Taking the Weekend Off

I’m taking the weekend off to go stay with the best guy in the universe.  I won’t be posting, checking email, etc. until Monday night/Tuesday morning.

- R

Dawkins Reads Some "Fan Mail"

You gotta love those “loving” Christian emails.

Even More of the Same

Two nights ago Biden was urging crowds to chant that McCain is, “just more of the same.”  That apparently goes for his VP Sarah Palin too.

What McCain lacks in Bush-level fundamentalism, Bush-level anti-science, Bush-level anti-woman’s rights (jokingly called pro-life) and Bush-level idiocy, Palin picks up the slack and tugs hard.

McCain and Palin together are a Dreamteam of Destruction.  These next four years are critical for America and will probably make or break the future of American foreign policy and economic/energy stability.  It is urgent we put the right people in office, people who recognise and take seriously the problems our nation and our planet are facing.

I can now say without the slightest hint of doubt that nothing in the world could make me like Obama/Biden less than McCain/Palin.  I would have considered McCain depending on his VP, but now there is nothing to consider.

Some evil GM scientist picked the worst parts of Hillary and bred them with the worst parts of Bush and gave us McCain’s new running mate… and in her acceptance speech, she said “nu-cyoo-lar.”

More of the same.

 

McCain is 22 years older than Alaska, the state Palin is Governor of.

What is Science?

There is question as to what the actual definition of science is.

When asked what science is* I usually point to the OED and grunt, but actual definitions aren’t enough for some people seeking to define terms.

Look no further, people, Wikipedia has shown us the way!  Wikipedia has settled the question with a definitive answer, in the form of a tiny .jpg.

 

Science is a galaxy-looking thing that shoots fire and is currently being impaled by a pillar of smoke.  All hail Wikipedia!

If you were queer, I’d still be here

While my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) are no secret to my parents, they haven’t really taken an interest in following the blog, reading any of the articles and papers I’ve written, etc. They chose to take a leaf out of the army’s book (“Don’t ask, don’t tell”). Recently, I fell asleep on the couch after making a blog post from the shared family computer, and left the blog homepage up and running. Upon finding it, my stepmother informed my father that I had been visiting “gay sites” on their computer, which prompted me to show the blog to dad, explain the situation behind the title, including my own heterosecular straigtheism. After a long, drawn out argument ranging from living arrangements, financial situations, god, recreational drug usage, (a frequently recurring argument in my family, we talk about one of the four at least once a week), the topic came back to the “gay site”. I took my father to the computer, showed him the blog, let him read a few of the posts, and after all of it, the discussion culiminated in this:

“Are you gay?”

“No”

“If you were gay, that would be okay. I’m not saying anything about it, you can tell me, it’s okay.”

“I promise dad, if I ever started swinging the other way I’d let you know before I brought any boyfriends home.”

I felt strangely inspired to share this instructional video on the topic of how to talk to someone about their sexuality.

- CJ

And now for a taste of things to come

Greetings and salutations Gaytheist readers, and welcome to my second blog post ever!

As you may have guessed, I am one of these vaguely mentioned “friends” of Reed’s. I’ve been asked to post on “whatever, whenever” to add a new, and hopefully somewhat sciencey, perspective to Homosecular Gaytheist. My particular area happens to be psychology, in fact,  I’m gearing up to start my second year of a Master’s program and all the delightful thesis fun that entails, so I don’t really know how regularly I’ll be posting, but you can almost count on something at some point about psychological research… maybe even MY research. To get started though, I would rather describe a recent conversation I had with a hopelessly misinformed and dangerous creature, namely, a Lutheran fresh from a missionary trip to South Africa.

First, I will say that my encounters with Lutherans and their doctrine is limited, but I have heard them described as “wanna be Catholics”; from what I’ve seen, this is pretty accurate. Their services are full of all the mindless repetition you’d expect from a brain-washing session. In fact, I recently went to a Lutheran funeral where the deceased’s name was mentioned exactly twice and not in eulogy. The name of Jesus, however, played a prominent role in the service.

Inadvertent Racism

It has come to my attention that my inadvertently racist grandmother has become even more, well, inadvertently racist, and has also started making up words. I just thought I’d take the opportunity to share a recent gem she come up with today, in light of the 24-hour torrential downpour/mild drizzle we’ve had.

“It’s raining pitchforks and nigger babies”

I post this for two reason
1) Can anyone else share funny inadvertently racist stories?
2) Can SOMEONE please give me a history or an explanation behind the phrase? Is it something that was in common use when she grew up, or did my grandmother just pull it out of her ass, because cats and dogs were too docile to be raining on us?

- CJ

Arkansas Homosexuals "in No-Man’s Land"

My cousin Katherine Blackmon-Solis is an attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas who practices child custody and adoption law.

I asked her if she thought the Arkansas ballot measure banning gay adoption had a fighting chance:

Unfortunately, I think it does stand a fighting chance.  Arkansas law unfairly impacts gay couples across the board.  For example, we have a “good behavior clause” that is frequently put into custody orders, stating that there is to be no overnight visitor of a romantic nature while the children is in the care of that parent.  This effectively prohibits a parent from having a “partner.”  Gay couples cannot get married, so their only option is to live in an unmarried relationship.  I have seen many situations where the non-custodial parent is openly gay, has a partner of many years, yet the partner has to move out of their home when the children visit – or the parent can choose not to exercise visitation with the kids.  It’s awful.  Homosexuals who are in committed relationships are forced to live in a no-man’s land – they are not allowed to marry, yet our laws restrict and oftentimes negatively impact unmarried persons.

Apparently it’s worse than I thought.

New Stuff! Yay!

I updated the layout once again to make it look a bit less cluttered.  Since I’m on this side of the blog, I don’t usually see what your side sees.  I just write some shit and hit publish.  That’s why it’s good to get feedback from people on things such as the layout, page glitches, etc.

I also added a few friends as semi-regular contributors who may be stopping by to say hi soon.

Be sure when you read a post to check at the bottom of the page for the author’s byline.  I write most of what shows up on this blog, but it’s a good bet that the coherent, educated posts here are someone else’s… so check the bylines before commenting.  The authors should sign their posts but people forget to do things sometime.

I would make it more obvious with avatars and stuff, but none of the free WordPress themes I could find support that and I’m not about to pay to blog.

Parable of the Sighted Mukluk

Today, PZ Myers posted a link to his parable, Planet of the Hats (PDF) and Evolved Rationalist posted her parable of the Thingists who follow the Thing, Maker of Caves.

I thought I’d stretch my creative writing muscles and write a parable today too.

The Parable of the Sighted Mukluk

There is a planet around the star Betelgeuse called Tynan.  It is a beautiful planet and anyone who sees it will most certainly fall in love with it instantly.  The people who rule Tynan, the Mukluks, have never seen their own planet.

For hundreds of thousands of years, the Mukluk people walked around with their eyes closed.  Their eyes worked, but the star their planet orbited was so bright that it would burn out their eyes and render them blind if ever they were to open them… or so they were told by their leaders and parents and teachers since birth.  They were so afraid of losing their eyesight to the sun that they never opened their eyes to see.

Arkansas, don’t do this to yourself!

(USA Today)

LITTLE ROCK (AP) — A proposal aimed at effectively banning gays and lesbians from becoming foster or adoptive parents was cleared Monday to appear on this fall’s ballot in Arkansas.

The measure would prohibit unmarried couples living together from fostering or adopting children, and Arkansas doesn’t allow gays to marry or recognize gay marriages conducted elsewhere.

[...]

“Arkansas needs to affirm the importance of married mothers and fathers,” Family Council President Jerry Cox said. “We need to publicly affirm the gold standard of rearing children whenever we can. The state standard should be as close to that gold standard of married mom and dad homes as possible.”

The Family Council campaign is a response to a 2006 Arkansas Supreme Court decision striking down a state policy that specifically banned gays and lesbians from becoming foster parents.

[...]

Cox said the Family Council will rely on support from the same network of churches that helped it pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2004.

I must admit I have a strong connection to Arkansas.  My grandparents (not the racist ones), my aunt and uncle and their four wonderful children, and many other fantastic Bradens, Blackmons and Freemans live in Arkansas and my roots are there–even though I was born in L.A. and raised in Memphis.  Arkansas was once on the road to common sense until they were recently driven back into the gutter as the religious right have come out in full force in America and Arkansas has taken hit after hit.

The measure does not specifically mention barring gay adoptions, and that is what probably allowed it to get this far, but it bars all unmarried couples from adopting.

Interview with gay diver, Matthew Mitcham

Because NBC refuses to play it, here’s a video of Matthew Mitcham with his mother and (gasp!) with his male partner.

Christopher Hitchens: Dear Dubya

This is probably the most poignant and sardonically irreverent criticism of George W. Bush I’ve ever read.  It’s tongue-in-cheek meanness (The meanness is more than deserved.  We have so few words that mean meanness in a positive sense.) reads more like a roast than real political criticism, but it cuts much deeper than any Presidential criticism I’ve read in the past eight years.

And of course, Christopher Hitchens wrote it.

Gays for Obama/Biden

Obama has been relatively admirable on the LGBT playing field–though not nearly as much as former Democratic candidate John Kerry or lying twat Hillary Clinton–but his recent kowtowing to the religious right has left him vague and useless on most matters of gay rights.

However, Obama’s newly announced running mate, Joe Biden, is a strong voice for equality.

Biden supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which expands the list of recognised discrimination cases to include gays and he supports adding homophobia-inspired violence to hate crime legislation.

Although he voted yes on DOMA in ‘96 and has showed support in segregating legal relationships into marriage for straight people and and “civil unions” that carry equal legal status as marriage for gays, he voted against the federal Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and has stated that further denying civil unions and marriage to gays is prolonging the inevitable.

He received a score of 78% on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2006 Congressional Scorecard(PDF) and a score of 100% on their 2002 Scorecard(PDF).

Barack Obama got a score of 89% on the 2006 Scorecard but that doesn’t take into account the shifting of opinions we’ve seen so far this year in his campaign.

It could very well be that Biden is going to save Obama from losing politically-conscious gay and secular voters.

We’re just waiting for him to co-sponsor the Uniting American Families Act.

Obama/Biden ‘08

Barack Obama has chosen Delaware’s Senior Senator, Joe Biden as his running mate.

Especially after the months of Obama’s pandering to the religious, a pandering that has escalated into the realm of political fellatio, this greatly increases my chance of voting for Obama with a guiltless conscience this year.

While he’s not the ideal secularist, he’s certainly better than Obama at not blowing pastors for votes.

I’ve been using a Biden quote for the past month since I heard it on (I think) Meet The Press: “You’re entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.”  I like it.

Who wants a Johnson/Harris ticket in 2012?

Life Update

I haven’t been blogging much lately.  The show at Mill Mountain is in its last week and school starts again tomorrow, so I’m busy using every bit of free time I have to enjoy the last few days of Summer vacation in spite of my schedule.

There is an exciting addition to my life that’s worth mentioning:

I’ll let you folks come up with the story.  I’m too tired to go into much detail.

And it’s NOT a mullet, Rebecca.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Eats a Qur’an

No, not that Ayaan Hirsi Ali, this one:

This is a chocolate-brown Pit Bull puppy I rescued from an abusive owner earlier this year.  She’s a stunningly beautiful dog and so I named her after one of the most stunningly beautiful heroes of our time, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I have two Chihuahuas and a fairly small yard, so I couldn’t keep her myself.  It wouldn’t be fair to her for me to keep her indoors and confined away from my other dogs. I gave Ayaan to my friend Nick and she now has plenty of room to run around and exercise at his house.

I told you that story to tell you this one:

I was hanging out at Dunkin Donuts tonight and Nick mentioned that he had a paperback Qur’an until Ayaan chewed it up.  The irony had me rolling on the picnic table’s bench in wild spasms of laughter.

Old Media vs. New Media

I just returned from downtown Roanoke and the horror of the pile of homeless poo in the parking garage was crippling.  The smell was unbearable and it was right next to my car, which still smells like hobo poo.  I had to step over steaming, fresh poo to get to my car.  This was inadequate, however, to prepare me for the real shit I found when I got home and plugged into the Tubes.  I can still taste the smell of hobo shit in the back of my throat but that’s nothing compared to the shit spewing from my computer screen as I read the Interwebnets.

Old Media (Non-digital Film, Television, Radio, Newspaper) is dying, but not without a fight.  And we, the Internet People, are the ones being hurt.

New Media (Digital Media, Streaming Video, Streaming Audio, Blogs) is being unfairly suppressed and hurt by Old Media.  Because laws regarding telecommunications were written when fax machines were a luxury commodity and TV and Radio were king, they do far too little to protect the Internet, the most important technological advance since the first pornographer decided to paint a picture of people fucking on a Grecian vase.

I May Have Auditory Synaesthesia

I tried this test at least two dozen times to make sure it happened each time, and it did.

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~saenz/movingdots.html

The test is a video that shows white dots moving toward the screen (imagine the Windows 95/98 Starfield screen saver) and then reversing and going away.

What I hear:

While the dots are moving, I hear a faint high-pitched noise not unlike what many people (myself included) can hear when an old CRT monitor or television is turned on, but a bit higher in pitch.  For those who don’t hear the sound of a CRT monitor, it’s like a consistent-pitched sound that’s between a “whoosh” and a whine (almost like a high-pitched squeal that’s very breathy… like Marilyn Monroe a dozen octaves up from normal) that doesn’t waver and is one of the highest-pitched sounds humans can hear.

The moment when the dots reverse is a slight pulse in the noise where the tone and volume both lower for a split-second before going back up.

The noise sounds as if it’s ~80% in my left ear and ~20% in my right, giving the impression that the noise is emanating from inside my head close to my left ear.  I know there is no actual noise emanating from the inside of my skull, but that is the impression it gives.

I’ve noticed this noise in several situations but I never, until now, realised that the noise always occurred in those situations, nor did I connect them.

I’ve noticed this noise

• when driving on a straight road with a dotted centre line, but only certain roads like this and not others;
• when watching high-contrast scenes at a DLP movie theatre (this is the only time when the noise is substantially noticeable and uncomfortable);
• when sitting in complete silence (often in a parked car) outside or in rooms with big windows on days when the sun is clear and bright;
• and very, very faintly when looking at my LCD computer monitor. I can only notice the sound when I look to and from my monitor to hear the difference and only if I’m completely quiet and my CPU fan isn’t currently running.  I actually did notice this before the test but I thought it was something else.  (The noise is much too soft to have interfered with the test.  The noise during the video was much louder than the normal LCD noise and at a slightly lower–barely a quartertone–pitch.)

The test is for hearing-motion synaesthesia, but the noise occurring during the third example has very little to do with motion.

I have no clue what causes this or anything about it, really, so I wish the researchers luck and hope that this post can help in some small way.

My head is bleeding…

because I hit it on my desk, repeatedly.

Those of you with thin skulls should not read on.

This article came at a great time:  I found out yesterday that a friend of mine, a Muslim, believes Earth is flat.

Oddly enough, it’s from Fox News:

Global warming? Somewhat controversial. Evolution? Even more so.

Still, there’s one well-founded scientific notion that everyone can agree upon: The Earth is round, like a ball.

Right? Well, maybe not. The BBC reports that the Flat Earth Society, thought to have been crippled by the death of its leader in 2001, is still hanging on, somewhat bemusedly.