerds / liberals / freethinkers though (and mostly males at that), so it is a fairly slanted view. However, there are a few unique episodes, such as when she talks with a 59 year old mormon virgin, where you get the most interesting perspectives of wisdom, compassion, and tolerance you’ll ever hear. Linda, the interviewee, was really someone I’d like to know. Yet, she’s also religious. These are the sort of conversations I’d like to have with a christian – non-confrontational, just wondering how that particular person fits the world together in their head and reconciles the big questions in a comprehensive way.

Also, I’m inspired by a post from FriendlyAtheist.com, “Tired of the Usual Debates”, where Hemant Mehta quotes Amanda Metskas’s article “Debating a Dead Horse” at the secular student alliance’s website. It expresses much of what I’m feeling right now (though what I’m about to say is not necessarily in that article.. just along the same lines).

I just don’t really want to have this argument about whether or not god exists with another person – for a number of reasons, one among them being that if we are on opposite sides of the fence, neither of us will probably be very good at convincing the other to hop the fence. It just doesn’t really happen. It’s a personal choice that – hopefully – is made through a lot of introsprection and investigation of the world. The evidence must be impartial, impassionate, without bias if it is to be taken into account in determing this question. The entire field of christian apologetics and scientific myth debunking are rather useless for permanent conversion of a person – they are really just re-inforcements of one side of the fence to keep people where they are.

In any case, along these lines of inspiration, there is a project I’d like to do at some point in my life – another one of those ideas that may or may not ever get done. It is to sit down with someone and do essentially what Sue Grandys has done – an uncomfortable questions type interview – but instead of simply accepting relatively random volunteers, I’d like to seek out specific perspectives and cross sections of society. I’d like a whole streak of christian interviews, muslims / arabic, foreigners and americans. I want the broader perspective, because there is an interesting thing that happens when you hear enough of these interviews. You begin to see patterns among them, commonalities, that can’t be seen any other way. But more than this, it is a look into the inner machinations of many people that you will never hear by having a conversation with them on the street, or that debate you would strike up with a christian on the Quad as I did the other day. It is the deeper conversation that we all (or atleast I) desire to have with one another in order to find out more about the people of the world and how they view it.

The only difficulty I see in doing such a thing is that the people who would submit to such an interview are perhaps a special breed of introspectors, or thinkers. Not everyone has really thought about these things. Also, I can’t imagine how I would advertise that I would like to do these types of interviews, or find the people to do them with. Perhaps I should start with some friends and go from there. Maybe it would be a good ice-breaker after a few conversations with someone? Who knows. For now, I’m thinking I might really do this. We’ll see. Minimally, I guess I’ll have to get a decent microphone before I start such a thing. If I’m going to produce media, it better be quality.

There’s one quote that I like to keep in mind, but can abandon so easily since it requires a strict tolerance of people and a certain probing-but-congenial curiosity:

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”
- Baruch Spinoza

I make a very conscious effort to learn about group dynamics, relationships, and people in general. It’s hard to not feel like ridiculing or just plain feeling frustrated about people that disagree with you on such a basic level as whether to accept evolution as a fact of life, but as a guiding piece of wisdom in interactions with christians, this is probably one of the best pieces I’ve come across.

A couple days ago there were some evangelical christians on the Quad of the ISU campus near the SUB. I am a pragmatic atheist/philosophical agnostic, and I know where conversations with x-ians usually go, so I don’t normally approach them. However, since my fellow atheist Sayler was with me, we did go ask them a question that ended up being a 30 minute discussion/debate.

I will say this, the x-ians were well informed on the history of the Bible. It caught me off guard that they actually knew a fair amount about how the bible was compiled (more than I did at any rate), so I had to abandon this line of debate if I was to have reached any higher ground. It’s definitely a bad idea to start arguing the point of historical credibility with someone who potentially knows more than you do – it can lead to nasty surprises.

After the encounter, I was just pissed off… mostly because the discussion ended around the point where one x-ian said that in a universe without a god, there is no morality, yet a universe with a god fills humans with a moral sense/conscience that even atheists will have, regardless of their stance on the existence of god. Essentially, they claimed that the only reason I care about other people is because god loves me. There’s just no way to argue against that.

I also began thinking about what I could have said or done better at the beginning of the conversation so that I didn’t come off as a rude, bitchy atheist that’s just out to hate any concept of god, because that’s not what I’m fundamentally about. Here are a few things I came up with:

• At the beginning, I wish I had said something to the effect of, “Hi, I have a question, but let me preface it with the following points.
  1. I am an atheist/agnostic, and you a x-ian. Let’s not have a discussion trying to convince each other of our own beliefs, because it is a tired one that only leaves us both embittered.
  2. I like civil conversations, but I don’t like being accused of immorality. Please acknowledge, for the sake of conversation, that I am capable of being a person of integrity without a deity’s help. We can argue this point, but repeating your premise as evidence of its truth won’t help to convince me, and it only makes you sound ignorant.
  3. My fundamental reason for asking a question is that I am curious why people think differently than I do. I may be able to predict some of your responses since some are fairly common, so please avoid the preach-y language and cut to the chase. Keep it real. Quoting the bible doesn’t really help – I’m really just interested in your personal experience, what convinced you the most, etc. – I’m not in it to determine the absolute truth of something during this conversation.
  4. With that, my question is: What, fundamentally, is the most vivid experience you have ever had that convinced you the most of god’s existence and/or that your flavor of religion was the “true” one?
• I should probably bring the list of 21 unconvincing arguments for god as a quick reference / something to point to that will avoid going over tired arguments in case they bring them up. Download a nice PDF to print it off for yourself! (*.pdf)

Oh, and I recorded this entire 30 minute conversation (*.mp3 , ~3Mb) with my Muvo v100 mp3 player. The audio isn’t that bad, but you’ll have to turn up the volume to hear it. There are some parts where people are talking over each other.. sorry about that.

One thing is for sure.. before I approach another x-ian, I’m definitely going to think over what I really want to talk to them about first. I did not do well with this first confrontation on campus, but I’d like to do better.

Though I love WordPress for many reasons as a blog service, they only give me 30 Mb of hosted space for images/files. I use BlogDesk as my client of choice since it has a sleek UI and produces clean code for posts, however the only integrated image upload support is for the blog service I’m using – it can’t do 3rd party uploading to something like flickr or imageshack . This is kind’ve frustrating, because it makes it a pain in the ass to include the all important visuals needed to make posts more than just the type-written ramblings of a random person on the web. Pictures are important.

So, I’ve been searching for a client that is capable of this. I found one – Post2Blog – which does this fairly well. However, there are a lot of cons to using this client – it produces dirty html code that hardcodes a lot of the formatting, it preserves the formatting of pasted text and the formatting ends up looking very weird when you ever edit a post that is already published. In addition to this, it produces a lot of unnecessary prompts for saving edited posts locally, and there is no way to turn off these prompts in options. So I’m abandoning this freeware, even though it is good at the one thing I needed it to do. It just can’t do anything else well.

For the moment, I’ve decided just to use BlogDesk and install the Firefox Imageshack toolbar. It’s a little annoying to have it there all the time, but there doesn’t appear to be a separate / independently functioning image upload client for imageshack. I’ll keep looking for a better solution though.

A few days ago I ran across an article about Miro’s parent foundation, the Participatory Culture Foundation, trying to raise $50k since they are short on cash for developing Miro. I used paypal to donate $2.50 since it appeared to be a decent piece of software judging from the website’s screenshots and feature lists. I’d tried it before and found it to be lacking, but since there’s a new version I decided to see what I got for my money.

To my surprise, Miro is actually pretty good at handling video files, and – to my delight – already had the RSS channel for TED Talks – which immediately made me think these guys are on the right track. The video from TED Talks is simply amazing stuff, and I’m glad it’s there by default – I sure hope more people see the content from there because it is world-changing stuff.

In any case, I also found that Miro can do a basic search of youtube (only returns one page of results though) and download the videos and put them in your designated video library folder for you. Yay! I usually have to do this manually with www.keepvid.com, so that’s a definite plus. Miro doesn’t rename the files, unfortunately, but all the meta-information is there in the program, which is good enough for me.

I would say the only true failing of Miro is the fact that it is a total RAM whore. Fortunately, I recently bought a 1-gig stick of RAM for my laptop, so it isn’t a problem to have something use ~140MB of it. Nonetheless, the interface can have laggish reactions if I’m doing heavy multitasking at the same time (I occasionally use autostitch to create panoramas, have ziepod and utorrent downloading ~200kbps and have photoshop 7/gimp open at once). This is not unexpected persay, but applications such as VLC run so incredibly memory-light that they are less likely to become unresponsive in such situations, and I wish Miro was the same as well.

So, Now I’m pretty much running three programs for RSS feeds of different types, and I’m lovin’ it.

• RSS Owl handles text well
• Ziepod is pretty good for audio
• Miro handles video well

I prefer applications that do their individual tasks well, so I’m pretty much set for the moment! These all do what they should do, and with the thoughtful features each task demands. Best of all, they’re all free!

I sign up for a lot of random web accounts that I try out for services I run across… and there’s always the nagging dilemma of what username to pick. I’m getting bored with my usual ones which use numbers in them or are just kind’ve lame neologisms… yet I have no ideas for what to substitute them with. I want something unique, memorable, and something of an in-joke if possible… but not too unusual. Aargh.. being creative is tough!

For now, I’ve settled on “naiko”. Just some nonsense syllables.. though apparently the last name of an african athlete as well.

I go to Idaho State University. I received a bulletin through the university’s mailing list that the college is now subscribed to Ruckus, a subscription service which appears to be the faculty’s response to the growing problem of p2p file sharing of media. They want us to do it legally, apparently. I’ll give that a shot.

Let’s see what Ruckus provides:

• a fair amount of music (3 million tracks)
• a currently pitiful offering of video (films, webshows) that is growing

So what’s the catch?

• you can *only* play music on the proprietary Ruckus software player on your computer. If you happen to have a "Ruckus to Go" account and a PlayForSure mp3 player, then you can listen to it on the go as well… but who has these things really?
  • all the music is downloaded via a *.ruckusdownload file… annoying. These aren’t real music downloads
• the Ruckus player and website runs ads everywhere that hog your bandwidth from the actual media you’d like to listen to/watch
• pretty much everything on the website screams "Don’t share files illegally kids! Use our pitiful service instead! We made this specifically for you college students, because we know what you like!"

Please: don’t insult my intelligence. Ruckus is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever run across.

Ruckus is a crappy-ass DRMed media website that gives you only mainstream music + annoying ads and takes money from students involuntarily via their tuition because some scared college administrators don’t know how to deal with the p2p issue.

The funny thing is, I actually saw something on Ruckus’s site that I might like – a David Bowie album – but I can get it off of bittorrent for free, without ads or DRM, in about 5 minutes. I don’t think any paid service is going to be able to beat that. Unless maybe they just took off the DRM and didn’t put up annoying ads… after all, they *are* already taking money from me already via tuition.

*Sigh*… maybe one day the marketers will realize that only truly free (in the sense of DRM-free) music is what college students want. I’m willing to pay for music, but only on my own terms, which are:

• DRM-free, high quality. It must be a basic, old-fashioned .mp3 or high quality losslessly encoded .ogg/.ape
• Reasonably priced. Everyone knows that pushing data across the ’net does not cost a significant amount. So really, don’t inflate those prices just to make humungous profits. Try to remember, college students are poor.
• Significant amount of profits must go to the artist. I will never buy from iTunes simply for the fact that none of their profits go to the artists (or at least, last time I heard – perhaps they’ve changed this policy?). The artist should be the primary beneficiary of the sale – not the distributor. I think it is ridiculous that we have such huge music distribution companies that make so much money, but the artists they "serve" get shorted all the time and have to be mega-stars to really make their millions. Repeat: ridiculous!

Maybe one of these days a music service will come along that does this. I’m always surprised by what pops up on the internet – it seems that anything I can think of eventually shows up as a fully developed product if I wait long enough. I just wish marketers would realize that people won’t put up with the defective-by-design DRM crap – we want functional-by-design products. Not crippled ones.

For a more comprehensive review of Ruckus, checkout its wikipedia article.

I’ve been looking for some good screensharing freeware today. My basic requirements:

• free (as in beer) – no strings attached – i.e., no trial-ware, subscriptions, that I have to go through in order to use it
• has to work regardless of my network setup – whether I’m behind a router or a server or whatever… the fact is, I don’t know what type of network I’ll be in at any particular moment since I’m using a laptop and rove around quite a bit
• simple – doesn’t require me to do a lot of configuration for the network besides maybe finding out what my WAN IP is (pretty easy to find)
• ideally, doesn’t require software for the viewer end – though this is somewhat negotiable depending on how invasive the software is, or how much setup is required by the viewer. I’d rather they get to use a Java client in their browser than install software on their computer.

The results of my search today:

RealVNC 4.2.1 Free Edition (download)

Pretty simple, doesn’t have a lot of options for configuring the stream settings in such ways as video quality or re-rendering the stream to the size of the viewer’s resolution in the browser-java applet. However, it does make it very simple to transmit a stream, and you don’t absolutely *need* the viewer client to see the stream if you already have the Java applet installed. Anyone can view the stream via your IP address + port information in a link such as http://192.0.0.1:5801/ , where your IP is 192.0.0.1, and the port you’re transmitting at is 5801. Simple, and you can put a password on it.

Also, there is no intermediary server involved with this – the host client *is* the server, so you aren’t dependent on some company’s servers to make this service work. Just some interweb connections.

CrossLoop (download)

Very simplistic setup for both the host and the viewer, but both need CrossLoop installed. Supports file-sharing and viewer control of the host, which can be toggled on/off by the host. This can work in virtually any networking environment, and also purportedly uses bandwidth more efficiently due to using TightVNC protocols rather than the legacy VNC. I’ll probably end up using this one as a fallback for Real VNC since I’d prefer to have the viewer use a browser rather than have to install software on their computer.

Update (10/02/07): I ran across this a blog post titled “40+ Ways To Access Your Computer Remotely” at the mashable.com social network news blog, which was linked via crossloop’s blog. This appears to be a pretty comprehensive / summary post of a lot of remote access solutions out there, but it doesn’t provide too many individual details about any particular solution. Nonetheless, a good starting point if you’re hunting for a particular method of access under particular conditions… searching the ‘net for individual solutions is a pain in the ass.

ScreenStream (download)

This one unfortunately didn’t meet the standard of working in any network situation. I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work over an internet connection to the the outside world, but it does perform admirably over the LAN. This might just be my own ignorance of how to set it up, but it’s enough of a barrier that I didn’t feel like figuring it out when I have other simpler options that work. Nonetheless, it is free and works well. There is an option in the software for changing the quality of the stream from a hi-low continuum, and the viewer only needs a browser which is a big plus for me. Maybe I’ll figure out how to use it over the WAN someday.. I liked it better than the other two except for the setup difficulties for WAN viewership.