I love it when fundamentalists do this…

March 29th, 2008 • chatter, idiocy

The hate speech alone ought to give any rational American pause. We don’t tolerate such talk against minorities on the basis of race or sexual preference, so I have to ask why we would tolerate it against Darwin skeptics?

From The ID Report. Yep, us Americans are devoid of racism now thanks to Rosa Parks (erroneously pulled into this op-ed). Nevermind the fact that people are still calling black Americans “niggers” and there’s at least one piece on racism in America on one of the big box news channels everyday. Or that gays are continually discriminated against to this day. I thought they all got liberated from intolerance back in the 70s when disco was still big! No, there are no hate crimes perpetrated against gays today, none at all. I’d make a remark about this author but then I’d get lumped into the “bigoted” group of people who read PZ Myers’s blog. I mean the fact that he states Americans don’t tolerate racism is stuff of pure comedy alone, I don’t even have to make up a punchline, he already did. If you believe Americans don’t tolerate racism or hate on gays, I’m not sure if you know what “rational” means. Or if you actually watch the news. Or talk to anyone.

I do like how the author points out that even if you question evolution based on non-religious rationale, you’re a target for the pro-Darwinist hate machine. I find this incredibly funny seeing as there are people in my Human Evolution class who are agnostic and don’t fully swallow evolution as a viable theory but they’re not being brow-beaten or singled out in class for this. They’re students like the rest of us. My teacher, a staunch Darwinist with a doctorate in primatology, surely isn’t taking these kids out back and beating them up. Americans “don’t tolerate racism” but we sure as hell tolerate a lot of ignorance.

All of this is about the pro-Intelligent Design anti-rationalism (and everything else) movie Expelled. Long story short, it premiered in Minnesota and PZ signed up to attend on a publicly available form and got booted from the movie theater. But his guest, long arm of atheism Richard Dawkins, got in without issue. People supporting Expelled keep saying that PZ was not invited to an “invite only” (was Googlebot invited since it crawled the site?) that was not invite only or that he crashed a private screening to which he was allowed to come since he signed up to do so. But the producer of the movie, who actually singled out both Myers and Dawkins to be interviewed in the movie, “allowed” (read (presumably): “didn’t see the white-haired, tall Doctor whom I hand picked to be in this movie”) Dr. Dawkins to stay. Well, as someone pointed out, if PZ wasn’t invited then weren’t his guests even less invited? Since it’s a private theater (since you pay to go there, it’s technically private property even though it’s open to the public) why weren’t he and his guests wrangled up and sent off to the hoosegow for trespassing? Smells fishy to me if no one was actually invited but only one person was kicked out but a bunch of other non-invited attendees got to stay and hang out.

I think I’ll sign up for a screening here in Boca so I can not get thrown out and then bash the movie because I plan on seeing it anyway for belly laughs. From the sound of all of the Hitler and Nazi propaganda footage, I think these guys are either trying to promote neo-Nazism or have a man-crush on Adolph. “Hitler was a strict Darwinist” is the popular phrase being used right now. No, he actually wasn’t but he was incredibly high on illegal drugs a lot. Hey, that sounds like G.W. Bush except he doesn’t understand Darwinism. Parallels?

I can’t believe I’ve wasted the last hour or so reading this diatribe, as unamazingly biased as it is. For someone who’s “spent the last quarter century investigating and studying this issue [of anti-Darwinist elitism]” (author’s words, not mine) in respects to academia, they’ve apparently never stepped foot inside of a collegiate classroom in those twenty-five years. Surprised? Yeah, neither am I. According to the author, the movie wholly states “freedom of expression is under attack” but of course does not acknowledge the fact that there are schools in America — both secular and religious — that disallow any discussion of evolution and Darwinism. Not only colleges but primary and secondary schools. So if freedom of expression is under attack, why is the counter argument to your eye-opening movie being actively disregarded and decried in states such as Kansas and Texas? Freedom of expression isn’t under attack at all nor was it ever in this regard. Since the antithesis of ID is actively being stifled in the Bible Belt (“under attack” if you will, to use the parlance of the author), how Darwinist elitism is attacking proponents of ID is beyond me. There are portions of the US population that believe in Intelligent Design so how is their freedom of expression (since they can openly express whatever they want) “under attack”? I know the article is biased and entirely one-sided but seeing “arguments” like this really makes one wonder just what did happen to reasoning to allow unresearched and factually incorrect stuff such as this get put out.

The internet happened.

Self pull junkyards to the rescue!

March 29th, 2008 • chatter

A few months ago, we found out the thermostat housing on my girlfriend’s Focus was cracked and needed to be replaced. Laziness set in — along with some thinning of the pockets — and we didn’t replace it. But now we have to, her car is leaking like a sieve. So sieve-like is the leak that the gallon of water I put in her overfill reservoir at 9PM is now all over the parking lot. Took about 5 minutes flat. We would’ve replaced this at the dealer when we found out except for their great pricing structure and ridiculously low mark-up. I could pay some mechanic ~$60 for the part plus roughly $150 in labour (maybe $225 if they want a standard 3 hour labour charge) and be done with it one in afternoon and $200+ later. Nah, I’m driving to Davie for a $15 used part to install tomorrow if the yard has it. $15, about two gallons of gas, and the cost a T25 drive is below the reasonably priced dealer offer. Wonder which my checkbook will appreciate more?

I also got some new teas today. Rishi Tea Ancient Tree Pu-erh Maiden and Ancient Tree Pu-erh Tou Cha. I won’t do a review here yet but one thing none of the other reviews said, that I read, was that this stuff smells like a rotting body. I swear it smells like something died and they just rolled up the skin and popped it in a can. In no way does this describe the taste but it’s got a nose you can’t miss. I’ll write something up soon after I enjoy another cup or two and take some pretty pictures.

Another week past

March 28th, 2008 • chatter

I’m glad this week is almost over, it’s been one big bore. From work to school, nothing exciting has gone on except for when my girlfriend thought someone broke in and it turned out to be a bath mat that fell off the shower rod. At least it got me out of class about 5 minutes early. I should have an exciting weekend ahead though! I get to dissect why the Focus is spewing radiator coolant and possibly change the oil in my clunker, find some books for a new paper, eat some sushi(!), find a leg of lamb recipe, and edit 400+ pictures from Lion Country Safari. The pictures should be fun to look through, we managed to get some decent ones even though it was raining the whole time.

I’m dying to read a non-school-related book and I’ve got dozens to pick from. But that’ll have to wait a few more weeks, I don’t want to get encumbered by yet another book that’ll go unfinished, I too have enough of those to go around. Maybe this week has just sucked my intellectual stimulus, I don’t know. I’m drinking some of that horrid sencha tea and now that I’ve been downing two cups a day, it’s not so terrible. Granted it still tastes just like grass, I can drink it without sweeteners.

Maybe I’ll go find a new WP theme. I really dig Unsleepable but it’s been out of development since I started this blog so I can imagine that it will mesh well with 2.5+ but it’s getting kind of stale. Meh.

Sencha tastes like a freshly mowed lawn

March 24th, 2008 • chatter

But it smells better than that, like someone ground up some flowers too. Don’t get me wrong, I find some kind of odd comfort in the smell of a freshly mowed lawn — it has some kind of sterile “clean” smell to it — but I don’t like my tea to taste like one. I bought some of Dr. Weil’s Daily Sencha tea today since I was looking for something to put in my new Tigo cup since black teas just don’t work in it (more on this later this week). I decided on a green tea since the Silver Needle tea I wanted was a bit too pricey for me today. After smelling a handful of Rishi teas — tip, don’t buy this stuff from Whole Foods, it’s so much cheaper from Amazon — I decided to buy some Sencha…until I realized their Sencha was $17 for only 60g and we opted for Dr. Weil’s 80g bag for $8. Now, I can’t comment on the Rish tea just yet but Weil’s tastes just like I cut my lawn, if I had one, and steeped it in water. I’ve smelled other green teas that smell like grass but this is the only one in recent memory that tastes just like it. After being a linebacker/center/nose guard for 6 years, I know exactly what grass tastes like. I just bought $8 worth of grass it seems. This tea doesn’t give my mouth that funny tea feeling since it’s “less astringent” but I can’t drink this stuff straight. I had to add a nice portion of organic honey to give it some actual flavour. Even though we have (or had) the largest Whole Foods Market in the country, their loose leaf tea selection is pretty pathetic, it’s only three brands that I could find! I could blow a bunch of money for Rishi or Octavia tea or go budget for Dr. Weil. Looks like I’ll be springing for something a bit more boutique next time.

I’m now in the market for an electric tea kettle with variable temperatures but I’ll be damned if they’re not hard to find. It’s either boiling or slightly less boiling (208F) unless I plunk down cash for a Zojirushi which I just may. With one of these, I can finally enjoy my teas and coffee at less-than-tongue-scalding temperatures. Of course, I could accomplish all of this with my coffee maker and a reliable thermometer but I’ve been looking to shelve that thing permanently since it’s only used to heat water for my French press. I’m getting a fresh shipment of coffee this week and I’m quite excited. This is the first time I’ve purchased any coffee since Christmas when I received about 5lbs worth. I’m getting 3lbs of Gorilla Coffee from the Brooklyn roastery. I ordered their pretty sweet looking Gorilla gift box and it’s being roasted tomorrow (well, actually today) and shipped on Tuesday. Now that’s fresh! If their coffee is as great as their customer service, I might be dumping Coffee Fool as my mainstay coffee roaster.

I want to be on perpetual semi-vacation

March 19th, 2008 • chatter

I’m now back at work, begrudgingly, and school as well. I enjoyed my time off although it was over a week ago, I wish I had a few more days. I could say I spent most of last week catching up with work, partly true, but it was really more like I didn’t leave and no one else worked for a week. I managed to slightly catch up on reading for school even though it was not to my detriment to have not read since I’m one of the few who does — in either class. Oh well, the vacation’s been over and I feel less stressed for the most part. I also feel less connected to work and more drawn to academia now even though I didn’t do anything special to come to this.

I’ve missed out on a lot of news lately too, not much to my dismay. I haven’t touched my feed reader in two weeks and I do feel out of the loop but really, what have I missed? I know a firefighter was killed about a mile from my old place of employment last week and I know my niece was in a dance competition on Sunday. I kind of like this unplugged feeling. But alas, I want to go catch up on news for an hour or so before I head to sleep.

Ah, sweet vacation

March 7th, 2008 • chatter

I’m nearing the end of my vacation but what a great time it’s been. My father spent a week with us and gorged himself on healthy, organic, and mostly vegetarian food. I built a spice box and a new desk for myself, I only have pictures of the desk since I think the spice box could use some work. The desk is a welcome for me since I do spend a large portion of my day sitting at the thing so I built a desk from a solid core oak finished door with 4″x4″ pine legs (it’s all I could get!). It must weigh 120lbs easily and I need to stain it in the next few months. Unfortunately, it’s not made of reclaimed wood but the spice box is! Good luck getting reclaimed and recycled wood from Home Depot, we were lucky enough to get anyone to help us. This weekend I’ll be putting up a peg board for my myriad of tools.

I’ve also sent off 7 PCs to be responsibly recycled which freed up a lot of room for me in the office. Now I only have my work PC, my play PC, and two spares along with the various laptops. Since this is my first real vacation in two years, I’ve spent almost the entire week doing something I thought impossible: detoxing myself from the Internet. It’s been surprisingly easy although a bit boring at times. I’ve fired up my laptop a few times to check my email and my bank account but nothing more than that. Well, I did check my work email account just to make sure that I didn’t have about a billion emails sitting, I’ve only had about 600 I’d say. I also have some work stuff to do tomorrow which stinks but hey, them’s the breaks. Tonight’s the first time I will have spent any amount of time jaunting around the Internet since last Friday. And it’s been a great experience. In all the time I’ve spent away, I managed to build my aforementioned desk and spice box, catch up on some TV shows and even catch up on a few weeks’ reading for school.

I really, really need to do this more often than every 2 years. Hopefully the “work stuff” I have to do tomorrow will yield me some more vacation time.