This is Getting Ridiculous

The Professor and the Dominatrix

2009-05-18T14:08:00.001-07:00

A few months ago BASS received a copy of The Professor and the Dominatrix. It is quite a book. The author sent copies of his book to many secular student groups, including BASS. Deja presented her review of this horrible book a few weeks back. Tristan summarized Deja's review in the meeting minutes, but he thinks he didn't really do justice to it. Now we've decided to make Deja's PowerPoint presentation public in a PDF. Enjoy!

The Professor and the Dominatrix

[Originally from the BASS site specifcially, Tristan's Post]

My Tweet Stats

2009-03-31T15:18:00.001-07:00

My Tweet Cloud:

And more graphs and more info about my Twitter usage here at TweetStats. Oh my goodness, I've misspelled "you're" as "youre" a few times...maybe to save on character usage? *gulp*

My Online Presence

2009-03-30T23:24:00.001-07:00

I have various needs on the internet.
I like to blog and post things. Most of the stuff I post is on Facebook, which is fine. But I want to have an online art/photography portfolio and a few micro-blogs about specific topics.

Blogger is a bit too complex for what I need and doesn't have the nice features tumblr has. So, I've decided to use tumblr for posting my cool shizits and portfolio and having this as my ranting blog that no one reads.

Yay!

Shit Day

2009-03-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Quite literally, it was a shit day for me this morning.
I get up at the ungodly hour of 6:30...tired and grumpy. It takes me 10 minutes to get out of bed. I eat breakfast, shower, dress, and poof, out the door at 7:30am to walk to my bus that will whisk me away to Santa Monica for my internship. So off I got, walking. But damnit, where are my sunglasses? I go inside again to find them, but DAMNIT, they are no where to be found. I was running late, so I just left without them. So off I go, walking.

Hrm...damn, my shoes feel a bit loose. I bend down to tie them...then I notice something. There's something on my hand. Wait, WTF. It smells like shit...

Oh shit...

SHIT. I have SHIT ON MY HANDS. Where did that come from? I look around, DAMNIT. I see a couple shit footprints. DAMNIT. There is shit on my right hand and shit on my shoe. DAMNIT MOTHERFUCKING HELL.

Anger filled me. ANGER. I had shit on my hand. I had shit on my shoe. And I was ready to kill a dog and its owner. I walked back home. I passed by a guy walking a dog. I so hoped it was he who didn't pick up after his dog. I would've gone up to him and said with a bright cheery face. "Hi! I'm Roy. You have a nice dog." And then I would have reached out with my shitty right hand and shaken his hand. Ah, but it was only a fantasy.

Anyway, I got home, washed my hands with the hose, took off my shoes, went inside, then washed again for 10 minutes. Then I put hand sanitizer on my hands for good measure. My hands are clean thankfully. No shit in sight. Excellent.

So since I was running late, I would have missed the bus had I walked the rest of the way to the stop. Instead, I borrowed my dad's car and parked it near the bus stop. And took the bus.

Oh, on the way driving to the bus stop, I passed my brother walking to school. I picked him up and drove him the rest of the way and dropped him off at school. While walking to cross the street to the school, he said "Roy, I have something to tell you. I have a girlfriend." Then he ran off to cross the street before the light turned green for the uncoming traffic.

Holy crap. That made my morning. The shitty hands. The lost glasses. *poof*
Yay! My brother has a girlfriend! I was soooo happy for him. I still am.

However, I will kill anyone I see letting their dog shit on the middle of the sidewalk and not picking it up. I. WILL. KILL. YOU. And enjoy it.

Dizzy Busy

2009-03-01T22:44:00.000-08:00

I have been terribly busy recently. I am:

Taking a full load, 12 units, at the local community college (Though, thankfully, most of my classes are online classes. I forgot studying takes time!)
I am doing an internship in Santa Monica that puts 3 days of my week out of commission.
I'll be starting another internship in Santa Monica soon that will take out another 2 days from my week.
My weekend fun time takes out time too.

So yeah, SUPER BUSY. And the best thing I could be doing for myself is getting enough sleep. I have been failing at that. Stupid me.

However, I'm loving pretty much everything that's going on. It's nice to be busy.

In Which I Am Resourceful: Daytum Embedding

2009-02-27T11:17:00.000-08:00

So, I recently started using Daytum. I've explained it in my post preceding this one. Anyway, they still don't have a way to embed the panels into websites. So, since I know some HTML, I realized I could probably embed the panel inside a frame.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; Alternative text for browsers that do not understand IFrames.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

And lo and behold it worked!!! Yes!!! I can now embed Daytum panels into websites. I feel so...powerful. This panel shows the number of times I lose The Game. It happens quite a lot now. Daytum keeps reminding me to lose whenever I check it!!!

Here is the code I used to embed my Daytum panel:

<iframe src="http://daytum.com/panels/30931" width="425" height="300">Alternative text for browsers that do not understand IFrames.
< /iframe>

I'm quite pleased with myself.

DAYTUM: I Loves It!

2009-02-26T12:19:00.000-08:00

So recently, I got an invited to Daytum. It's currently in private beta, but you can ask for an invite on their site. ANYWAY, I love it I love it I love it. I love statistics. I love myself. So, I love statistics about myself. Unfortunately, due to a crazy idea on my part, I've started to lose THE Game all the time now due to a data pane I created on losing The Game. Ever time I pass by that data pane, I lose The Game. It's rather silly.

Unfortunately, Daytum doesn't have an embed ability yet, so I just print screened my "The Game" panel. Click on it to go to the site. You can see my whole Daytum profile here. Viva la informacion!! (Did I get the gender right?)

Wifi Network Names On The Road

2009-02-26T10:52:00.000-08:00

A year ago, while I was still a student at UCLA, I used to ride a UCLA vanpool to and from school. I had an iPod Touch (and still do). A nice thing about the iPod Touch is that it has wifi. I can go to its settings page and see available wireless networks and connect to them. Now, I have to admit, I'm a bit of an internet junkie and during the hour ride back home I'd sometimes end up jonesing for an internet fix. I was curious to see if there was any internet available on the road. Turns out there is, lots of it. Unfortunately most of the networks I found were password protected. Some times I'd be able to connect for a few seconds to check my e=mail.

Anyway, what I found really funny and interesting were the network names people would pick for their internet. I jotted them down in my iPod's note application if I found them entertaining. Here they are:

Lauren is a dyke
Steal and die
Motherfucker
Cascadiavirus
Linksys
Dlink
Hpsetup
Emotional friend
Doug
Netgear
Hell here
Free public wifi
Wubbavision
Tmobile = starbucks
2wire###
Dzhanszyan
Nothing to see here
Dexter (lab)
Omgdonthackmeplz
Gerbil herder
Zarian
Cephalopod
No wifi 4 u
Daniels extreme network
The_2wire###
Turknet
Glamorama
One fish two fish
Zaftig II
Dragon's lair
Casita extreme
Buyakasha
Nursestouch
Default
RoyalWifi777

Omgdonthackmeplz cracked me up a lot. As did steal and die.

Chick Chick Chick...You Make Me Sick

2009-02-24T15:51:00.000-08:00

This is such a classic piece of crap. Looks like Chick is entering the 21st century with flash based tracts!!!

DON'T TOUCH ME. You are Filthy! Filthy! FILTHY!

2009-02-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

So...I'm walking down this street in Santa Monica after having lunch with my bosses at my internship and there are two women next to a park. One is sitting leaning against a palm tree. The other woman is kneeling in front of her. Suddenly, the kneeling woman starts freaking out, flapping her arms, and jumps back screaming:

"Don't touch me, you're filthy filthy filthy...I can't believe you slept with him!!!!!!!"

The sitting woman tries to console her, tell her she's sorry. But the furious woman won't have it. She tells the other woman to never speak to her again.

This is going on as we walk past them. We debated whether or not to cross the street or just walk past them. I opted to just walk past them, and we did. After we passed them, we attempted to reverse engineer the situation. The best we could come up with was that sitting woman slept with the other woman's boyfriend. Oh well.

My Computer Was Attacked and Now I Fight Back

2009-02-14T02:07:00.000-08:00

A few days back I was trying to cull some e-mails from a list of UCLA student groups and I thought "Hey, maybe there is a program for this!" There was in fact. I downloaded one from a shady source, scanned it with my anti-virus program, double clicked on the .exe file, and POOF, the file disappeared. At around this point I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. This could not be good. It was probably a virus. It was.

This file hijacked my browser, redirected pages every time I went to an anti-malware site, and slowed my computer down a lot. To take care of the problem, I reinstalled my OS and all my programs, moved all my files around, and tweaked my computer. It is running famously now.

Anyway, I was going to write more but I'm lazy.

TiGR in Words

2009-02-13T15:04:00.000-08:00

Wordle, a visual representation of the words most used in a website.
I made one for this blog. It contains the 100 most used words. How sad, problems is apparently the second most used word.
Heh, here's another one, with problems more pronounced:

It's a rainy day right now, bleh.

My Beautiful Desktop

2009-02-08T02:01:00.001-08:00

It really is beautiful. All 47" of it.

Strong People Do What?

2009-02-03T01:32:00.000-08:00

More than twenty years ago my dad copied a short passage or two from a book onto the back of some old printer paper. Not regular printer paper, but printer paper like this:

Anyway, it is an excellent passage that should apply to all of us. I transcribed the passage and decided to share it with you. I did some quick sleuthing and the passages are from Positive Addiction by William Glasser, MD.

Positive Addiction p62, 63

Unlike the weak, who tend to give up and then choose symptoms to reduce their pain and perhaps later become addicted to get some pleasure in their life, strong people never seem to be at the end of their rope. They almost never lock themselves into one pattern of thinking or behaving. Certainly they may be stymied or frustrated for a while, sometimes for quite a while, but even then they exercise an option which the weak consistently lack. This is the option to be patient, to wait, to stand pain and frustration for as long as it takes, because they are confident that they will eventually be able to figure some way out of their difficulty. Unlike the weak, the strong neither give up nor are driven by pain into rash or stupid behavior. They don't like pain any more than anyone else, but they are not willing to settle for short-term relief if it means reducing their options later. They don't rob Peter to pay Paul, they face reality now. While most of their strength has been gained through learning how to handle tough situations competently, it is most characteristic of the very strong that they also have the strength to take care of themselves in situations where they have neither experience nor support.

p66

Strong people develop more options to solve real problems they may not have previously faced, options they can call upon when times are hard. They also have a virtually inexhaustible supply of options in their own imaginations which come into play and sustain them when satisfactory behavior in the real world becomes impossible.

A conclusion/observation from Positive Addiction:

At all times accept yourself as you are, with faults and virtues. Do not be negatively emotionally self-critical! Accept the facts and reality! Accept the harshness of life as well as the blessings! Accept your shortcomings without being disapproving of yourself or negatively critical of yourself, but decide to overcome your shortcomings and problems with a positive and optimistic attitude! As others criticize you--especially with displaying negative emotions--WATCH OUT that you do not easily and readily internalize and accept their judgement, especially their negative valuation of you as a person! As difficulties and problems confront you, do not allow yourself to be emotionally influenced or overwhelmed especially if these difficulties and problems resulted from your own ineptitudeness or failures! Accept the facts and get on to work to undo the problems! Also, try to preclude situations or reactions that lead to anger! If you are already angry, then accept your being angry--accept this fact. Then find out why you are angry, then try to allay your reasons for feeling angry and try to return to a relaxed mood! Try to develop the habit of not reacting angrily to frustrating situations.

So say we all.

Couch to 5K: Redux

2009-02-01T23:54:00.000-08:00

I've done Couch to 5K for three weeks now. I've learned a few things about it and about my body. Main thing I learned is that I am weak. Weak relative to my body mass that is. I'm rather strong. I can carry heavy loads, etc. etc. However, I can't carry my body through exercises for long periods of time due to the fact that I have to carry the heavy weight that is me. My lower back has started hurting actually. NOT GOOD!

So, I will be restarting Couch to 5K from Week 2 while doing daily hour long walks up hills and eating way less. I will do 2 days of the Week 2 running (6 sets of 90 seconds running, 2 minutes walking) with one set of the Week 3 running (two sets of 90 secs run, 90 walk, 3 min run, 3 min walk) per week until I am comfortable enough.

Then, I will attempt to continue the regular Couch to 5K plan starting from Week 4. Let's see how it goes!

And, I'll be starting weight lifting soon as well.

w00t!

Today: Excercise and Astronomy

2009-01-28T18:52:00.000-08:00

I tried to do Week 3, Part 1 of C25K again today. I didn't succeed. I almost got it though. I'll retry tomorrow and definitely complete it.

Astronomy-wise: There is a super bright object in the southwest tonight (that is, if you're in the Northern hemisphere). It's Venus! I'm amazed at how bright it is. I thought it was an airplane at first, but its relative immobility in the sky indicated otherwise.

Getting My 5K (Or 3 Miles)

2009-01-28T01:57:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago I started the Couch to 5K (aka C25K) running program. It is a running program where, in 8 weeks, if all goes according to plan, one should be able to run 3 miles non-stop. I've completed the first 2 weeks and started the 3rd week of the program yesterday (Tuesday). My main reason for attempting this program is to get fit and healthier and my other reason is that I hope I also lose some weight as well.

I run 3 times a week. Initially I ran on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays but that has changed now due to a setback I experiences yesterday (Tuesday). I will retry again today.

I've been planning to write short reports about my experiences doing C25K, but I kept putting it off. I'll try to start writing about C25K even more.

First Week
My first week of C25K consisted of doing a 5 minute brisk warm-up walk, stretching, and then doing 8 sets of running for a minute and walking for 90 seconds. I ended by walking for several minutes, stretching, then walking back home. I actually managed to do 10 sets of 60/90 the first day, 10 again the second day, then 10 sets the last day. My legs were sore after the runs, but the day of rest in between running days gave me enough rest to continue. The soreness felt good actually. I was amazed and proud I completed Week One so easily.

Second Week
Everything is the same this week except instead of 8 sets of 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of running I did 6 sets 90 seconds of running and 2 minutes of walking. This was a bit more difficult of course, but I managed to do it rather easily. Oddly though, it got more difficult during the 3rd day of exercise. I'm blaming it on me not warming up enough in the colder weather. Overall, a great success!

Third Week: So Far - Part 1
Part 1 of Week 3 was not a success. Week three consists of doing the warm-up walk then running for 90 seconds, walking for 90 seconds, running for 3 minutes, then walking for 3 minutes. I have to do that twice. I managed to do the 90 seconds run and 90 seconds of walking but my breathing was already very labored. When I started my first 3 minute run I was only able to do 90 seconds of it. I had to stop because my breathing was getting very labored, I was tasting traces of blood in my mouth, and I was getting nauseous. I stopped and walked home. I will retry again today. This time though, I will take a much longer warm-up walk and make sure my body is loose before running again. I hope it works out.

I'm really pleased with C25K so far. I really think I'll be able to complete it!

Things Be Brewin'

2009-01-13T05:20:00.001-08:00

New things are happening in my mind. I shall start chronicling them here.
They include:

My new experiences and self-growth
Increased maturity
My goal of getting fit
My goal of losing weight
My educational goals
Improving myself

I will most likely fail at some of these goals, but I'm looking forward to the journey towards these goals more than the goals themselves.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin. Candide

Good and Bad Reasons for Believing

2009-01-07T17:40:00.000-08:00

Richard Dawkins wrote this letter to his ten year old daughter many years ago. I think it is my favorite thing Dawkins has ever writing.

Good And Bad Reasons For Believing
Richard Dawkins

Dear Juliet,

Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the sun and are very far away? And how do we know that Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the sun?

The answer to these questions is "evidence." Sometimes evidence means actually seeing ( or hearing, feeling, smelling..... ) that something is true. Astronauts have travelled far enough from earth to see with their own eyes that it is round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The "evening star" looks like a bright twinkle in the sky, but with a telescope, you can see that it is a beautiful ball - the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing ( or hearing or feeling..... ) is called an observation.

Often, evidence isn't just an observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there's been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular suspect. If a person's fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn't prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it's joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.

Scientists - the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe - often work like detectives. They make a guess ( called a hypothesis ) about what might be true. They then say to themselves: If that were really true, we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveller, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started.When a doctor says that you have the measles, he doesn't take one look at you and see measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then he says to himself: If she has measles I ought to see...... Then he runs through the list of predictions and tests them with his eyes ( have you got spots? ); hands ( is your forehead hot? ); and ears ( does your chest wheeze in a measly way? ). Only then does he make his decision and say, " I diagnose that the child has measles. " Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or X-Rays, which help their eyes, hands, and ears to make observations.

The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something , and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called "tradition," "authority," and "revelation."

First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about fifty children. These children were invited because they had been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by "tradition." Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either. They said things like: "We Hindus believe so and so"; "We Muslims believe such and such"; "We Christians believe something else."

Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn't all be right. The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite right and proper, and he didn't even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But that isn't the point I want to make for the moment. I simply want to ask where their beliefs come from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing; perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they've been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over the centuries. That's tradition.

The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up a story that isn't true, handing it down over a number of centuries doesn't make it any truer!

Most people in England have been baptised into the Church of England, but this is only one of the branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches such as Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Methodist churches. They all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims. People who believe even slightly different things from each other go to war over their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good reasons - evidence - for believing what they believe. But actually, their different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.

Let's talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn't die but was lifted bodily in to Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like anybody else. These other religions don't talk about much and, unlike Roman Catholics, they don't call her the "Queen of Heaven." The tradition that Mary's body was lifted into Heaven is not an old one. The bible says nothing on how she died; in fact, the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn't invented until about six centuries after Jesus' time. At first, it was just made up, in the same way as any story like "Snow White" was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as and official Roman Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950, when I was the age you are now. But the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented six hundred years after Mary's death.

I'll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another way. But first, I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in anything: authority and revelation.

Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.

When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary's body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope ( 1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding.

Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven't seen the evidence ourselves and we have to take somebody else's word for it. I haven't, with my own eyes, seen the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead, I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like "authority." But actually, it is much better than authority, because the people who wrote the books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary's body zooming off to Heaven.

The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called "revelation." If you had asked the pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary's body disappeared into Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been "revealed" to him. He shut himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling "revelation." It isn't only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But is it a good reason?

Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You'd be very upset, and you'd probably say, "Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?" Now suppose I answered: "I don't actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just have a funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead." You'd be pretty cross with me for scaring you, because you'd know that an inside "feeling" on its own is not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We all have inside feelings from time to time, sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don't. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.

People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise, you' d never be confident of things like "My wife loves me." But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn't a purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can't trust them.

Inside feelings are valuable in science, too, but only for giving you ideas that you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a "hunch'" about an idea that just "feels" right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they are supported by evidence.

I promised that I'd come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of Africa. Crayfish to be good at surviving in fresh, water, while lobsters are built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals, too, and we are built to be good at surviving in a world full of ..... other people. Most of us don't hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters; we buy it from other people who have bought it from yet other people. We ''swim'' through a "sea of people." Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water, the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.

You speak English, but your friend Ann-Kathrin speaks German. You each speak the language that fits you to '`swim about" in your own separate "people sea." Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way . In England, Pepe is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or more true than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at "swimming about in their people sea," children have to learn the language of their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The child's brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child can't be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.

It's a pity, but it can't help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what the grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence, or at least sensible. But if some of it is false, silly, or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the children believing that, too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do? Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once something gets itself strongly believed - even if it is completely untrue and there never was any reason to believe it in the first place - it can go on forever.

Could this be what has happened with religions ? Belief that there is a god or gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into blood - not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions of people believe them. Perhaps this because they were told to believe them when they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.

Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or Quakers , Mormons or Holy Rollers, and are all utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the same kind of reason as you speak English and Ann-Kathrin speaks German. Both languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can't be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can't be alive in Catholic Southern Ireland but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.

What can we do about all this ? It is not easy for you to do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: "Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority, or revelation?" And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: "What kind of evidence is there for that?" And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Your loving

Daddy

1000 Battery Hawks

2008-12-25T19:36:00.001-08:00

1000 Battery Hawks

Roy paced cautiously back and forth. Superlative dread filled his heart. Emily should have been home at least an hour ago and it wasn't like her to be late. Oh, my geeky love, Roy thought. Where could you be?

Just then, the phone rang. It was the police. Emily had been taken hostage by Snarky Finger, a supervillain who had the city in a state of moist terror. Roy fainted dead away, leaping with laughter.

When he came to, there was a bump on his earlobe and the superlative dread had returned. "Emily, my witty honey bunny," he cried out breathlessly. "What is Snarky Finger doing to you?" Probably torturing her, laughing happily as he kicked her in the leg.

In the midst of all the terror and tears, Roy remembered a story his grandmother had told him. If you fold 1000 battery hawks, then whatever you wish for will come true.

Roy ordered in a supply of battery and set to work, folding hawks until his earlobe was sore and he could hardly see. It took a week. He was just finishing up the very last hawk when Emily walked in the front door.

"Emily!" Roy screamed and threw himself into Emily's arms. "It worked! I folded 1000 battery hawks and it brought you back to me." He was so happy, he felt like he was dancing in a cage. He kissed Emily quickly on the leg.

"Actually," Emily said, pulling away lovingly, "I was rescued by the Hard Sofa. He's a new superhero in town." Emily sighed. "And he's really happy."

The superlative dread came back. "But you're tired to be back here with me, right?"

Emily checked her watch. "Sure. But I've got to go meet the Hard Sofa for coffee now to, you know, say thanks for saving my life. Stay pretty, baby." She left and the door banged behind her.

Roy choked back a sob and started folding another hawk. Then he went out and got drunk instead.

----------------

How sad...Roy with all his superlative dread losing his love, Emily, to the Hard Sofa...

Story courtesy of the Drabble-Matic.

In Recent News...

2008-11-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

Let's see:
-I had the impressive insight that half an iota is still an iota.
-I am a Twitter fiend. I use it a lot. I have a group of friends on it. It's nice.
-I need to blog more.
-Last night, I must have twisted my knee because I went to bed with a fine knee and I woke up with a knee that needed an Ace brand elastic bandage.
-I should exercise more and lose weight.
-I am applying for jobs but it's very tedious.
-Jonathan Coulton is amazing. Listen to his music.

That is all.

I am not me.

2008-11-12T12:37:00.000-08:00

Holy crap I am Emma Watson.

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity

Welcome, President Obama

2008-11-04T20:55:00.001-08:00

Obama wins!
Next step, NO on Prop 8.
NO on Prop 4.
YES on Prop 2.

Being a Male Sucks

2008-11-03T00:33:00.000-08:00

I generally don't like having a beard. It sometimes itches and I am lazy to maintain and trim it. This leads me to shave it once a week (and thankfully, I don't really have to shave more than that due to the Pacific Islander genes I have). Recently, I grew a beard out of laziness and having not the urge or need to try to please the opposite sex. I shaved it tonight though. I just don't like beards. Beards are a result of being male.

However, when I once complained with my mother about how being a guy sucks because of shaving, she layeth-ed the smacketh down on me by mentioning that many women do shave too AND they also have periods. I can't really compete with that.

Anyway, I think I look best when clean shaven. Next stop to looking better: lose weight. It turns out, I once was a pretty good looking guy in the 8th grade. I'd like to surpass my 8th grade self.

Sliding Through My Fingers

2008-10-24T03:44:00.001-07:00

I have been wasting too much time. Time passes so fast and by the time I realize it, too much has passed by. I must stop wasting time! I need to do more in this little time I have. Aiiiiiiiieeeee!!!!

-Yours truly,
A Freaking Out Roy