My interest in explanations was brought to a new higher intensified while I watched a movie. I must regress many more years to tell the entire story. Before I begin, though, I need to assure you that my story is absolutely true.

About 20 years ago, I awoke at about 3 a.m., and I saw the strangest thing. A small orb with a soft greenish glow hovered five feet over my bedroom floor, about an arm’s length out from the foot of the bed. The orb was about the size of a ping-pong ball. I walked toward the orb until my face was one foot from the orb. I tried to see if I could account for the glowing ball by checking for an external source of reflected light through the bedroom windows. I couldn’t find any such external light source, though. The orb itself was glowing and it was still in my bedroom. I considered touching the orb with my hand, but I didn’t. For a moment, I wondered whether it would try to communicate with me—a strange thought, given that I have never believed in disembodied sentience.

I noticed that the orb was slowly descending. It didn’t make any noise. After 30 seconds of descending, the orb reached the floor, then it took the shape of a sunny-side up egg as it melted into the bedroom floor. I went downstairs from my second floor bedroom to the first floor to see whether the orb was “melting” through the ceiling of that room, but I saw nothing. I went back upstairs and sat awake in bed for several minutes, wondering what it possibly could have been. I decided that I didn’t have a clue. Eventually, I went back to bed.

I sheepishly mentioned this weird and disorienting experience to a few close friends in the days after I saw it, always shaking my head with some embarrassment. It bothered me that the thing I witnessed appeared to be something “outside” of physics. I sometimes wondered whether I had been dreaming. I’m sure I hadn’t been dreaming, though (but too bad I didn’t write a note to myself that night “I saw a strange glowing orb tonight”). I don’t have any history of having any hallucinations or visions, nor any episode of vivid dreaming.

Fast forward about eleven years. About nine years ago, I happened to watch a PBS drama in which a female character was literally scared to death when a ball of light floated across the floor of her house—others in the drama referred to the phenomenon as “ball lightning.” After the show, I ran a Google search for “ball lightning,” and found dozens of sober-sounding testimonials. Large numbers of people have also seen things similar to the orb I saw (if you Google “ball lightning,” you’ll be amazed at the large number of reports). Then I found a Scientific American article describing “ball lightning. This column, which was titled something like “Ask the Expert” no longer appears to exist intact. I did copy down the expert’s answer, word for word, when I first read it. Here’s what that early version of the article said:

Ball lightning is a well-documented phenomenon in the sense that it has been seen and consistently described by people in all walks of life since the time of the ancient Greeks. There is no accepted theory for what causes it. It does not necessarily consist of plasma; for example, ball lightning could be the result of a chemiluminescent process. The literature abounds with speculations on the physics of the ball lightning . . .

Ball lightning is typically described as a luminous ball one to 25 centimeters in diameter having about the intensity of a 20-watt incandescent lamp; the phenomenon usually occurs after a lightning strike. It almost always moves, has a top speed of about three meters per second and floats about one meter above the ground. The motion can be counter to the prevailing breeze and can change direction erratically. Ball lightning may last up to 10 seconds, whereupon the ball extinguishes either noiselessly or with a bang. There have been many observations of ball lightning inside of houses and even in airplanes. There have also been a number of observations of ball lightning passing through closed glass windows, with no apparent damage to the glass.

[Again, the new version of the above article has been updated and elaborated].

Upon reading the above description by a scientistic expert, I experienced an intense feeling of relief. To me, this information served as an explanation with real consequences: I wasn’t dreaming. It wasn’t a spirit. Don’t touch glowing orbs! Science might figure this out someday . . .

[Wikipedia also offers an article about ball lighting. This will show my age: back when I saw the ball lightning, there was no World Wide Web; there was no Google ]

Here’s an experiment: I am betting that you, the reader, were also intrigued to learn about ball lightning and you also had a gut feeling that the phenomenon was at least somewhat “explained” by the above article I found at the Scientific American website. (more…)

From the first time I saw him perform I loved the deadpan comedy of Steven Wright. His view of life is coldly objective and sometimes skewed, but always funny. Here are a few of my favorite one-liners, some of which are relevant to the ongoing conversations here at DI.

Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts.

If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation?

Just think how much deeper the ocean would be if sponges didn’t live there.

So, what’s the speed of dark?

How come abbreviated is such a long word?

I went for a walk last night and my kids asked me how long I’d be gone. I said, “The whole time.”

If you’re sending someone some Styrofoam, what do you pack it in?

Since light travels faster than sound, isn’t that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak?

If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?

What would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?

Why are there 5 syllables in the word “monosyllabic?”

Why do scientists call it research when looking for something new?

If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?

Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.

If “con” is the opposite of “pro,” then what is the opposite of progress?

Should you trust a stockbroker who’s married to a travel agent?

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

If all those psychics know the winning lottery numbers, why are they all still working?

War doesn’t determine who’s right, just who’s left.

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.

“Did you sleep well?” “No, I made a couple of mistakes.”

I was in the first submarine. Instead of a periscope, they had a kaleidoscope. “We’re surrounded.”

I went to a general store. They wouldn’t let me buy anything specifically.

I went to a restaurant that serves “breakfast at any time”. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

The other day, I was walking my dog around my building… on the ledge. Some people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.

I filled out an application that said, “In Case Of Emergency Notify”. I wrote “Doctor”… What’s my mother going to do?

Isn’t the best way to save face to keep the lower part shut?

Want more? Go here.

I’m currently reading Rob Walker’s 2008 book, Buying in: the Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. I’m finding Walker’s chapter on “Hello Kitty” especially interesting in its own right and also because his description of the success of Hello Kitty has helped me to understand Sarah Palin.

Walker repeatedly points out that corporate logos are symbols and it is the consumers of modern corporate symbols (not those who create or promote those symbols) who imbue these symbols with meaning. Hello Kitty is an especially good example.

The Hello Kitty logo was created out of thin air in 1974 by the Japanese firm, Sanrio. Hello Kitty was not a character in a movie or story. When Hello Kitty was created, the symbol was “empty of specific meaning.” The Hello Kitty artwork was the work of an employee of Sanrio, Yuko Shimizu, who had been asked to design some logos to place on some small vinyl purses. Fast forward to the present. Hello Kitty can now be found on toys, clothes, computers, watches and lingerie. The symbol has had “astonishing success.” The Hello Kitty line has developed under licensing arrangements worth more than $1 billion a year in sales.

What is the secret of hello Kitty? According to Sanrio, “We work very hard to avoid things that would define the character.” The “mouthless cat” cannot be said to stand for any social or cultural idea, according to Walker. “Hello Kitty stands for nothing.” Yuko Shimizu indicates that she was simply trying to make an image that would appeal to little girls. A scholar named Brian McVeigh (quoted by Walker) indicates that Hello Kitty succeeds because the symbol has “projectability.”

Hello Kitty’s blank cryptic simplicity, he argues, is among her great strengths; standing for nothing, she is “waiting to be interpreted,” and this is precisely how an “ambiguous”– and let’s be frank: meaningless– symbol comes to stand for nostalgia to one person, fashion ability to another, camp to a third, vague subversiveness to a fourth.

“Without the mouth, it is easier for the person looking at Hello Kitty to project their feelings onto the character, explains a Sanrio spokesman quoted by McVeigh: “A person can be happy or sad together with Hello Kitty.” Hello Kitty, McVeigh argues, is a mirror that reflects whatever image, desire or fantasy in individual brings to it.

Belson and Bremner (also mentioned in Walker’s book) return to this theme repeatedly in their own book on Hello Kitty.

“What makes Kitty so intriguing is that she projects entirely different meanings depending on the consumer,” they write. The cat is “an icon that allows viewers to assign whatever meaning to her that they want.” . . . not only can Logos have meaning, and not only can that meeting be manufactured– it can be manufactured by consumers. Ultimately, a cultural symbol that catches on is almost never simply imposed, but rather is created and then tacitly agreed upon by those who choose to accept its meaning, wherever that meaning may have originated. That’s what Hello Kitty is: a cultural symbol. And a successful brand.

(Walker, pages 15 to 19). This idea of an empty and projectable logo also seems to describe Sarah Palin. Many conservatives loved Palin before they knew anything substantial about her. Granted, they knew Palin could read a teleprompter and rev up a crowd of conservatives, but what did they know about Palin’s character, her knowledge base and her ability to govern? They knew nothing about those critically important issues early on, but that didn’t stop them from making wild claims that Sarah Palin would make a great Vice-President. Now that freely available information shows that Palin is actually an ill-informed, spiteful, secretive woman deeply entrenched in cronyism, many conservatives love her all the more.

Those who, in the absence of substantiating evidence, believe that Sarah Palin has what it takes to be Vice-President are projecting. They are defining Palin rather than taking the time to learn who Palin really is.

Even though Sarah Palin actually has a mouth, her big trained pageant smile, combined with the serious office she seeks, leaves us with a wide range of interpretations of who she is. Is she your girlfriend, your mother, a small town mayor, a Vice-President, an attack dog, a flirt, a hyper-moral woman, a neo-conservative, a maverick, a super-mom, a neglectful mother, a quick-study or someone who is proudly ignorant?  Palin offers a lot of real estate to you as material for your personal projection as to who she is.  And, vague as all of this is, this is as coherent as it gets–this is who she is, at least for those of us who are allergic to facts.

Hello Sarah.

Discussions in the comment sections of many posts on this site chaotically tend toward the strange attractor of one generally off-topic issue: Why does Creation/Evolution seem correct to you? It is usually a discussion between Creationists who believe that the scientific conclusions are based on faith, and Naturalists who believe that the Scientific Method is best tool ever invented to extract sense from chaos.

In the beginning, Natural Philosophers (now called Scientists) in the West all believed in the Bible. Bishop Ussher gave the final word on the age of the universe according to the Bible in the early 1600’s, and the Church had all the answers. But then the idea emerged that one can actually test Aristotelian conclusions (purely rational and based on “what everybody knows”) with observations. Copernicus demonstrated with careful observation and applied math around 1600 that only the moon itself orbited the Earth, and all the other planets circled the Sun. The church accepted this, as a philosophical observation, irrelevant to the place of Man in the Universe. Then Galileo made a gadfly of himself by publishing popular books mocking the Pope for publicly continuing in the preaching of Geocentrism when it was clear, with the aid of a telescope, that not only did the planets orbit the sun, but that some of those planets had moons of their own. Many moons, placed where Man couldn’t even see them without modern technology.

Well, it just snowballed from there. Newton, a devout Christian, developed math in the late 17th century that accurately modeled the behavior of pretty much everything that man could observe at the time (the Laws of Motion). And those models showed how things naturally happen, without need for divine intervention. Then  in the mid-19th century, J.C. Maxwell developed similar rules to explain electromagnetism (light, electricity, radio, etc). Discovery after discovery kept challenging the universally held beliefs in many areas. Gravity wasn’t related to nor caused by sin. Demons didn’t cause disease. The basic elements weren’t Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Air was a complex substance, but caloric and phlogiston weren’t. The planet and the universe steadily got wider and older and more complex as more and more evidence collected by true believers forced them to acknowledge that nature is as it is, and not how interpretations of the ancient texts described it.

(more…)

After a long hot summer on California’s Central Coast, when smoke filled the air and ashes fell from the sky, it rained last weekend. Time for UC Santa Cruz students to run naked through campus in the annual tradition of “First Rain”!

Caution: video contains very small naked people.

Richard Heinberg, a Senior Fellow of Post Carbon Institute, knows that energy-from-oil is connected to everything else that we do.  That is why we are facing a monumental change in our economy within the next few years.   And we are not prepared in the least.

What can we expect?  Here’s Heinberg’s opinion, from an article he entitles “Dress Rehearsal”:

When the next supply crunch comes, we could well see prices of $200, $250, or $300. But again, the rise won’t be steady and unending; we will  again see a spike followed by a plunge—this time maybe back to $150.

Meanwhile, will oil at $100 be an occasion for sleepwalking or strategic regrouping? For policy makers, this is a time to think clearly about long-term measures to reduce demand pro-actively and support the development of renewable energy sources. For citizens, it is an opportunity to make the effort to change habits, buy a smaller car, and get involved in community Peak Oil prep work . . .

The world has had an unmistakable wake-up call from the global oil alarm clock; merely to press the snooze button would waste what may be our last opportunity to act before necessity makes us react in ways that are less than optimal.

Wick Allison was Editor in Chief of The National Review from 1990 through 1993.  Allison donated a lot of money to John McCain during the primaries, but he is now endorsing Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States:

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

Allison concludes his endorsement by commenting on what has happened to conservatism by using a quote of Eric Hoffer:  “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

Why use a pre-made Obama sign when you can make your own?  This question became obvious this weekend.  My neighborhood was sponsoring an art fair along a long boulevard, “The Shaw Art Fair.” (here’s some of the art). Almost 150 artists showed up.  One of the neighbors set up a big tarp and provided blank signs, markers and paint.  For free (or for a small donation) this neighbor offered folks a chance to make their own political signs.

Many people took advantage of the opportunity, as you can see from these drying signs.  By my neighbor’s estimate, more than 200 people took advantage of his sign-making materials.  Quite often, parents and children worked together on the signs.

It occurred to me that this was a clever strategy.  If my neighbor had simply offered to give people pre-made Obama signs, I don’t think he would have had quite as much business.   Because he offered to let families make their own signs, he was instrumental in getting hundreds of homemade Obama signs erected on lawns.  After all, when you work on a sign with your kids, they will insist you actually stick it in the front yard when you get back home.

My family took advantage of this opportunity.  Above, you can see one side of our homemade sign, designed by one of my daughters.   Below, you can see that I had a less artistic backside to the sign.  Yes, I do have some (not many) McCain-supporting neighbors and they are not going to like this direct and accusatory approach to campaigning.

It is interesting how so many Americans are so willing to plop pre-made signs on their lawns rather than making their own personal statements and creating their own artwork.   The home-made aspect of these signs reminds me of an earlier post where I complained about store-bought greeting cards. Why buy mass-produced Hallmark cards when you can make your own, and the message will be so much more personal?   Same thing for political signs for the front yard.  My unsoliticed advice:  Go express yourself politically!

Have you ever been annoyed by an on-line personality?    Perhaps this is a rhetorical question for you.  Regardless, Mike Reed of Flame Warriors has spent a lot of time studying the types of people who hang around and often annoy the rest of us.   These personality types include the following (and many more):  ALLCAPS, Bliss Nanny, Evil Clown, Filibuster, Grenade, Lonely Guy, Deacon, Troller and Xenophobe.

Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood recently revamped its website.  One of the new features includes a fact sheet that provides the following information regarding modern marketing aimed at children (with citations to primary sources):

• Marketing directly to children is a factor in the childhood obesity epidemic.
• Marketing also encourages eating disorders, precocious sexuality, youth violence and family stress and contributes to children’s diminished capability to play creatively.
• As young children are developing their gender identities, they are flooded with ads for products promoting sexualized stereotypes. There are 40,000 Disney Princess items on the market today.
• This generation of children is the most brand-conscious ever. Teens between 13 and 17 have 145 conversations about brands per week, about twice as many as adults.
• Children ages 2-11 see more than 25,000 advertisements a year on TV alone, a figure that does not include product placement. They are also targeted with advertising on the Internet, cell phones, mp3 players, video games, school buses, and in school.
• Almost every major media program for children has a line of licensed merchandise including food, toys, clothing, and accessories.
• Until the age of about 8 children do not understand advertising’s persuasive intent.

I’ve often written about these issues before (see the list of posts here).  The problem is not the enormous amount of money corporations are spending on their commercials.  Rather, it’s about the effect of those commercials on young minds.  In my opinion, modern advertising directed toward children is part of the thorough education the children are receiving in the need to be hyper-acquisitive. Through these incessant messages about the need to buy, modern American children learn that A) they “need” many things they don’t need; B) children who have expensive toys are socially superior to those that don’t; C) “playing” is about having single-purpose toys that stifle creativity; D) they need expensive toys to be happy; E) having the right toy is more important than developing meaningful friendships; F) being sexy in a shallow and glitzy way is important even at a young age.

Truly, children would be much better off to never view any commercial advertising.  There is absolutely nothing good that comes of it, and there are many potential dangers.

It is also my belief that the amount and intensity of these advertising messages are an important part of what is turning children into acquisitive adults with limited creativity.  I suspect that the education that Americans have been getting from advertisers is driving the perceived need of so many Americans to buy things they can’t afford (the average American family now saves a NEGATIVE one percent of its income each year).  I also wonder whether this commercial-driven “need to acquire” is responsible for people buying so much that they work too many hours at high stress jobs, thereby failing to tend to the things that they constantly claim are the “most important” things in their lives (children, marriage, and community-building).

In June, I had the opportunity to interview Josh Golin of CCFC about these issues.  It was a lively interview and Josh is a terrific spokesperson for these viewpoints.  If you haven’t seen this interview yet, I highly recommend it.

For previous DI posts regarding advertising, consumerism and over-acquisitiveness, see the extensive list at the bottom of this post.

For those of you who haven’t experienced Rolling Stone assassin Matt Taibbi’s uncompromising, pointy and funny-as-heck style, first cop this excerpt from his Palin pwnage piece on 27 September …

It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain’s decision to cave in to his party’s right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from a tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman — reportedly his real preference — by picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I’ll rally the base. Here, I’ll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?

… and then go and read the whole thing.

Heh heh, ” … serially pregnant moose-killer … ” That’s gold!

It is often hard to be a person on the planet Earth. It can be scary, overwhelming, fraught with obstacles, and most of all, inescapably lonely. We are, after all, alone in our minds, our bodies, and our selves. I think most all of the stuff we do as people - creating, building, loving, consuming and communicating is meant, at the most basic level, to help us forget or at least put a band aid on the ache of that loneliness.

That is one reason we band together in tribes of similarity and often poke fun (or worse) at those who are other. Race, nationality, politics, religion, non religion, gay, straight, gender, geography. We work so hard to escape the singularity and loneliness of existence by being a part of something bigger. Today this country is as divided as I ever thought I’d see it. After 2000, 2001, and then 2004 I didn’t think it could get worse, but it feels like it is. Do you remember the horror, the rage, the fear? I think back on it a lot these days. I saw grown men on all sides of the political spectrum weep and rage. I watched people of all flavors do both beautiful and horrible things. Just like now.

I am as sad as I am hopeful. We are faced with terrific challenges today. Yet we cling so tightly to the myths that separate us instead of reaching for the meanings that could unite us. I, like everyone, often take refuge in the ability to reach out to those who think as I think, or who recognize me as part of their team. “Lifelines in the midst of the madness”, I say to myself, so thankful I have the opportunity. It might be friends, family, colleagues, or acquaintances I meet online, might be a chance encounter and conversation that makes my day. These days we have tools to help us seek out other people like us, whatever us might mean. It can be easy to find someone to answer our need to not be alone, our need to be understood.

One danger is that all this connectivity within easy reach can reinforce the tribes of sameness we cling to so tightly. It often makes us more rigid instead of less, and less tolerant instead of more. I think we need so much to belong, to understand and be understood, to find connection and meaning that takes away the ache of loneliness, that in our searching and our finding we forget that everyone else is doing it too. Thus ,those who are not part of our tribe become less human. It reduces us, collectively, as people, and it is dangerous.

It is so common, and it scares me. I’m trying to fight it within myself, trying to see the humanity within the folks that frighten and enrage me. Its not easy. I have to leave the comfort zone of my tribe, and work to see something that humanizes the other. It is hard to fight the “us vs. them” mentality that seems so central to any discussion today. It becomes easier when one practices seeing it as an artificial divide, a human construction.

That practice requires fearlessness. If one accepts the premise that what divides us is not a given, but our own creation forged from our own fears and vulnerabilities, then so are the group identities that give us comfort and meaning. Thus, we find our selves truly alone, which is the uncomfortable position that contributed to the mess in the first place. Hopefully, though, the practice and effort will yield a healthier and more realistic perspective, and most importantly, the ability to reach out with compassion and strength, instead of lashing out and manufacturing distance from fear.

Are you out there, can you hear this,
Jimmy Olsen, Johnny Memphis
I was out here listening all the time,
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there, and you found me,
I was out here listening all the time

……Are You Out There, Dar Williams

How many posts at this site have been about the election? I haven’t counted them, but there are so many that it almost seems like an obsessive pursuit. It’s almost a little embarrassing, especially for a website that does not present itself as a current events or news commentary site.

On the other hand, the upcoming election is compelling to many of the authors at this site (I am the most guilty), because John McCain and Sarah Palin embody so many of the characteristics that inspired the creation of this blog in the first place.

Back in 2004, a handful of my acquaintances became emboldened by the national political mood and came fully out of the closet with their fundamentalist explanations for how the world works and how it must be changed. The positions were strikingly uninformed and one-sided. They were proud of their lack of any basis for the conclusions other than the Bible or their version of our “Christian” government. They showed no ability to understand the basis for the beliefs of people who disagreed with them. They quoted the Bible incessantly without showing any understanding of the historical development of the Bible as a book of stories, many of them entertaining or inspiring, but many others disturbing and self-contradictory.

I took advantage of this opportunity, just as I still do today, to question such beliefs.  Because I was hearing such silliness out of the mouths of real human beings, I was inspired to write, research, converse, and write some more, in an attempt to figure out what was going on. I wanted to know if my worldview was utterly and starkly disconnected from that of fundamentalists and neocons or whether there was some possible translation by which we could still communicate with each other.  In those early days of this blog, I remember feeling frustrated, sometimes angry with fundamentalism of all stripes.  I now realize that good-hearted people who happened to have traditional religious beliefs (but who were not fundamentalists) got caught up in my frustration. It’s not that I don’t have differences of opinion with non-fundamentalists religious believers, but I have gradually come to the conclusion that it is fundamentalism that is the real problem.  I am now fully aware that there are many good hearted people who sincerely believe in a sentient God who are my full-fledged allies, despite our many differences in the way we respond to the mysteries of life.

One way of illustrating my re-orientation is to consider that there are many agnostics, ignostics and atheists out there with whom I have less in common than with many good-hearted and thoughtful believers in gods and religions. This becomes all the more clear when I articulate what really should be our main concern as inhabitants on this planet: to get along with each other and to make the community a better place for all people.  Yes, many nonbelievers are also good-hearted (Ebonmuse of Daylight Atheism is one of my favorites), but not all nonbelievers are good-hearted. The ultimate question is to ask with whom I would have more in common: a goodhearted thoughtful believer in “God” or a self-centered and intolerant nonbeliever?  Because the answer to that question is clearly the former group, this means that I am not here to wage a war on religion itself.  It is my firm belief that each of us acts on beliefs that we cannot prove. My attack is on destructive impulses, regardless of the manner in which someone packages his or her destructive belief system.

I will continue to explore why people who claim to believe in God make their (to me untenable) supernatural claims. This is a fascinating topic that deserves the increased amount of discussion that it is now getting.  It is clear to me, however, that thoughtful and kind-hearted people who believe in gods and who belong to religions are not a threat to my way of life, whereas fundamentalism is a threat because it shuts down the brain in a way that prevents meaningful discussion of real-life issues and all too often inspires heavy-handedness, reckless and insensitive conduct. Fundamentalism is usually based upon out-of-control anxiety and fear, hyper-groupishness, obeisance to authority, and intolerance to the differences of others. It is also clear to me that fundamentalism comes in a variety of flavors, the most visible being religious fundamentalism (there are Christian, Muslim versions, for example). There is also political fundamentalism, of course. Those who are neoconservatives represent an especially dangerous version. It is my belief that the highly visible decay of the United States is due to the rise of both political and religious fundamentalism.

I started this site back in 2006 because I realized that humans need a constant and a healthy dose of skepticism to keep themselves from falling prey to various types of fundamentalism.  This self-vigilance needs to be unrelenting, but our inner personal battles also need to be fought intelligently. Those of us who are too skeptical become paralyzed with doubts and we thus fail to reach back out into the world to actually make the world a better place. For fundamentalists–those who reject skepticism–there will be lots of reaching out in the community because movement always seems like progress, but there is a huge difference between changing one’s community and intelligently changing one’s community. There is no better example than the US invasion of Iraq, where our political and social leaders were anxious for some sort of tangible activity that would “respond” to the 9/11 attacks.  It is clear now that what we got is an extremely expensive (in terms of money and lives) endeavor which made the world and the United States worse off and completely failed to “respond” to the 9/11 attacks.

John McCain and Sarah Palin now assert that they are different than George W. Bush.  It is equally clear that they wish to continue the same failed policies of the current Administration, especially the war-mongering.  Based on the kinds of answers they are giving to questions posed to them, it is also clear that McCain and Palin are political fundamentalists who reject any evidence that does not fit in their pre-conceived notion of how the world works.  We can’t afford any more leaders who reject the importance of inconvenient evidence.  We desperately need leaders who are self-critical and who are not embarassed to admit this.

It is without apology, then, that we will continue to take an unrelenting side-excursion into politics, at least until November, because it is really not detour at all. Rather, the current campaign is allowing us to see, in a tangible and high-stakes way, the intellectual concerns raised in this site ever since we appeared in 2006.

Duped from Ethics Gradient.

They’ve started advertising the DVD version of that infernal, mendacious, highly offensive, wilfully ignorant and misleading waste of megabytes known as Expelled. Bay of Fundie has scratched the surface of their advertising and revealed some new information.

Now, given that this is the DVD release of Expelled, it makes me wonder what kind of special features they’ll include. Of course no one can know for sure, but I have something of a wish list:

- a complete timeline of all the steps taken & communication entered into to secure the participation of such people as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, including a full explanation for the stark deviation from the premise of the original film: it was originally presented to Myers & Dawkins as a documentary named “Crossroads”, detailing the intersection of religion & science, which it clearly did not turn out to be, either by name or nature

- full, uncut, unedited interviews with the above-named

- a full explanation from the film’s producers of PZ Myer’s own expulsion from a screening of Expelled by security staff before he’d entered the theatre, despite the fact that he’d registered to attend under his own name and hadn’t attempted any kind of subterfuge, as was alleged early on by the producers (as well as an explanation of how Richard Dawkins, arguably more recognisable than PZ Myers, was allowed to enter unmolested)

- behind-the-scenes segments showing such things as exactly who comprised the audience in Ben Stein’s opening, paranoid address to college “students”and a clear explanation of Adolf Hitler’s alleged use Darwin’s theory of evolution to justify his horrific experiments

(more…)

This past Saturday afternoon, after doing my dance duty at the annual “Dancing in the Street” at Grand Center, across from Powell Symphony Hall, I wandered the booths of the adjacent “Green Homes and Renewable Energy Festival” going on in Grandel Square behind the stage. There were plenty of solar panels, windmills, composters, insulation plans, PAC’s, and so forth.

But what really impressed me was this oversize black surfboard-looking thing under an awning surrounded by young Christians. It was the second place winner of the North American Solar Challenge 2008: The Principia Solar Car.

I regularly see Principia College students who drive down from Elsah, IL to dance with us. But it was a pleasure to converse with the young engineers, craftspeople, and even marketing students who created and support this little marvel.

Each of the little GaAs solar cells costs over $30, and the body was hand made by sudents out of graphite mesh, resin, and structural honeycomb. Even the wheels were custom made. These younguns are every bit as dedicated as I remember from my college daze. [sic]

How can I spot them as Christian? Well, Principia is explicitly “A Liberal Arts College for Christian Scientists”. They might have some odd ideas about Life, the Universe, and Everything, but Gould’s principle of Nonoverlapping Magisteria seems to allow them a solid education outside of that realm.

And How to Build a Solar Car is not their title for these galleries of building the car, but it should be.

I have personally heard this claim from several Christian Fundamentalists. It usually doesn’t survive examination. They were raised to the church, had a normal adolescent rebellion and denied everything to do with the authority structure they knew. Then as they matured they experienced the guided hallucination (revelation, dream, epiphany, psychotic break) that returned them to the church with the burning fervor of any new convert. Proverbs 22-6 pretty well promises this return to type.

What was their “atheism” like? Let’s quote one who has recently been visiting us:

“I have lived life apart from God (thinking that I was the center of the universe, not wanting to admit that I was a follower, I was convinced of my uniqueness).”

I don’t know any atheists like that.

“Center of the Universe“? Rational atheists know that the universe is big, and the Earth is tiny. We are as unlikely to be the center of the universe as we are certainly living on a minor planet near a smallish star near the edge of our own little galaxy of 200,000,000,000 or more stars. This is a minor galaxy in our local galactic cluster, that is itself nothing significant in the vast foam of galaxies. All created for “me”? Uh. Huh.

“Convinced of my Uniqueness“? Aside from the statistical uniqueness of any macroscopic assembly of fermions compared to any other, atheists usually know that we are basically interchangeable parts of any social unit larger than their close circle of family and friends. Every individual is unique unto himself. But not to the social matrix in which we live. Any of us might have written this post, allowing for stylistic differences, pleasing or offending the same readers.

“Not wanting to admit I was a follower” is typical adolescence. Sociologically and anthropologically, humans are pack or tribe animals, somewhat like wolves but more like bonobos, who form fractal group hierarchies naturally. Teens are especially prone to forming cliques with leaders and followers within and between. But the followers don’t want to think of themselves as such, so they claim to be individualists, as they carefully mimic the behaviors and accouterments of the current peer leaders while carefully disassociating themselves from the societies of their progenitors and predecessors.

“Life apart from God“? I was never a theist. The faiths in which my parents were raised canceled out before I was born, and they quietly raised atheist kids in a rural Christian neighborhood. We never did drugs, we never were promiscuous. We respected our elders as well as did our peers, and lived by the Golden Rule. Excluding Santa Claus, we never believed in invisible father figures. We never believed in eternal posthumous punishment for our own actions, much less for the actions of our very distant ancestors.
Yes, I was raised apart from God. Never missed him.

Another charge raised (but not in this particular quote) is that Atheists think the world was always as it now is. Nope. Rational atheists know (and most Eastern philosophies have always held) that the world is ever changing. Mountain ranges come and go. Oceans relatively rise and recede. Glaciers come and go, and continents drift gracefully like the slag on ladle of steel. Societies, languages, civilizations, and species are always evolving, even faster than the landscape. The Sahara wetlands (a true Garden of Eden) became a desert in the time that man has lived there. All of this is measurable.

Was I raised with any beliefs? Sure. I always believed in discernible causes for any given effect. I probably believed in Evolution until I had enough education to understand it. Now I know it. Like gravity, electromagnetism, or quantum parity.

Just like Me? I don’t think so.

There was a recent online tempest about an article posted by Roger Ebert outlining, nay promoting, the Creationist way of thinking. For a few days, many were arguing about whether his site was hacked, or had he lost his rational mind? I voted for “hacked”.

Turns out, he was attempting satire. He argues that anyone aware of his earlier writing should see the invisible quotes used to denote irony. He claims that anyone today should recognize that satire as easily as they did for Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” in the 1720’s.

But, as PZ Myers points out, had Parliament in Swift’s time been discussing recipes for Irish babies, and running candidates on a pro-baby eating platform, that satire would also have fallen flat.

Apparently, Poe’s Law needs some better distribution:

“… it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.”

Pharyngula suggests: “Maybe we need to rename Poe’s Law to Ebert’s Fallacy.”

I am not one to encourage a lawsuit, and am no expert in the law. But if you read the details about this suit, you might want to give to the cause. In brief, a Creationist posted a long monologue rehashing many long-disproved arguments claiming to be original and irrefutable proofs of God (the particular Christian Fundamentalist one). Our “hero” Martin Wagner, host of Atheist Experience soundly debunked many sections thereof on his blog back in June.

At first, strong responses were exchanged. But then YP (our villain) libeled Wagner in Wagner’s own wiki listing and on other blogs, some created just for this purpose. But he did it all from his regular ip address. Completely traceable.

When Wagner publicly called him on it, YP sent a Cease and Desist injunction for exposing his illegal tactics plus the threat of a suit if he didn’t immediately recant.

So, reluctantly Wagner is suing in response. But suits cost money, so at the bottom of the page linked above, there are some Donation buttons. Should you wish to help an Atheist in distress. The linked post also has links to all the supporting materials should you wish to check them out.

Here’s SNL’s recent skit concerning John McCain’s wave of dishonest campaign ads:

Reductive religion is just as objectionable as reductive science, and for the same reason: Reality is large, and our minds are small

-Wendell Berry, The Burden of the Gospels

Regulars know that our particular corner of the blogosphere, already hazardous enough (see name), has recently been hit by a juggernaut of rhetoric whose driver is under the influence of a kind of intoxication of certainty. While I understand that almost everyone is tired of the debate, I’d like to say that in some ways I recognize the embattled feeling he communicates so vividly.

I think any of us who are parents and who try to instill in our children skills of self-control, responsibility,  and compassion, feel that we are swimming against the tide of the whole culture. I want my daughter to realize that she has value and worth beyond sexual attractiveness, but I face a culture that glorifies pimps and hos and pornstars - a culture, in short that views sex as a commodity. I want her to have self-control and the ability to delay gratification, but the culture says “Grab it now. You deserve it!”

The normalization of the doctrine of limitlessness has produced a sort of moral minimalism: the desire to be efficient at any cost, to be unencumbered by complexity. The minimization of neighborliness, respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-subordination—this is the culture of which our present leaders and heroes are the spoiled children…We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.

–Wendell Berry, Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limit

I want her to be responsible and accountable, but we our leaders refuse to be held accountable for their mistakes. CEO’s feel no qualms about drawing large salaries while running their countries into the ground. I live in a country where politicians feel no compunction about repeating what they know to be lies and distortion about Iraq’s connection with 9/11.

…our cultural tradition is in large part the record of our continuing effort to understand ourselves as beings specifically human: to say that, as humans, we must do certain things and we must not do certain things. We must have limits or we will cease to exist as humans; perhaps we will cease to exist, period. At times, for example, some of us humans have thought that human beings, properly so called, did not make war against civilian populations, or hold prisoners without a fair trial, or use torture for any reason…

-Wendell Berry, Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limit

I want her to have compassion, and the courage to fight for justice, but again, these are qualities not often found in those our culture rewards with money and power.

The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is that we cannot spend and consume endlessly..  An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product.

Wendell Berry, Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

In short, while I feel with Erik that a moral indictment of society is in order, I think we need to get beyond obsessing with what goes on in other people’s bedrooms and really look at society as a whole. We say that we want our children to have ethics, responsibility, compassion and critical thinking skills. These values are hard to teach when all around them children see adults rewarded for the opposite qualities.

Finally, I would like to speak in favor of discipline. Not discipline as punishment, but discipline as developing the habit of turning away from the path of least resistance. We speak of academic or scientific disciplines: to be effective in science, the mind must be disciplined to avoid assumptions and to demand evidence. There are also spiritual disciplines which can help develop compassion and develop what the Buddhists call “skillfulness” in personal relationships. Mental and emotional discipline both require a certain skepticism to our own deeply held certainties. For in the end, while the universe is infinite,  our minds are finite.

[I have interspersed some quotes of Wendell Berry with my thoughts, as an example of a Christian and conservative (in the classic sense of the word, one who conserves) writer whose thinking I respect, though I don't always agree with it.]

McCain said to not care crowd walked out after Gov. Palin’s speech

“Hey, she can see Russia from her porch!”

(Faux News, September 19, 2008). At a speech today in New Mexico, GOP Vice-Presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin announced that the “Palin-McCain ticket” will prevail in the November election.

Governor Palin’s stump speech then went on to repeat the tired, untrue and completely de-bunked lies of the GOP about Barack Obama and his tax policies and their impact on small businesses and middle class America.

The GOP faithful attending, having received their red meat marching orders from Karl Rove, gave Gov. Palin a rousing reception, great applause, and then filed out of the venue as GOP Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain began his speech. Some present began to wonder if they’d ever hear anything substantive from Gov. Palin, others reported Gov. Palin did not blink.

McCain was overheard to remark that he also had seen Russia from Gov. Palin’s porch. An immediate after event analysis by Fox News reported this part of McCain’s speech as further evidence of Gov. Palin’s expertise in international relations. As a result some GOP members began to question the wisdom of Palin as McCain’s choice to possibly take his place in the White House.

In a Nevada venue, Democratic nominee Barack Obama questioned Sen. McCain’s credentials to “run against Washington” and the “good old boys.”  Obama ran an ad that gives a two minute speech outlining the economic policies for an Obama presidency.

Why isn’t Senator Barack Obama way ahead of John McCain in the polls?  Why is this race so tight?  Bob Cesca has an idea:

Hmm. I can’t imagine why that is. It’s not like Senator Obama’s patriotism and character is being assassinated for three hours every morning on cable news — six hours if we include the spasmodic howler monkeys on FOX & Friends. I can’t imagine why the polls are so close when Joe Scarborough is helping his Republican allies to once again turn this critical national debate into another blind recitation of Lee Greenwood lyrics.

Why are the polls so close? Not only do around 25 percent of Americans watch FOX News Channel on a regular basis, but, from coast to coast, there are more than a thousand far-right talk radio stations occupied by shows that make Morning Joe sound like an Olbermann Special Comment. And 17 percent of Americans are glued to it at work and in their cars. Talkers like Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity, John Gibson, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, Bill Bennett and Glenn Beck broadcast on your public air around the clock. Non-stop. Unrelenting. Only interrupted by Accu-weather and traffic. Free to anyone with an AM radio.

I don’t know if you’ve dared to listen to far-right talk radio lately, but I can assure you that they’re not ignoring Senator Obama — or his family. Put it this way: if you only got your news and opinions from talk radio, you’d probably believe that Senator Obama is some kind of foreign-born baby-killing Manchurian Candidate terrorist — if not a sexist uppity black man who, if he loses in November, will incite race riots in every city.

The following is a quote lifted from Charlie Stross’s blog and is pretty much In Full.

We. Are. Not. Going. To. Die. On. Wednesday.

The maximum energy the particles generated by the LHC (7TeV) get up to is many orders of magnitude below the maximum energy of cosmic rays that hit the Earth’s upper atmosphere from space every fricking day. None of them have created black holes and gobbled up the planet, or turned us all into strange matter. Nor have they done ditto to any cosmic bodies we can see, such as planets or stars. Therefore the world isn’t going end when they switch on the LHC on Wednesday. QED.

Joking is all very well, but please, can we not be spreading the FUD and scaring people needlessly? The current climate of superstitious dread with respect to the sciences is bad enough as it is …

As everyone knows we have a presidential election coming up. The two combatants are flinging accusations at one another as to why the other guy isn’t fit to lead. According to McCain, Obama is not only another tax-and-spend Liberal but one with no real experience. McCain is claiming to be an agent of change, despite a record that really doesn’t reflect that. To be fair, he’s been on board