summertime and the living is queasy

There are summer days in Washington DC when the sky is a grayish solvent in which clouds become soggy, and then completely disolve. The weight of this added humidity makes the air semi-liquid, and the surface of the Potomac River in summer looses definition as a phase boundary between liquid and gas. Gills might be better suited to breathe this air.

The skin of moist amphibians is permeable to both oxygen and carbon-dioxide. They can breathe through their skin. Mammalian pores that gasp for air in the Washington DC summer heat might be trying to recapture some vestigial respiratory function, but they just vomit forth constant streams of sweat. The sweat is seamlessly miscible with the humid air.

At any moment the air will abandon its vain attempts at standing on the gaseous side of phase-change. Instead of just licking surfaces it will condense into festering oily pools. The world threatens to become the worst Jacuzzi ever.

What better time for AYD and I to fly out to DC for a vacation. Yay!

We will visit the Nation’s Klansman.


National Klansman

 


Looking up at its pointy top I will relate to AYD how President Zachary Taylor (standing right where we happen to be standing) spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony for this great monument on July 4th 1850. Since I have no idea where ZT actually stood I will have no problem finding the exact spot. It was so hot that he eagerly slurped up a cool bowl of cherries and milk which happened to be poisoned. Five days later, at 10 AM on July 9th, ZT said “I’m ready to die”; then did.

“If it is hot enough” I’ll add pointing towards the White House “You can hear the echoing relief in President Taylor’s voice. Or the hint of guilt when he said ‘My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me.’ He knew they had weeks of DC summer heat yet to go”.

DC is so full of history. I should also be able to point to the tidal basin from the Washington Monument.

“There” I’ll say “Is where, at 2 AM on October 9th 1974, Fannie Foxxe jumped into the Tidal basin trying to escape both Wilbur Mills and the DC police. It wasn’t as hot in October as it was that August when, on the 8th of August 1974, Richard Nixon resigned.”

It is so interesting to talk of presidential history during the start of a presidential election cycle.

I think a lot of our trip will be spent flitting from air-conditioned metro-stop to air conditioned museum. I’ll point out the decay of artistic sensibility captured in the National Museum of Art’s historical collections. It is amazing to actually see firsthand through changes in art how abilities and skills simply evaporated when Christianity took over Europe. Maybe we will discuss Michelle Bachman at the same time.

We will also flit into air-conditioned Starbucks. The nearest Starbucks to my house is over 30 miles away. I plan to be amazed by their presence on every street corner; it gets me every time. I may even jack into the WiFi and do a blog entry or two.

Wählen Sie den Richtigen

I discovered that AOD was Hitler Youth the other day. I was a bit surprised; first because I did not know that Hitler Youth was a sanctioned school club, and secondly because AOD is not Bund Deutcher Mädel material. She is tall and blond, but marching around in lockstep wearing the same uniform everyday is not something I picture happening. She never wears the combat boots I bought her, and olive-brown is also “not her color” I am told.

The Hitler youth membership is apparently something she received for being enrolled in honor's English. Everyone in the class was assigned to be either a Hitler youth or a Jew. The Hitler youth even stage Nuremberg-style rallies after school for extra credit; I do not know what the “Jews” do for extra credit. At the rallies the HY are given tickets which they can use to condemn “Jews” to concentration camps.

I had a few questions about this whole Hitler Youth thing.

“So... when you condemn one of the fake-real Jews” it is important to always make the distinction between 'Real Jews' and 'True Jews' (The Mormons were told by god that they were the 'True Jews') in Utah. “Do you put them into forced labor first? You could make them chip bubble gum off the desks while only feeding them the extra-crusty tatertots from the lunchroom”

“Our class has only condemned one Jew Dad”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, this friend of mine did it. Well..she's not really a friend, but we've got a couple of classes together. She was mad at another girl about a boy or something like that. So she sent her to the concentration camp. She had another girl turn in the tickets so everyone thinks it was her.”

“Don't you have enough tickets to condemn anyone?” I asked. “It may be cheaper to condemn a Commie or a Gypsy.”

“Actually I'm kinda suspended from the Hitler Youth 'cause I freed too many Jews” she replied.

I was so proud of AOD; using all of her fascist monopoly money to free fake-real-Jews from imaginary death camps.

I spoke with the teacher about this. She had spent time in Germany. There she learned that everyone -by law- was a Nazi during WWII. She wanted to teach some level of tolerance and understanding by having the students take on the character of fake Hitler Youth or fake real Jews.

In my Jr. High there was an art teacher who was rumored to have a number tattoo on his arm. This was in the 70s, and he was the right age to have survived a Nazi forced labor camp as a young man. He also had a strangely psychotic temper which prevented young screw-offs like myself from asking if there was truth behind the rumor.

“Most people don't realize that everyone had to be in the Hitler Youth” AOD's young teacher told me. “It was the LAW”.

I reckoned she was about the age that Saul the art teacher would have been when he was suffering under the hot end of a whip making Wernher Von Braun's rocket parts.

“Wasn't tolerance of the Hitler Youth one of the things that helped cause all that Nazi trouble?” I asked.

“The students will learn that everyone had to be Hitler youth; even if they did not want to be” She replied. “The student's who are Jews will see that that the Hitler Youth were just other kids like them”.

“I would think the whole holocaust thing would be a better springboard for teaching suffering and perseverance rather than tolerance; especially tolerance of Nazis. I'm fairly sure I don't want my kids learning tolerance of fascism”. I countered “And won't this help downplay the impact of the holocaust for the holocaust-deniers in your class?”

I received the 'you are not a professional educator' look. Apparently I was not understanding.

“It's not like we are talking about 'Lord of the Flies'” I continued. “There is a history of suffering beyond the imagination of pampered suburban high school freshman. I like the idea of teaching kids about the 'banality of evil', but this sounds like it might just get across the banality part.”

The conversation was over.

I was a very active high school student so I remember very little of high school. Still, there were the unforgettable incidents which resolved the line between stupid and sane; between banal and evil. High school students play around this line; adults shy away from it.

I remember being told of a small section of scalp the hoses had washed into some grass at the corner of Burdett and River roads. There was some reason why the junior was going so fast in the Camero his parents had given him. I remember telling someone that he was a 'jerk' (Though I may have used more precise wording). He was white and quiet the next time I saw him.

High school students also confuse things like date-rape and seduction. I suppose that one can still hear girls talk about other girls “asking for it” in high school corridors. Like 'it' was some sort of punishment metered out to the 'wrong kind' of girls.

Boys would practice trying to say things loud and often enough to restring truth so that it resonated to their desired note: "She wanted 'it'".

There was a litany of half-backed excuses for sub-human behavior. Somehow the residents of high school believed that the presence of words indicated a presence of truth. Somehow the idea of hidden truth suggested that there were special unwritten rights and responsibilities unique to high school.

One of my favorite excuses has always been “It was just a joke”.

For most 'jokers' in high school there were several people who needed to “just learn how to take a joke”. There was usually a solid group of people who did most of the learning for almost every 'joker' in a high school.

Take the basic bully, add a few wanna-be-bullies, and you've got the makings of a good gang. Empower them with authority from adults, and you've got a good group of fascist thugs. Force everyone into the hierarchy of the thugs (Hitler youth only had 25% attendance before it was made mandatory in 1939), and you've got the Hitler youth of the early 1940s.

In Utah all high school students are separated on the basis of their membership in the Mormon church. Every single public high school in Utah has a Mormon seminary adjacent to it. The location of the seminary is established before the high school is built. Mormon high school students take seminary classes during the school day, and the seminary holds a separate additional graduation. The Mormon students hold special rallies where they march around. The similarities between the Mormon seminary and the real Hitler youth are much greater than the similarities between the fake Hitler youth of AOD's honors English and the Hitler youth of the 1940s.

Monson Youth

I asked AOD if anyone pointed out the seminary similarities in her class.

“of COURSE NOT Dad” she sighed “Over half the kids in the class are IN seminary”.

I'm not sure how a high school student can tell the difference between real and true banality.

Delusionati

Living in Utah provides a cornucopia of potential topics for discussion. Most are depressingly ironic. I am a special fan of people in power who make it their job to be paranoid about government conspiracies. I have thought about creating a secret society called “Delusionati”. Perhaps I already have and I’m hiding it from you; it would be a secret after all.


Delusionati: We can be everywhere because we are nowhere at all.





There may be conspiracies hatching all over Utah, but most of the evil is organized only by the force of collective ignorance. The dissection of the Nazi party in the twentieth century may have hatched the term “The Banality of Evil”. Twenty first century gives birth to the unfortunate guttural understanding of “The Evil of Banality”.

The now iconic story of Kitty Genovese being raped and then killed in an alley within earshot of her neighbors, people who would not upset their daily routine to save her life, is a kind of seed (it is now called the Genovese effect) for this idea, but the idea only takes root when the ignorant start inventing amazing justifications for evil.

As an employee of a large corporate structure I take EEO and sensitivity training almost annually. Most of the time they are canned lessons. Sometimes the cans arrive too late for the scheduled training. When the canned lessons are not available the EEO person wings it. This is usually as funny as a circus-train-wreck.

A good number of years ago, and I think all the people involved have retired or moved on, there was a winging situation I will remember for some time. Earlier in the week an interracial couple in Salt Lake City had a cross burned on their front lawn. The EEO guy thought he could incorperate this into his improv lecture.

“So, just this week, a group of kids were out having some fun when they did something that was interpreted as a racial attack” he explained “They went and put a cross on someone’s lawn, and then lit it up with gasoline. To them it was just a harmless prank. They didn’t know that there was a interracial couple living in the house. The couple thought it was a racial attack, so when they caught the boys they got in a lot of trouble for their harmless prank”

He went on to describe how it is important to try and see how the person you play a prank on sees things, but I had been struck speechless. He went on to explain how they were severely punished despite being upstanding members of their ward (ward is the name for a local Mormon church) and the community.

“What do you think the odds are of randomly choosing a house in Salt Lake City Utah, and it containing an interracial couple?” I asked.

“See” he replied, thinking I was supporting his fantasy “You just never know how lucky you are going to be.”

“I’ve just never heard” I tried a different approach “of people burning a cross on a white couple’s lawn in Salt Lake City”

“Exactly” he was so pleased to have someone awake and agreeing with him during one of his talks “you NEVER hear about them when the cross is burned on a white couple’s lawn”.

I felt like jumping on the table, grabbing my temples, and screaming “The stupid...IT BURNS!!!”.

Apparently not hearing about something is strong evidence that it is happening secretly; certainly not evidence that it is simply not happening at all. However, I guess it was happening since the interracial couple had it done to them. Burning a cross on someone’s lawn might be a universal sign of racial intolerance, but you just cannot be sure what people are trying to communicate with it.

Even targeted statements of intolerance by the very prophet of the Mormon church have been re-interpreted to mean something that they just don’t say. What do you make of this:

“When one considers marriage, it should be an unselfish thing, but there is not much selflessness when two people of different races plan marriage. They must be thinking selfishly of themselves. They certainly are not considering the problems that will beset each other and that will beset their children,” -- Spencer W. Kimball prophet of the Mormon church.1982

Just this past week an interracial boy named Larz Cosby attended a school pep rally of some sort at Alta high in the Salt Lake Valley. There he was confronted by a boy wearing a white KKK hood. The KKK boy was jumping around and taunting Larzs.

I know some of you think I am about to describe how the poor KKK boy was held down by Larz and his classmates with his open mouth shoved against the hard edge of a concrete curb, and then how his teeth were all knocked out by repeated blows against the back of his skull, but that is not what I am about to describe. Larzs simply snatched the white KKK hood off of KKK’s face, and then he went and sat down.

I would not have heard about it had the Cosby family not contacted people who thought it was news. I would not have been as informed of it if Larzs had not written about it on a wordpress blog. I would not have been intrigued by the story if I had not read some of the many comments on it.

The school was “investigating” the incident according to the news broadcast. I’m still amazed at how I picture this story unfolding. KKK boy is hopping around demanding attention in a assembly hall filled with over a thousand students and over a hundred teachers administrators and staff, and it does not become an issue until he confronts one of the only interracial students in the school. I’m sure my former EEO person would chalk this up to some pretty poor luck on KKK boy’s part.

I wonder if KKK boy’s mom helped him sew up his hood. Perhaps it was a hand-me-down from his older brother’s cross-burning days?

The comments are decidedly in support of Lars, and the strength he showed in making his allegations. If I actually counted the comments you might be able to firmly trust me when I state that about 60.2% of the comments were in support of Lars. Roughly half of these appeared to be from people who did not sound like they were familiar with Utah. The other 30.2% sounded like they were Lars’s classmates. Of the 39.8% of those who derided Lars most sounded like they were his classmates; several used “hawk” (the Alta high mascot) in their anonymous comment names.

Although there were many well written and reasoned statements in support of Lars I found the ones attacking him to be more interesting; especially the ones with really poor spelling. I have preserved some quotes from a few of these for you here. I have tried to preserve them as much as I felt comfortable doing. I have hidden some of the filter-unfriendly swear-words with liberal use of the “*” character.

“Oh and get a life it looks like all you have time to do is right about the kid that did that! what are you like gay or something that your so obsessed with him that you need to right a whole story about him! that is very creep! Get over yourself you f**king fag” – ashley

“Larz you are not a saint either” -- bullied

"You are an attention seeker, like most black people. Move back to where you came from.” – genevieve

“I have alot of admiration for the LDS religion. For the most part they act as a whole community and try to help their fellow member’s as well as the whole world.” – genevieve

“i garentee nobody has even called you the “N” word your making this a big deal” – MB

“Just a simple joke. This is High School. Let kids be kids” – Bready

“Should i protest against the Governmemnt for selecting and entire month for ”Black History”..Or even better, maybe ill start an all white organization like NCAAP” -- AgR

“Hey if it offends you then dial ‘911’ and ask for Obama” – AgR

“get over yourself you f**king crybaby. go tell the people in libya, japan, and other countries in dire straights that you felt a skit was racist and see how bad they feel for you. Crybaby” – mike

“I support KKK. It was in reaction to the rights granted to the Negro after the Civil War. Negro should be repatriated to Africa. They are worthless and do not belong in America” –SH

“The boy who wears a kkk hood to school ought to be suspended for the simple fact that people like you have to blow it out of proportion and call attention to yourself like youve suffered slavery personally.” -- joe

“I certainly support what the student did. You are a racially-mixed, confused, and hateful person against whites. You should be expelled for trying to say he is racist when you are the racist one” -- Wyatt Powers

“Get over it and get used to it” – Chris

“What appalls me is race-mixing.” -- Matt Dillon

“You polys are more racist than most. You support him because he is brown. Solidarity in skin color. Sounds racist” -- Mike Jones

“polys are racist” -- Former Hawk

“I think it was funny and glad we live in a place you can wear a white hood. sounds like your a trouble maker and not to well liked in school grow up laugh it off and get on with your life. before it gets worse and you have other problems” -- uncle tom

“And seriously your not the kind of kid that should be saying stuff like this you are ruining the reputation of alta and the kid that did it when really its not like anyone is even racist here. Seriously dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” – Altahawksenior

“I know Mackay he isnt racist he just likes to entertain people.” -- ALTA SENIOR

“But I do like how it’s not racists that there is BET, NAACP, United Negro College fund, so on and so forth….but…BUT….if I wanted to start a “poor white kid college fund”….or WET….or National Association for the Advancement of Caucasian People…I would definitely be a racist” – Duke

Aqua-LAMe

Next week will be the 26th annual running of the Los Angeles Marathon. I wish the runners in that event well. Despite all my planning and preparation I will not be there to see them compete. Bummer.

Part of my preparations to attend the LAM included a first-ever professional massage. I scheduled the massage for last Friday, and since my ankle injury would have no adverse effect of my lying down -mostly naked- and having some stranger touch me, I went regardless of my change in LAM plans.

I like the idea of massage. Studies have shown there is a real, albeit almost negligibly small in most cases, positive effect from massage. It also feels good, which is a tremendous positive effect enhancer. After my professional massage last Friday I would consider having one several times a day forever, accept for one thing: they are too darned expensive.

The only reason Friday’s massage made it onto my miserly schedule was that an e-mail announcing “HALF OFF AN HOUR LONG MASSAGE” found its way into my inbox. It was a “Daily Deal” distributed by the Deseret News Newspaper. Basically, with the daily deal, local merchants provide a limited number of promotional business-boosting coupons to the paper, and the paper gives you 24 hours to purchase them. I once purchased four-for-the-price-of-two entrances into the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Unfortunately every time I go to UMFA I have some other free-admission invite deal, so I have not used them. I have looked into massages in Utah, and the Daily Deal price was good. An hour long massage for $32.50 sounded like about $10 less than what I could expect to pay at one of the lesser-expensive massage locations. I snapped up two; one for a friend.

There was no way to know that Japan would experience what may turn out to be the worst natural disaster survived by any developed nation while I was getting my massage. Nice as the massage was I would rather have taken the opportunity to call up folks in Japan to tell them to turn off their nuclear reactors, and go for picnics way up in the hills. Even scientists who have been exhaustively studying seismology repeatedly prove clueless in predicting even huge quakes like last Friday’s. If ever there was an opening for some psychic or direct-interface-with-god person to make a proverbial killing in the survival-through-precognition arena, Friday would have been it. There may turn out to be tens of thousands (the death toll rises, and the devastation looks unimaginable) of people whose deaths could have been avoided if just a fraction of the thousands of years of practice in religious prophesy proved worthwhile.

"They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal." – Pat Robertson on Haitian quake 2010

I will prophesize that outspoken religious persons will proclaim divine reasons for the quake. Probably some sort of retribution. More people will turn to religion in the quake’s wake. I will hope they find comfort in their faith; anything that can reduce suffering in such a situation should be exploited.

“He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” – Mathew 5:45, 46 NIV

I was, however, blissfully unaware of the quake till after the massage.

When we arrived at the indescript office suite (Mind Over Matter) for our scheduled massages we were informed that the massages would only be a half hour each. “That’s the daily deal” we were informed. Part of the cost apparently went towards the paperwork I spent almost ten minutes filling out before my massage. This was a new experience for me. I had never before felt disappointed when, after arriving at an office suite, being told my appointment would be over an hour early.

The massage, as I mentioned earlier, was delightful. The masseuse was a rapidly-aging single mother of three in her early 30s. Her recently out-of work live-in boyfriend was putting such financial pressure on her household that she was planning on moving to a more distant bedroom community where the rents would be cheaper. I could also give you details about her kids; it sounded like they were good kids who may have inherited their mom’s sparkling tenacity. She was a graduate of the Utah College of Massage Therapy; the same place most of the non-spa massage locations obtained their masseuses.

The massages were scheduled sequentially, and the waiting room had both comfy chairs and a microwave. My companion told me, when I emerged from the massage, that some very fat man had talked to her about hypnotherapy before disappearing with the attractive receptionist into an office whose closed door she nodded towards. I told her that if the massage had been longer I might have started to drool.

I nestled into a chair, and began to settle into my book when lunch arrived for the office folk. The hypnotherapist and the attractive receptionist emerged from their office hide-away to retrieve some Styrofoam lunches. The hypnotherapist was large. Someone should have told him the inflatable balance ball was not to be eaten. I wondered if his hypnosis sessions were designed to help people with weightloss.

Balance-ball hypnosis guy glanced at me, and must have decided I was not attractive enough for his hypnosis pitch. He disappeared back into his office with the attractive receptionist.

The older woman who had arrived with the lunches spied me, and then bee-lined it over to the comfy-chair microwave area. She sat on the corner of one of the other comfy chairs, and leaned in to speak to me. I cut her off.

“I was hoping for an hour-long massage when I purchased the half off an hour long massage coupon” I told her.

“That’s the Daily Deal” She replied “It’s only a half-hour massage”.

Clearly we were not speaking the same language. I tucked back into my book to signify that the conversation was over.

“With the daily deal you could also get an Aqua-Chi treatment for an additional twenty-five dollars” she said.

“that’s just great” I murmured “What’s Aqua-Chi”.

For the next twenty minutes I was assaulted with a detailed description of Aqua-Chi. In addition to words like “toxins”, “meridians” and “detoxify” I was subjected to the insistent flailing of the Aqua-Chi promoter. The pitch involved Carol Merel (Famous “Let’s Make a Deal” model, and miss Azusa California 1957) like gesturing to parts of the pitch-woman’s anatomy.

“Each leg has a meridian” She gracefully waved her hands up and down her corduroyed pant-leg “and the toxins travel down these through the feet to the Aqua-chi machine”

The Aqua-Chi spokesperson was a poorly-preserved should-have-been seventy-year-old. When she gestured to her legs I imagined that they would have looked like cottage-cheese-filled plastic bags held fast by a thick purple net of varicose veins. I decided that corduroy was my friend.

She gestured to other parts of her anatomy.

“Liver” She said.

I realized that what little color she had in her face was painted on.

“Kidneys” She said.

She must be wearing a rather full pair of adult diapers. I thought: “Most people’s butts don’t get that large and puffy on their own”.

“Colon” She said; waving, unfortunately, at her groin.

She must have just had her hair done. I wondered if she had the MSDS for the industrial epoxy used on it.

I was handed a laminated color printout with a couple pictures of what looked like a foot-bath. In one of the photos the bath was filled with clear liquid and had two feet and an aquarium pump in it. In the other photo the same bath was filled with opaque swamp-water. I studied the pictures carefully to avoid looking at the ongoing interpretive dance geriatric anatomy lesson.

I imagined I heard grunting coming from behind the closed office door. Unfortunately it sounded more like hypnosis-guy was devouring more inflatable exercise equipment than any interesting entanglements with the attractive receptionist.

“Black sludge, green, flakes, Vaseline, bubbles, cottage cheese” Aqua-chi woman had sat back down and was apparently describing the swamp-water in the picture I was hiding behind. I was only momentarily shocked before I realized she was not describing the contents of her pants.

I have slightly researched Aqua-Chi since this encounter. It is a footbath. The bath is filled with a salt solution, and a low-voltage sacrificial electrode is placed in it. The electrolysis of the electrode pollutes the water to opaqueness with iron oxide. Chlorine, and sometimes sulfur, is also released by the reaction; these turn the water different shades, and stink too. Hydrogen gas bubbles come off the electrode when the water molecules themselves are split into their component atoms. Somehow the idea of soaking my feet in a slightly toxic waste material is not appealing; even if the low voltage of the electrolysis electrode is supposed to be pleasantly tingly.

“I’m not going to get an Aqua-Chi today” I handed the printout back to the woman. “It’s not the dumbest thing I have ever heard of, but I have just not budgeted for it today”.

“Have you ever tried hypnotherapy?” she said, not even pausing to switch gears.

Hypno-dude had gone silent in his office. Maybe he was awaiting the delivery of some tether-balls for dessert.

“Does it work for weightloss?” I asked.

“Yes” She replied “Nothing works better for that”

“I’m sure it does” I replied; saved by the emergence of my companion from the massage office “But I must be going now.”

And they're off!

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” -- Hamlet; Act III, Scene 2

Sometime during the state of the union speech an official 2012 presidential campaign starter’s pistol was fired. Its reverberating ‘pop’ was quickly drowned out by the furious republican shuffle to stage a response to the president’s constitutionally-mandated speech. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) gave the official response for the Republican Party where he listed ‘logic-lite’ talking points for the upcoming political battles. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) gave an official Teabagger response which did much the same as Ryan’s speech only with way more hairspray and medication. Since Bachmann is ‘examining’ a bid for the white house other potential candidates had to speak up to prevent being eclipsed by Michele’s notoriety. One such candidate was Mitt Romney. Mitt’s response was a lot like Michelle’s only hair gel was substituted for the spray.

One thing that should be too obvious for any candidate to need mention is that they have god on their side. This superfluous fact will be alluded to with increasing fervor over the coming year. The last presidential election witnessed a staggering number of front-runner candidates for republican nomination who either proudly boasted of believing in young earth creationism (YEC), or refused to fully elaborate. I think we are in for some transcendently idiotic statements this coming year. Republican candidates will outdo themselves in courting the ill-educated alcohol-muddled “Joe-six-pack” voting bloc they think will carry them to their party’s nomination. Somewhere in the deserts of the American mindset headless illegal-immigrant zombies are stumbling towards the nation’s brains to eat its constitution. And everyone knows all zombies are atheists.

Since I think belief in YEC is a sign of mind-numbing foolishness I have a hard time not using it as a de-facto test for office. Most candidates’ speeches are littered with the words “I believe”. We are somehow supposed to take into account what they believe when choosing someone to vote for; unless what they believe is utter foolishness. Many candidates will be detailing their personal religious beliefs in such a way as to communicate similarity to the largest possible voting bloc. The American atheist will be pushed from view as candidates struggle to insist the populist nature of their religiosity.

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom” – Mitt Romney 2007

I have often said that, confronted with the proselytizing efforts of a bomb or gun, my conversion to the religion of the trigger-wielding missionary would be swift and doubt-free. But the big guns of any religion should not be aimed by mere mortals. Where does god weigh in? How does god weigh in? Some of the more secular-adapted religious folks maintain that one can see evidence of god’s preference only in hindsight; look at the outcome and know what god wanted. I think this coming year we will see widely advertised evidence of god’s preferences long before any outcomes are certain. One of the ways that god has spoken to his chosen people is through prophesy. One of the ways one can tell whom god has chosen is by listening for who got the best prophesy.

One popular prophesy here in Utah is called the “White Horse Prophesy” (WHP). The WHP states:

“When the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they [American citizens] will have to call for the 'Mormon' Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it.”

Who will get the WHP nod this year; Huntsman or Romney?

Despite the fact that this would appear to be empty bragging on the part of the Mormon Church it is taken very seriously by quite a few people. One reason for this is that the statement was not simply transcribed from a proclamation of Joseph Smith (Founder of the Mormon Church) but reiterated by Brigham Young (Founder of the Mormon settlement in Utah) and John Taylor (An official prophet of the Mormon Church). When god repeats himself the chosen people listen.

The WHP is a significant motivator for the true believers. It can serve as a justification for otherwise morally questionable activity. Prophet John Taylor’s version of the WHP delineates the lines of righteousness:

“When the people shall have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States the Elders of Israel will be found holding it up to the nations of the earth and proclaiming liberty and equal rights to all men" -- John Taylor, JD 21:8, August 31, 1879.

What will be done to “the people” who have torn the constitution to shreds is a bit vague. There are multiple mentions over the intervening century-and-change of measures that go beyond voting. The exact ways that one can identify “the people” and what to do are mostly left up to the individual.

"The first casualty when war comes, is truth" -- Hiram W. Johnson (R-CA) 1917

Though there are certainly true believers who will be stocking up on explosives and ammunition I think most of them will be hiding in the dark places under rocks where they feel most at home. There will be a greater proportion of believers who will be willing to simply deceive and cheat the sub-moral “people” to achieve their divine goal. Through the use of prophesy aggressive behaviors are justified. In the case of the WHP the behavior is seen as defense against an evil that god has tipped them off about.

Despite the fact that Xtians control all portions of the US government, and weigh heavily in most economic activities, many Xtians feel like they are under attack. Somehow atheists and Muslims are attacking everything good. The WHP resonates with those feelings of persecution. The biggest problem with mapping those feelings of persecution to action is the disappointing lack of substantial evidence of the persecution. Lack of evidence, however, can be fixed.

In November of 2007 Mitt Romney loudly decried the use of “push polls” aimed at discrediting his candidacy on the basis of his Mormon faith:

“I think the attempts to attack me on the basis of my faith are un-American” -- Romney 2007

 On November 16th the Romney campaign registered an official complaint with the New Hampshire attorney general’s office. Their preliminary report was published on January 3rd 2008. The NHAG found that the polls were conducted by ‘Western Wats’; a company based in Orem Utah. Provo-Orem is the home to Brigham Young University, which accounts for most of what Provo-Orem is. BYU is Romney’s alma mater and also of great importance to Ron Lindorf who founded Western Wats. Many employees at Western Wats were campaign contributors to Romney’s 2007 campaign.

Accusations that Romney’s 2007 campaign had push polled itself to raise sympathy were published before the January 2008 report (which came less than a month before the Republican nomination had been decided). These were firmly denied by all parties involved. Who really did the push polling? According to the Romney campaign we may never know. Perhaps the push pollers were just disgruntled atheists?

Atheism will be on the front lines in the coming election whether atheists do anything or not.

Faith in god

I am often told to get a faith in god. Well I finally got one.  I think I will wear it on my sleeve!

Faith in god medal

Wavy Hair

Although there are many cherished moments of contemplative introspection I have enjoyed in my bathroom I can remember none that have occurred in the pre-dawn moments of hygienic confusion that start a typical workday. There must be an invisible thought sucking field that is generated by the interaction of my toothbrush, the metal toilet paper holder, the sun and moon, and (as I now suspect) certain haircare products. To be truthful, I am only really sure about the haircare products.

A couple of days ago I noticed the following equation on a bottle of shampoo:

Which I think is a relation between Energy(E) and Magnetic flux(β) through a medium(µ). This is a strange thing to see on a shampoo bottle. At the bottom was a notation describing the MDL as being at 5. After some searching I found that MDL is an abbreviation for “Magnetic Density Level”. I was intrigued. Just what is a Magnetic density level? How are they measured in shampoo? What are the MDLs of other haircare products?

It turns out the MDL denoted the amount of –get this- magnetite (an iron oxide) that they put in the shampoo. Sure enough the shampoo was silvery in color; just like you would expect if it had bits of metal in it. Later I went to the Giovani cosmetics (the makers of the magnetic shampoo) web site and this is what they had to say about magnetite:

“Magnetite! Its result is total domination over the negative electrical charges that have left hair desolate and bleak.”

Magnetism is often accurately described as action at a distance. This is the essence of magic. Why not put it on your hair. It does not take a very in-depth search to find multiple magic effects of magnets on health and wellbeing:

“Magnetic therapy is a non-invasive remedy that addresses both prevention and treatment of chronic ailments with an impressive success rate”

“There have been years and years of research to prove that people can benefit from this new technology. Today, millions of people around the world are feeling better because or health magnets.”

“Dr W Philpott MD, a practitioner of magnet therapy for over 40 years explains that negative magnetic fields oxygenate and alkalise by aiding the body's defences and helping to relieve pain. Further, they combat inflammation and infection and enhance deep restorative sleep.”  

You can also strap magnets onto your car’s fuel lines to improve gas mileage. Strapping them onto your home’s water pipes reduces “effective hardness” of the water. If you did not know that waving, strapping, or implanting magnets will make everything better it only requires a small amount of research to find out that it would.

Magnets actually have easily measurable effects. Strong enough magnets can alter the growth of cells, or the shape of crystals, or even change the ionization of salt solutions. Waving magnets over copper wires can produce electricity; this is the way almost all of our commercial electricity is produced. Magnets are awesomely interesting, and their effects (especially on complex systems like the human body) are far from simple.

One would think that, with both magnetism and therapeutic value being measurable quantities, that there would be loads of clinical studies proving the effectiveness of magnets. One would think that the abundance of claims for “significant successes rates” would point to an entire body of therapeutic literature. One would think that, with over a century of development and billions of dollars in sales, that magnetic therapies would culture their own engineering and development communities. Unfortunately this is not the case. Most magnetic therapies enjoy less developmental thought than the logic that went into the Heidelberg Electric Belt that was very popular around 1900 (electricity is also magic).

“For weakness in men and women, personal exhaustion bringing back lost strength and power, over brain work, vital , impotency, rheumatism, sciatica, lame back, railroad back, insomnia, melancholia, kidney disorder, Bright's disease, dyspepsia, disorders of the liver, female weakness, poor circulation, weak heart action and almost every known disease and weakness.” -- Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue 1900

The way that most magic magnetic devices are designed is through inspired insight. This is a wordy way of saying they are simply made up. I do not want to use terms like “intelligent design” or “invention” when refereeing to the creation of magnetic therapy devices as both terms insinuate a thoughtful process derived from cause and effect. There is no apparent structure in the development of magnetic therapies. If any magnetic therapies actually worked at all there exists no system to tell if one therapeutic device works better than another.

Many of the magic effects of magnetic therapy devices are fraudulently conceived. If any working magnetic therapy device were ever conceived it would be impossible (using the means by which the benefits of magnetic therapy are currently examined) to see this. The interest by the distributors of magnetic devices in a patient’s outcome appears to be significantly diminished once the patient is separated from the purchase price for the magnetic device. I have not heard stories of magnetic device distributors dancing around a hospital bed wildly waving their magic electromagnetic wands over a stricken patient, and this is not because they have yet to invent suitable wands.

Beside the sink AYD had left her newest hairbrush. The handle of the hairbrush proudly announced that it was made with both ceramic and “Ion Technology”. Since charged molecules (ions) are affected by magnetic fields a magic wand for magnetic therapy should conceivably have something like an “Ion Technology”. Certainly practiced waving of a hairbrush-wand around a bedridden patient could, if nothing else, arrange their hair so they looked a little less ill in photographs.

AYD’s hairbrush was a marvel of thoughtful design. It was honeycombed with holes, and the body was hollow. The handle contained a large removable hidden aluminum pick; like a giant version of the toothpicks on old Swiss-Army knives. I pictured the “Ion Technology” existing as some battery-driven transmitter whose antennae were embedded wires in the complex pattern of perforations in the brush’s body.

Unfortunately the “Ion Technology” consisted of tourmaline. Tourmaline is a complex silicate crystal. There was no word as to how they applied the magic stone to the brush. I imagine they simply added some tourmaline dust to the molten plastic before they poured the brush. I wondered what would happen if they forgot to add the magic dust to a batch of brushes. Would anybody ever notice?

“Negative ions generated by the high quality tourmaline have positive effects on health.”

Apparently negative ions are another source of magical health benefits. Somply by putting a little tourmaline crystal into water you can purify the water, kill bacteria and remove chlorine smell (which is interesting since the chlorine in the water kills bacteria). I was particularly interested in the chlorine smell reduction. The chorine smell in chlorinated water is caused by hypochlorite ions, which are negative ions. Apparently increasing the number of negative ions actually decreases the number of negative ions if it is done right.

The shampoo was supposedly designed to “dominate” negative ions in the hair. Perhaps one needed to generate negative ions with the hairbrush so the shampoo could properly exert its dominance?

Needless to say I was a bit confused. I decided I needed to go to the source of the magic haircare products. I ran AYD down and tried to initiate an over-breakfast haircare de-briefing session.

“Dad!” exclaimed AYD “You don’t think anyone actually believes that stuff do you!”

I asked why she purchased the material if she so thoroughly thought the magical claims were false. Apparently a product with obviously false claims to magical benefit is superior to one that lacks such claims. I attempted to extract more specific detail on this phenomenon. AYD said something about shoes that I did not follow at all.

I attempted to steer the conversation towards things I could get a handle on. I wrote some of Maxwell’s equations on the whiteboard we usually use for messages and grocery lists. I diagramed the square/cube effect of magnetic flux on ionized particles in a conducting medium. I asked her about the beta-pleated sheet protein structure of hair fibers.

Breakfast went quickly. Between bites AYD clipped answers to algebraic questions I fired at her. Finally the clock ran out, and it was time for her to leave to catch the schoolbus.

I hit her with one last question as she was putting on her boots to leave: “So… Are you going to keep your shampoo and stuff in your own bathroom from now on?”

“You know it!” she replied.

HNY

2011 invites a new decade-like time-span into history. It will be called the “twenty-teens” even though it will not really be "teens" for another two years. Because history requires punctuation as much as English composition there will be an apparent pause in events as 2011 begins.

Some historians will refer to the proper decade as the “twenty-tens”. They will do this because of a misguided desire to cover all of the 21st century in similar-sounding precisely-defined increments of time. They will do this because they are insufferable dweebs.

By calling the time-span from 2011-2019 the twenty-teens one gleans the delicate fruit of psychological allusion.

“The twenty-teens behaved like its eponymous ill-mannered child”. “The twenty-teen neo-cons became the teen-mom to the teabagger love-child that someone else would have to raise”. “The developed world’s twenty-teenage experimentation with geo-engineering became an addiction whose grip proved almost impossible to break”.

 Much will appear to happen in the next nine years simply because it will be cool to blame it on the twenty-teenage years.

That is, of course, if we make it to the actual twenty teens. I allude to the “End of the World” which is supposed to take place on December 21st 2012. I love it when the world ends; I got way too much enjoyment out of Y2K. I have a special project I am working on to mark the last days. It will involve my penchant for snide historical commentary, and I will reveal what it is just before December 21st of this year.

This past year I was wildly successful with all of my characteristically feeble New-Years-Resolutions. I planned on posting at least once-a-month to this blog, and instead I posted over a hundred times. I resolved to write a poem and read it to an audience of strangers, and I wrote several and read four. It is true that my audience consisted of only three people so my hand-waving beat-poet-at-the-lectern image of myself dissolved in a puff of disillusionment, but the audience made up for their small numbers in their crowded strangerness.

For this next year I’ve decided to bring in more readers to this blog. I've become part of  "The Atheist Blogroll" and "Planet Atheism". You can see both the Atheist Blogroll and Planet Atheism badges in my sidebar. The Atheist Blogroll is like any other topical blogroll; basically a list of topically-related blogs.  Planet Atheist is a aggregator blog which publishes topically-related feeds from a number of blogs; this makes it a convenient place to read a bunch of atheist blogs at once.

The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.

If you would like to join Planet Atheism you can find more information on how to do that by clicking on the Planet Atheism badge in the sidebar.

The blog has been very successful in bringing in readers this past year. Thousands of people have read this blog, not counting some who get it on direct feed. They have clicked in from every continent, and every state of the union (except Iowa).

Readership stokes more than just my ego. When people click on the automatically-generated advertisements on the side panel I make money. This year I made more than a dollar and seventy-five cents. I am going to blow the entire wad of cash as a partial sponsor of a racer in the 2011 Los Angeles marathon. I should be able to buy him at least two gels with the money (to be consumed at mile 7 and 14). If I can find a sharpie on March 20th he will be sporting “Adult Onset Atheist (adultonsetatheist.blogspot.com)” somewhere on his running outfit.

Ego-stroking was accomplished in spades by another project which I will cryptically call “PTIP”. A collateral yield of PTIP was the contacting of a couple dozen folks I had not seen in decades. I was reminded again and again how very awesome people can be. Sometimes it is easy to get a distorted picture of the Human species when looking at it as an amalgam. Time had worn down some of the people to shiny stubs which sparkled in amazing intensity when they even mentioned the people they loved. Some had diffused into the very structure of their surroundings; when they smiled everything around them smiled just as brightly. Some had risen through adversities so sublime they empathized with unique authority. With some I discovered strange new friendships and converse with them regularly about profound interests. Only one retreated into a passive aggressive cave with a sign reading “I did not even return his last e-mails” nailed above its gaping mouth. Most filtered through our brief time together, and left an amazingly optimistic sweetness in their wake.

I feel like the year called twenty-ten left an optimistic sweetness in its wake. I can’t add up some score value, and say it was a positive year on average. I can’t look at an emotional tide-chart, and say it has ended on a high note. I can say that I cared about some people in 2010, and it feels very likely that I will do so even more in the future. I can say that I loved some people in 2010, and it feels more than likely that I will do so even more in the twenty-teens.

Merry Christmas

The “War On Christmas” (WOC) is apparently in full swing right now. I hear about it several times a day; so far this year I have heard about the WOC more often than I have been wished a “Merry Christmas”. I find it disturbing that there is a war on the most popular of all holidays. That there is a war on a holiday that is so popular that its decorations now herald its celebration before Halloween, and threaten to do to Halloween what they have already done to Thanksgiving. It is shocking to think that any usurper holiday would dare attack the mythically powerful holiday of Christmas.

Who is the attacker? Is New-Years drunkenly stumbling backwards in time and threatening Christmas?

Is it a Trojan horse attack? Have people realized that certain Christmas traditions hearken back to the pagan solstice celebrations that pre-date it? BTW: this year the solstice falls on December 21st (6:38 PM ET and 23:38 UTC).

I have heard of people imploring others to “be thankful” this Christmas. Is the WOC a counter-attack by the slighted pre-Christmas holidays? Is there a holiday insurgency threatening to dethrone Christmas as the pre-eminent Yule-time holiday? Will we be forced to recognize a “holiday’s-council-of-festival-celebration”? That actually sounds appealing to me, but Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.

Imagine my disbelief when I discovered that it is people –not other holidays- that are waging war on Christmas.

Imagine my horror when I was told that I was a prime combatant. That: “You and those people like you are waging a war on Christmas and trying to destroy it for normal people”. As shocked as I was to find out that I was apparently waging a notably competent battle against such an important holiday I took time to endeavor as to how and why I was waging the WOC. Apparently by wishing the offended someone a “Happy Holidays” I was striking a potentially mortal blow.

I prefer the “Happy Holidays” greeting this time of year, but I will be brightly wishing folks a “Happy Christmas” from the 22nd of December till the 26th. The offending HH occurred just after the start of Chanukah, and I actually was thinking more of that “festival of lights” than Christmas when I made the HH remark. I wonder if I would have been seen as such a rabid enemy of Christmas if I had simply wished them a “Happy Chanukah”?

I like the HH greeting as it helps to encompass so many holidays that are crowded into the Yule-season. I have shrunk from my one-time practice of wishing folks a “Merry Solstice” as it misses the preferred name most people who celebrate the solstice use. How do you keep the proper name straight anyway? Is it Amaterasu, or Beiwe, or Brumalia, or Choimus, or Chaomos, or Deygān or Dōngzhì, or Goru, or Hogmanay, or Inti Raymi, or Junkanoo, or John Canoe, or Dzon'ku 'Nu, or Karachun, or Koleda, or Коляда, or Sviatki, or Dazh Boh, or Lá an Dreoilín, or Wren day, or Lenæa, or Lohri, or Lucia, or Feast of St. Lucy, or Makara Sankranti, or Maruaroa o Takurua, or Meán Geimhridh, or Midwinter’s night, or Midvinterblót, or Modranicht, or Modresnach, or Mummer's Day, or Montol, or Perchta, or Rozhanitsa, or Shab-e Chelleh, or Yaldā, or Sanghamitta Day, or Saturnalia, or Chronia, or Şeva Zistanê, or Sol Invictus, or Soyal, or We Tripantu, or Yule, or Jul, or Jól, or Joul, or Joulu, or Jõulud, or Géol, or Geul, or Zagmuk, or Sacaea, or Ziemassvētki? Of course just finding out the right name is a great conversation starter; the meanings and ramifications could lead to coffee, and a thoroughly delightful afternoon. "Happy Holidays", however, has never been taken as a salvo on the winter’s solstice whatever-you-call-it.

OK, so I may not be sensitive enough to figure out how I am attacking Christmas, but why am I doing it, and who are my co-conspirators? It turns out that I am waging the WOC because I am an atheist, and my cohorts in this are all my fellow atheists. It is truly unfortunate that atheists are not an organized group. It is embarrassing to be actively waging a war where I know such a small percentage of my allies. Perhaps we should all get together over a light lunch sometime and casually draw up plans for assassinating the Easter-bunny?

I should point out, at the risk of divulging strategic WOC secrets, that there is disunity on the atheist front. All atheists I know think of the Yule-season as a “great historically-tested time for party(ies)”, and therefore whole-heartedly support the idea of celebration. I myself have erected a Christmas-tree-shaped assemblage of plastic and metal which has been festooned with ornaments and low-power LED lights. If I am to coordinate this WOC thing I am off to a very poor start.

There are others that can be pressed into service as WOC enemies. Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and many others are attractive victims for the theocratical press-gangs. If Christmas is re-defined as a xenophobic celebration of homogeneous religious unity who will have won the WOC?

I think if we toned down the hate-speech we could resolve all this with diplomacy. Perhaps we could call it “Egg-Nog Diplomacy”. We could sit down with some glasses (not big glasses because Egg-Nog is high in fat, and I’m watching my calorie intake) of Egg-Nog (But not the Egg-Nog with alcohol in it because I don’t drink) and just talk it over.

For my fellow atheists I believe this plan will lull "them" into a sense of security, then, come April, the Bunny will never see it coming!

Zombie Miners

“There is a theological debate that this is a carbon starved planet” -- Rep. John Shimkus (R-Il-20th)

This time last year I was in the middle of a volunteering obligation I had…well…volunteered for. I was helping a local charter school set up a collaborative document system for producing the written policies the state required of them. My first inclination, when talking about this, is to make it sound like it required a tremendous amount of technical expertise, but it did not. Basically I spent most of the couple hundred hours setting up one system, listening to why people did not like e-mail and “computer-stuff", and then setting up another system, and then listening to more luddite whining. There was a liberal amount of personally training people on systems and answering “I don’t like the way the font looks on my computer” questions. I also sat in policy meetings where single words had to be discussed at length; often through the process of protracted arguments between a particular individual and himself.

In order to facilitate my own activities I asked to be considered for one of the vacant board seats. I was told that I was “not the sort of person they were looking for” and each of the many board replacements made after that time were done only after closed session consideration. I believe that this was one of the signs that there was a concerted effort to make sure the board of this publically funded school remained entirely and eternaly Mormon. The control was targeted to produce a more specific goal than simply an all-Mormon board. The members of the board had to be a special brand of home-school-leaning-educational-separatist Mormons.

I was involved because the school had hired a director whose ideas about producing a learning environment were inspirational, and he had hired the best group of teachers I had ever seen in any Utah public school. When he was ostensibly fired (so a for-profit philosophically acceptable charter school direction company could come in) I resigned my volunteer position. Before the next school year started around 60% of the great group of teachers had also left.

At this point I believe some of you may be wondering why I started this entry with a quote from a congressman from southern Illinois. Others probably realize that I will get around to the quote, but flinch at the circuitous path I will probably take getting there.

Shortly after the new directors began to change direction the ire of the school’s parents was raised. There were apparently several heatedly orated meetings. After one someone apparently took it upon themselves to amateurishly hack and then vandalize the schools computer system. Part of the vandalism apparently consisted of someone taking one of the gold-painted shovels the board stored in the server room (the shovels were mementoes of the building’s groundbreaking) and smashing the server rack with it. Wires were pulled, a key logger was found, and probably other stuff, but I was never shown any actual report.

 For the record I think it would be much more effective to simply pour a coke on a server if you wanted to take it out. When I have seen this happen by accident it has worked very well. A truly evil person would rig something with string, two-liter bottles of soda, and Mentos mints. When the IT person walked into the server room she/he could witness the awesome destruction in process. But I digress….

After the server destruction several members of the board and the schools paid staff decided that I was a prime suspect. Their evidence consisted solely of:

1. The idea that I “knew about computer stuff”
2. That they were not forthcoming in why they refused to consider me for the board
3. That I had spent a lot of time around the school doing “volunteer” work.

Basically I had helped them by bringing in expertise they needed, and they had treated me poorly for it; all of which was true. What stunted emotional degeneracy goes into making this sort of connection, and how can one prove one’s innocence in the face of it?

Of course the allegations were not made to my face. They were relayed to me by four separate individuals who had heard them on more than one occasion, so I do not doubt them. The purpose, however, was to lay blame; not prosecute. Because of the hidden nature of my guilt it was a couple of weeks before I could point out that I was on a business trip more than a thousand miles away for the entire week during which this happened. Unfortunately this paltry alabi was not enough to prove my innocence. Apparently I did some of it remotely and my evil minions did the rest.

So now I run an evil empire bent on destruction. How did I amass this power? I did it simply by witnessing the collision between their deeply held belief system and reality.

As a side note to any board members who may be reading this blogg: YOU MAY HAVE FIGURED OUT THE SECRET TO SURVIVE THE TERRIBLE ONSLAUGHT OF MY ROBO-NINGA-FERRETS, BUT YOU WILL NEVER FIGURE OUT THAT IN ORDER TO APEASE THE INTRA-DIMENTIONAL EARWIGS THAT HAVE BEEN WISPERING SINFUL TEMPTATION INTO YOUR BRAIN AT NIGHT YOU MUST ANONYMOUSLY SEND ME LARGE SUMS OF CASH IN UNMARKED BILLS.

Here, of course, is where I suddenly shift course to talk about rep Shimkus. Check out this video from which I gleaned the quote I started this entry with. This film was taken during an actual session of an actual congressional committee on climate change.

What we are witnessing on this tape is the collision of a deeply held belief system and reality. Shimkus is a deeply believing member of a church within the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. One of the premises of this church (along with creationism and some other ideas I could go into, but which would make this already thousand-word entry too long even for me) is “amillennialism”. Which means that they know (somewhat) how the world will end, and that you must go to their church as a result of these things they know. This of course results in some significant conflict between the LCMS and other churches who know other things that require you to go to other churches because of.

As early as 1932 the LCMS adopted the following prophetic truth (which I quote here from their A Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Missouri Synod. Statement 43):

“As to the Antichrist we teach that the prophecies of the Holy Scriptures concerning the Antichrist, 2 Thess. 2:3–12; 1 John 2:18, have been fulfilled in the Pope of Rome and his dominion.” 

This is not taken too very kindly by several Roman Catholics I have spoken to. I can paraphrase the average response thusly: “No AOA…the pope is not the antichrist. Why do you care anyway? It is like asking if some person who you think lacks any potential spiritual significance is also not something you do not believe exists.”. I must admit that their observation about me has some degree of validity.

So what I think we are observing (in rep. Shimkis’s scriptural tirade) is a skirmish in an ongoing theological battle. Someone is going to pick up the proverbial golden shovel and smash things that should not be smashed. If there are people with Catholic upbringing on or near anyone working on global climate change that fact could serve as proof that GCC talk was a modern manifestation of some ancient evil. There may even be jews involved in GCC research. I’m not entirely sure what the LCMS would find wrong with jews, but I’m sure there is something wrong with jews…there always seems to be something wrong with jews in situations like this.

What of the evidence? Evidence is only fabrications to hide evil intentions. As long as one can create a story (credibility is optional) then there is acceptable proof. When the actual battle is between systems of divine knowledge then mundane matters take a back seat. The charter school’s board was motivated to place blame by the collision of their narrow divinely-inspired teaching concepts and angry parents who wanted the best learning environment for their kids. I just happened to be in the wrong place on that battlefield. Shimkus is waging his divinely inspired battle against iron-age evils, and GCC scientists are simply in the wrong place on his battlefield.

The really interesting question is: “What evil minions will the GCC scientists use to do their evil papal bidding?”. I think the answer can be found in the single visual aid that rep. Shimkus used. That’s right…Zombie Miners!

Think of those Chilean miners trapped for months underground. Who saved them? NASA that’s who! Did you see that miner who ran the NYC marathon cross the finish line? I’ve seen “night of the living dead”. I know what a zombie gait looks like!

“If I only had some BRAINS” -- Zombie Miners

Lies for Tears

This past Saturday, August 14th 2010, it was warm and clear in northern Utah. Groups of people gathered at many outside venues to soak in the warmth and fellowship. I was outside almost all day, and I can show you exactly the areas of my exposed flesh I missed with my SPF50 sunblock. Families took advantage of one of the last weekends before school starts for reunions. Pools were filled with excited screaming youngsters. Parents and grandparents languidly watched them and wondered what cosmological dark mater replaces the energy of youth.

There is a beauty in uncomplicated frolicking that is made more precious in the very young. Before language and vocabulary make their mess of communicating the nature of fun, there exists the briefest moment when only the act of play can accurately express itself. While the toddler morphs into a kid each misstep and wobble craft metaphors of a lifetime. A simple fall can be the perfect image of something as profound as a first broken heart, and yet the tears dry so very quickly and kind words assemble smiles from nothing but trust.

Do I sound sappy? I feel sappy writing this.

I love the look of smiles on very small children. There should be more smiles on kids, and fewer looks of horror and loss. Kids have no idea where they are going; they have no reason to feel lost.

At a World Mark Resort near Bear Lake in northern Utah this Saturday a large extended family gathered to relax beside the pool. Numbering over a dozen, eight of them gregarious adults, they were a considerable group. I knew a couple of the older generation of the adults.

At some point in time a 20 month old child of the party exited the “baby” pool, walked over to the “adult” pool, jumped or fell in, and quietly drowned.

What sense is there when smiles are turned to limp meat? How can metaphors of a fabulous future become memories so quickly?

How many times will the drama of a failed rescue be replayed; each event analyzed stepwise out from reality into a horrible repeating dream? I was told that my friend jumped in and retrieved the body of his grandchild. I was told he performed CPR. CPR on a small child breaks bones. Did he feel like he was breaking her or trying desperately to reclaim her life? I will never ask.

There are so many questions that float to the surface of consciousness when talking about an event as pathetic as this. The simple question “why” breaks down into shards whose edges cut hurtfully deep. Many of the questions we can only ask ourselves in silence.

There are the support questions (e.g. What can I do for you?, Do you need anything?, Will you call me if you want to talk?) that should be asked out loud, and often. It is in the spirit of support that the ideals of atheism break down for me.

Rational approaches might work for a rational world. A world where 20-month-old girls drown is bleached free of everything rational. Gravity, electromagnetic radiation, air, and viscosity are notional at best. Can a person stand on non-existent physical principals against an emotional tsunami that has washed away value itself? No.

What do I do when asked to contribute to the magic seen by those in pain as needed for coping? If I am asked to pray for the family or the dead child’s soul what will I say? If a grieving parent takes me by the hand and asks me to describe “the place” that their child’s soul has gone to will I reply: “I don’t believe in that nonsense"? No.

I will put my hands on their shoulders and say: “I will pray if you want me to”. I will hold their hands and make up stories about a heaven where it is always Christmas, and love glows on every surface like crude soft focus. I will look into their eyes and say, with the conviction of consuming honesty, that I want them to hurt less.

Go with the flow

Once, when I was much younger, I overheard a conversation about baseball and Calculus.  The conversation basically centered around the question of whether baseball players were just innately good at solving Calculus problems on the fly.  

The proposition being debated was this:

“Calculus is the best way to solve the intercepting trajectory problems needed to compete favorably in baseball.  The baseball players perform as if they know the answers that would be generated by multivariable calculus. The baseball players must be calculating the answers to these complex problems in a subtle and profound way.”

The proposition stems from the idea that once you have a "best" way of doing something the way to do it faster is to simply be faster at doing it.  Listening to this statement with 21st century ears paints it a special brand of absurdity.  Picture someone saying that the fastest way to get from one coast to another is to walk as fast as you can!?  Why not get in a car, or a train, or a plane?  Walking may be a "best" way of betting from point A to point B but it is not the fastest in most circumstances.  The method dictates both the skillset needed to perform the activity and the way we measure success in the activity. 

Do the same rules apply when discussing thought?  Of course they do.  The method used to tackle a problem defines how we look at the answer and how we learn to achieve the answer.  A child may learn to add by counting their fingers and toes.  This works to develop an answering strategy.  The child may then memorize a set of addition tables.  This provides a larger set of answers faster, but does not provide the visual verification that the physical toe/finger  sum provides. 

One of the more emotional sources of resistance to the transition to atheist life is the silly notion that all thinking must be done using reason, specifically scientific reason.  The baseball player the elders argued about would be forced to do Calculus.  Playing “by feel” would be too spiritual.  If the players used some sort of visualization device like chi or guiding forces they might as well set up to begin a proof of some theist god's existence, wouldn't they?  Of course not!

The scientific method is an approach to reasoning that plods through information.  It is extremely good at establishing baseline information but it cannot be used to apply baseline information to actually doing much of anything.  

The next leap of reasoning is that of the engineering method.  Science establishes principles; mix these principles with some materials, and you have engineering.  With engineering you can build and design and do stuff, but it takes time.  There is a rich history of people using engineering principles to establish baseline knowledge.  The results have sometimes been wacky and wildly inaccurate theories.  There is little historical evidence of people using science to create great tangible things.  

Reason is diluted even more in the performance of most human activities.  It is easier to just know, or better yet just feel, when time is of the essence. 

When driving a car on a wet road it is possible to feel how well the tires are gripping the road simply by comparing the handling of the car with a memory of how the car handled on a dry road.  A very experienced driver anticipates the movement of the vehicle based on a series of instantaneous comparisons to a multitude of similar experiences.  In traffic a driver anticipates other drivers as well as the road melding a multitude of physical experiential memories to create a subliminally self referential method for driving.

If a person is as unidimensional as to only perform a single demanding function in their life it is fully conceivable that there would be no need for them to create a device to categorize their experiential methods for acting.  For someone who only drives all the time driving would only be driving.  Driving in the rain would only be driving in the rain. 

For most people there is much to be gained by creating categorizing tools that assist us when we apply patterns of experiential memory to a disparate things.  We can tell ourselves that doing something new is “just like” doing something we are familiar with. 

An advanced form of this is the use of a generalized feeling with a visual or tactile set of cues.  “feel the energy flowing through your body” or “see the lines of force connecting you to the intended action”.  Because these methods are used in the absence of reasoned verification they are often cited as examples of faith working.  If they are examples of faith working then the definition of faith that is used provides no evidence of anything supernatural.  I am describing the mind working without reason to perform actions for which the time lag imposed by reasoning impairs performing the action. 

Why, you might ask, am I going to such trouble to define the importance of types of thought that are entirely unscientific and, worse yet, steeped in the language of mumbo-jumbo? The answer is that in order to do anything cool one must first learn how to do cool stuff.  The algorithmic shortcuts that have been developed through thousands of years of human experience are described in an unfortunate language, but it is a language that can be understood.

Since I have a hard enough time doing things I am in no position to re-write the way masters have described doing them.  Instead I apply the knowledge of the 21st century to interpret these mechanistic descriptions.  This frees me from the need to appease spirits and daemons when doing anything that I must use “shortcut reasoning” to do well at.  It also allows me to get a more complete feel for the activity that I find enjoyable.

When balancing I am told to visualize the flow of energy called “chi”.  I avoid tensing my muscles and dampen overcorrection to minor perturbations in the balanced state.  I visualize a massless liquid that flows and sloshes. Each muscle is controlled, not in isolation, but as systems that respond to the flow of the imaginary liquid.  I do not have to calculate or postulate, the response is immediate.  What I use is akin to an applet called “balance”.

The thinking centers running the balance applet are the cerebellum and the cerebrum.  The reptilian brain perched on the brain stem can dictate actions quickly and efficiently but does so in an utterly unreasoning way.  In order to provide direction to the cerebellum the cerebrum must provide simple instructions.  Creating a virtual model of the instruction set (the visualization of liquid chi energy) facilitates the rapid indexing of the instructions.  When the cerebellum wants to know what to do next the answer is there.  The cerebellum does not care if the cerebrum is making logical sense.  It will twitch a muscle to respond to imaginary liquid energy as quickly as to the solution of a complex multivariate equation. 

The more that neural patterns of communication are used in the brain the stronger and more efficient they become.  The actual structure of the brain responds to the ways in which we think.  In this way the simple applet goes from software to firmware as it is used.  As one becomes better at visualizing the activity the more the visualization becomes unnecessary and we can become even more unthinking and automatic in our actions. 

Once the mental applet, described in the language of magic and superstition, is uploaded the need to describe it in supernatural terms disappears.  We can now identify the actions and describe them in terms of their effect.  Very complex actions are possible.  Identifying the process of learning them in an objective and nonmagical way only makes them a more powerful tool.

Evangelical atheist

I like the idea of an “evangelical atheist”.  There is worthy irony in using evangelical in this context.

I use the latest definition of evangelical which is: “marked by militant or crusading zeal”. However, it is impossible to use the word without traces of its origin clinging to it like a odor.  The original Evangelical churches (In the early part of the last century) were, along with some Lutheran churches, part of the Landeskirchen (state run churches) in Germany.  The Evangelical churches lobbied unsuccessfully to be the official church for the National Socialists in the early 1930s.  It was partially due to the zeal of that sales attempt that the term evangelical was resurrected in the 1970's as a descriptor that some conservative Christians began using to distinguish themselves from Fundamentalists.  The definition I use comes from describing zeal as being like that of members of the evangelical groups that arose in the 1970s.

The god of the evangelical Christian churches is very interventionist. Want a truly awkward god? The evangelical Christian churches have one for you.

In addition to an interventionist god the evangelicals believe in being quite interventionist themselves.  The evangelical wants to convert you to their belief.  Since I have said I like the idea of being an evangelical atheist does this mean I want you to be an atheist?  Yes it does actually.

Why do I care if you are an atheist? I care because I think you can use the tools of reason to make a happier life for yourself. Just as with suffering there is no shortage of potential happiness. Why don't you pick up a little more happiness for yourself?

Since I have gone to the trouble of usurping a definition I think it only proper that I steal a few other things.

David Bebbington has deffined a “quadrilateral of priorities that is the basis of Evangelicalism”which he says are:
conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism
I plan on stealing all of the useful bits from this quadrilateral of made up words.

Firstly I should point out that I use the term quadrilateral in the disjointedly stilted way that Bebbington does. It looks to me like he stole the word from the Wesleyans who used the term to define an approach to their religious method (they are often called methodists). The Wesleyan quadrilateral is scripture, tradition, experience and reason. Why the Wesleyans took a name for a four-sided polygon to desribe their set of principles is beyond me. Why Bebbington would steal the poorly thought out Wesleyan term to describe his set of concepts is even more strange. Did anyone stop and think “does this make sense”. Perhaps they did and arrived at the same conclusion I did. The conclusion that it does not make sense and is therefore more humorous to use.

As mentioned earlier the idea of Conversionism helps make the term evangelical worth taking in the first place. I want YOU to join in the new atheist movement.

Activism is pretty self explanatory. Get active, write down what the new atheism means to you and share it. Let your representatives know that you are an atheist and you vote. Let people know that atheists are people with faces and not evil forces plotting to destroy humanity.

Biblicism sounds made up, and probably is. The idea that perfect knowledge comes from the bible is difficult to adapt directly to an atheist “quadrilateral of priorities”. I will adroitly sidestep this problem by simply spelling this wrong and giving it a new meaning. “Biblioism” is also a made up word but it looks similar and and since it doesn't look like it has officially been invented before I can define it. I define it to mean “Leveraging the property of human knowledge wherein every human idea can be written down so that others can read and understand it”. This is obviously an important concept. It means that people can comprehensively communicate everything they think with one another in a archival format and that there is a now named pursuit of accomplishing just that. There are many facets to this activity. This is an ambitious enterprise worthy of being one of the four elements of the quadrilateral of an evangelical movement.

Crucicentism is also a made up word. It means that mutilation of somebody centuries ago is important to you after you die. All the elements of this concept are difficult to examine. As an atheist I find the concept described by this word as vapid as it is ephemeral. We need a better word, and a better more substantial concept. I propose the word “Amorism”. This is a word with at least a century of re-deffinition behind it. I think it is time to define it again. I define it as “Loving and finding ways and means to love more”. I have obviously saved the best concept of my evangelical Atheist quadrilateral for last. We are more than just atheists, we are human atheists. We want you to be part of our world because we love you and shedding the vestiges of guilt-driven vengeful iron-age theist gods frees us to love even more.

Conversionism, Activism, Biblioism, and Amorism.  
Join, Do, Read, Love.

Without anything to really sign up for the Conversionism will have to be more virtual. Perhaps you can click on the scarlet A on the upper right hand side of my blog and get some ideas on how to display your conversion from the OUT campaign. The Activism might be better served if I had a list of things to do but I'm not really good at to-do lists so that will have to wait. I'm writing some stuff so perhaps you can read my blog and understand it. Biblioism, thats one out of four. For the final one (Amorism) I simply need to find ways of loving people even more than I do now. That one sounds as easy as sleeping in on a lazy Sunday morning.

As practiced by me the atheist quadrilateral may actually be an atheist line segment. A line segment is better than a point. 

We can do this.
Better yet, I can do this.
Let's get it on.




Evangelist, n., A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
-- Ambrose Bierce