Blog Shtuff

I knew it!

[link] Q. Dad, will you explain the theory of relativity to me? I don't understand why time goes slower at great speed.
A. It's because you keep changing time zones. See, if you fly to California, you gain three hours on a five-hour flight, right? So if you go at the speed of light, you gain more time, because it doesn't take as long to get there. Of course, the theory of relativity only works if you're going west.

Hello, my name is Jim. I've got a writing problem.

Via PZ and Evolutionblog, news that blogging (and writing in general) is actually a therapeutic form of self-medication:

Blogging--It's Good for You

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

Hank says:

That pest Hank Fox (of www.HankFox.com) has tagged you with another idiot blog meme:

Tell the story of a (non-surgical) scar you have somewhere on your body. Answer and tag three other bloggers.

Hmnn. No surgical scars, and I am remarkably lucky in that I have no big accidental scars either.

The only one I can find that's still visible is a Verizon logo-"V"-shaped scar on my right, middle finger. Years ago my ex-wife and I owned an old hand-me-down microwave oven.

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My very first blog post, from that other, dead blog.

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Let's start with who I am. Good question. If I knew that, why would I need a blog?

Of course, I don't actually need one, do I ? I mean, this is my first entry. So presumably I do actually know the answer. It stands to reason.

I suppose I'll have to just let anyone who happens to read this decide who I am over time. Don't say I didn't warn you, because I didn't, and so I know that, Captain Obvious.

I'm a degreed person, which means I have successfully completed university studies. Unlike many people, I mean that--completed. I have no wish to return. Many people I know continually talk about returning to further their education. It makes me wonder what they've been doing. Life is certainly an education if you're paying attention at all.

They also frequently express a belief that I, too, should further my education. Go back to school, get another degree, get a PhD, become a lawyer or a doctor--do something with yourself.

Once upon a time, I had a Xanga blog. Why, I'm not sure. Today I went back and decided to delete it, but I wanted to keep a few of the posts, even though they are long out of date. So I'm posting some here. Likely, since the site was just about inaccessible, nobody has ever read them. Although the same is likely true here, of course. I will store the movie reviews somewhere, since they're from 2005 or so, and drop some of the more general observations here. Like this one:

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Pretty much everybody thinks life sucks, at least in that internal non-objective part of themselves that keeps looking at the best imagined possibility. Everyone. Hugh Hefner may be the lone exception, but he probably has his bitter moments, too.

HELLO,
MY NAME IS JULIET IN SEARCH OF A MAN WHO UNDERSTANDS THE MEANING OF LOVE AS TRUST AND FAITH IN EACH OTHER RATHER THAN ONE WHO SEES LOVE AS THE ONLY WAY OF FUN BUT A MATURED MAN WITH NICE VISSION OF WHAT THE WORLD IS ALL ABOUT SO AFTER SEING YOUR ID IN A SITE I TOOK INTREST PLEASE REPLY ME WITH THIS BOX IF YOU ARE INTRESTED IN ME. (julietdonaldsononlylove@xyz.co.uk).

Quick, someone drop Juliet a note!

OK, got a question for people. And I'm serious about it.

Why so few comments here anymore?

In the last few months, it seems things have really dropped off. Of all the posts currently on the front page, only one got more than 20 comments. Most have less than half that number.

I try mixing up what I post about. Short pieces. Long philosophical ones. Topical items. YouTube clips. Rants. Nothing seems to provoke much discussion. Likewise with the things posted by Brent, Rick, Dirk, and anyone else. Yet anytime I drop in, there's always 20 or 30 people online.

Rather than stating this in the comments of the post, I think a response to Brent's opening paragraphs in his latest review of Vox Day's book warrant a full post.

Brent, unsurprisingly, I agree with you.

Kind of.

Sort of.

Mostly.

Here's what I agree with you about:

I have my own opinions, political views, and values. I have my own, personal, rational for being a person in whom god-belief is absent (an atheist). I recognize no "atheist leaders" or spokesmen, and I endorse no one who claims to speak for me, or insinuates that they speak for me in any way.

Here's where our opinions may part:

I have lately (within the last few years) come to believe that the entire social and political "atheist movement", as it nominally exists, is a big, fat exercise in futility. Atheists are not, in any way, shape, or form, a "group" in the same sense that Methodists, Shriners, or Republicans are a group. The atheists who organize activist marches, set agendas and identify themselves as part of this "atheist movement" group seem to be lying to themselves. There is no cohesive atheist political movement.

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Possummomma needs our help! Her Lupus-related light sensitivity has gotten worse, and she needs to light-proof her home. Even a couple of bucks, from each of us baby-eating evil atheist scum-sucking lowlifes will help.

Berlzebub is organizing the donations at his blog.

Hang in there P-Momma!

One of the longest residents of the UTI blogroll was Andrew Olmsted. Andrew was killed in Iraq two days ago while in service to our country as a soldier.

I always liked Andrew. I liked his writing, I liked the design of his blog, and although I didn't always agree with him, I was seriously impressed by the calm and rational way that he considered the issues and his own opinions about them. As much as you can consider someone, having not met them except on the blogs, I considered Andrew my friend - or at least friendly, like rarely-met acquaintances can be. I saw the potential of friendship, even way back when. Unfortunately, it never blossomed into anything like that. I regret that.

Andrew prepared a final post to be put up at his blog, posted by his friend and co-blogger hilzoy from Obsidian Wings (where Andrew also posted occasionally).

Here it is.

[link] What I don't want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.)

I agree with Andy at World Wide Rant - grab a beer and hoist one to Andrew tonight.

MY INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD

Alvin Miller

(Note: This blog is identical to that on my site. I recommend you clink on the link below to get a more readable version of it than here. Also, Firefox browser blocks the annoying Angelfire popups.)

http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman

TOPICS

Preface MY INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD
Introducing Myself
I'm the Captain
The Joke
The Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead
The Taboo
White Armband
Instant Prophet
The Witches
My Favorite Sport

Like Professor Dawkins, and many of you as well, I am a cultural Christian. I was born and raised in this American society, bathed in Christianity - it's customs, it's traditions, and it's holidays. I love Christmastime and I always have. Here at stately Inscrutable Manor, we celebrate the traditional secular American Christmas not unlike most of our Christian friends and family. We have a tree, gift-giving, dinners and parties with friends and family, and a general period of good cheer and love.

Here are some of my favorite Christmas quotes. Enjoy, and add your own! Merry Christmas and a very happy and safe holiday to everyone!

"Christmas ... is not an eternal event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart..." -Freya Stark

"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'" -Dave Barry

"Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart." -Washington Irving

"Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect."
-Oren Arnold

"Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion." -Ralph Sockman

"Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we'll be seeing six or seven." -W. C. Fields

That's right - I double-dog dare ya to make sense of this lunatic raving, right here on our very own UTI. It was so good, I just had to point it out!

Jim Downey

Les over at SEB had some comments about the new movie made from the first novel in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy called "The Golden Compass".

So, I went to the movie site and checked out the trailer. It looks pretty good, actually!

Clicking through to a blog area, I read through some comments on a post there and came across this one by a commenter named "Angela" that just broke my heart:

[Angela] Chris…i don’t know what to do. ("Chris" is Chris Weitz, the movie's director. -Brent) i love all of the books and i really want to see the movie when it omes out, but my parents seem to have a problem with the books. when my stepmom saw the trailer, she told my dad that she had a problem with the books. i instantly told her that my sister and i had both read the books. Then began a three hour discussion on why spirit guides are a bad thing…especially when the daemens are pronounced deamons…we talked a lot about the compass too…how lyra is able to see the future and the truth in everything…well…the bible is how christians find their way…they think the books read into eastern mystisism and all that jazz. my dad’s a pastor and he doesn’t agree with the things that the books present to young individuals like myself. i explained to him that i see this series as pure fantesy, and that i dont actually believe the ideas presented in the books. As a christian, i do think that some of the things presented in these books contradicts what i believe, but i would never let them change what i believe. i guess it’s just really hard for me to think that i shouldn’t have read the books for that i shouldn’t see the movie. it will also be hard for me if im not allowed to see the movie because it is almost exactly how i pictured the character, and the whole setup in the books.

The poor thing. She's obviously a good kid who loves her parents - and also loves to read and use her imagination. It makes me sad that a parent would want to squash that, for any reason whatsoever.

What are your thoughts? Are you folks going to see the movie when it comes out?

Hi Folks,

Thanks for your patience. I just switched UTI over to a new host - GoDaddy.com. Hopefully this will mean better performance, and less down-time. For some weird reason I cannot get the user avatars up and working at this new box, so I'll keep working on that. (10-29-07 - This has been fixed -Brent)

So, please try and remember to change your links. We are now at:

http://www.unscrewingtheinscrutable.com

...and the RSS feed is at:

http://www.unscrewingtheinscrutable.com/node/feed

I have the old URLs forwarding to this one automagically, so you'll still get here.

Please let me know if you notice anything wonky with the site, other than the missing avatars.

Thanks again!

Former UTI front-pager Alon Levy popped up in the news today.

[link] While there are plenty of groups for students who believe in everything from Catholicism to Zionism, until this semester, there was no group for students who don’t believe in anything.

Columbia Atheists and Agnostics, founded by Alon Levy, a mathematics M.A. student, was organized in an attempt to form what Levy calls “a safe space where the nonreligious can share their views without being called sinners.” After attending a student leadership conference at the Center for Inquiry, a nonprofit organization which supports scientific examination of religion and ethics, Levy was inspired to start an on-campus organization for the nonreligious.

Good for you, Alon!

I set up the Carnival Of The Godless to accept submissions via the very handy blogcarnival.com service a while back. for the longest time I hand-processed the submissions every two weeks. The blogcarnival.com site does all of that for me now. (Kudos to them, by the way!)

However, my email address was out there for a long, long time, so I still get the occasional COTG submission sent to it. So, I set up a filter in Thunderbird to reply to these submission emails with a polite little response that basically asks them to please re-submit using the proper form URL over at blogcarnival.com.

One submitter with the handle "owlafaye" sent me a bare submission. That is to say, it was just the text of the submission, not hosted anywhere. (If you'd like to read the full text of his submission - and you think your sanity can handle it - click here.) My Thunderbird filter replied with my polite auto-response, and I thought nothing of it - until this morning when I received yet another email from our intrepid submitter.

[owlafaye] Your submission form asks for a URL...haven't one on hand...pretty stupid requests piss me off.

Take it or leave it...also there is a bug that keeps your site on my computer and I can't get rid of it.

Get your shit together.

So, I replied to his little foot-stomping tantrum.

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Hi Folks,

I apologize for the last few days. UTI has been down off and on due to some hosting issues, a pretty serious hack, and a mild denial-of-service attack.

I am confident I have it under control at this time. Thanks for sticking with us!

This isn't really pertinent to the usual UTI stuff, but I thought I would post it here anyway so folks may understand why I will sometimes be absent in the coming weeks. It is a follow-up to this post on my blog yesterday.

Jim

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