Atheist a-go-go

While driving down the highway to work today, I noticed a new billboard with a giant pro-Christian message on it. There didn't seem to be any advertisement to it...some Christian group must have just decided they wanted to spread the word of their God in some massive method.

As a tried and true believer in freedom of speech, I have no problem with this. Granted, I don't choose to kowtow to any God, but I don't begrudge those who do.

This got me to thinking, however, about how divergent the messages of the godly and the godless are. Someone who believes in a God can put up a sign beside the highway, and because their message is a positive one, they are allowed such freedom. The atheist/humanist side of the coin has a problem, however. Their position is not to trumpet the existence of their own holy entity, but to discredit the idea of an entity even existing. This puts them in a rather poor position - one that always looks negative and vindictive. I mean, imagine a sign beside the road that says, "There is no God. Get over it." This is a completely legitimate belief to the atheists, but it would never be allowed since it would be aligned with hate speech rather than free speech.

I happen to use StumbleUpon.com when I'm bored - and one of the things I have it feed me are atheist sites. Most of them spend a lot of time trying to present arguments that show how silly the beliefs of Christianity are. Of course, a Christian who came across such a site would be terribly offended. However, when a Christian spouts off about how great their religion and God is, they are allowed to do so with impunity. Again, the Christian view always looks positive and good, while the atheist view looks like sour grapes.

Therefore, I thought atheism needs a marketing spin so they can say things with a positive slant rather than their typical "religion sucks" view. But the more I thought about it, the more I discovered that the atheist point of view, when viewed against a religious one, is hopelessly doomed to looking negative! No matter how you present it, an atheistic view appears to be slagging religion. I mean if an atheist says:

"Think for yourself." (a positive atheist message)

The religious would hear it as:

"Religious people are mindless sheep."

If an atheist says,

"Atheism is cool."

It sounds like they're saying:

"Religion sucks."

Religion automatically has the high ground on this matter because they can talk about all the great things that religion provides, sounding like a celebration of their religion, but nothing of what they say sounds like a direct discrediting of atheism (unless you really want to twist it that way). Atheism, on the other hand, is founded on the idea that there is no God and therefore, it is naturally negative toward religion. This automatically makes atheists appear antagonistic (which, in fairness, they often are), which is a horrible PR position.

Which all comes to making me be quite impressed by how well-insulated religion is. Faith is quite simply unassailable. You can beat on it all you want with atheist logic, but true faith is very difficult to destroy. This is something that a religious person is very proud of...and that, in itself, reinforces the faith. Brilliant!

But I do find the double standard annoying. It's okay for someone to trumpet their religion loudly in public, but to trumpet one's non-religion (atheism) in public is considered bad form. No wonder there are so many angry atheists!

The muse in the young

Ah, my daughter the performer - she is quite interesting to talk to about her dance and singing. She mentioned last night when I was bringing her home from ballet that some kids in school were unwilling to sing aloud in class, and she couldn't imagine how they could think that way. She always notes how the other kids in choir fail to really belt-out their singing, so that she ends up being the one leading them. The same thing happens in band - she is the only flute that really plays loud, and the others are so lacking in confidence they play softly and she finds herself having to play softer so as not to stand out horribly (it is supposed to be an ensemble, after all). This, in itself, causes a problem since she plays with a type of flute (open holed) that requires more volume of air, so she can't hit some of the notes when she's trying to be quiet! And now, tonight, she will be singing in the public performance of the talent show. Her act, during the audition, moved one of the judges to tears and has brought tons of applause during rehearsals, so I'm told.

And I'm torn - I don't want to be a "show biz parent" for whom their child's performance success is much about their own unsatisfied wish for stardom that causes them to drive their child into the biz (like, say McAulay Caulkin's family), but I also think she is terribly talented and I wonder if I don't push her a bit, will she someday look back and wonder if she wouldn't have succeeded in a life of performing if we hadn't been more demonstrative toward her BEING a performer and stretching her to work at it.

I also know that she dreams of being a dancer foremost - but honestly, I think she has more of a chance of being a singer with her amazing and completely natural voice. If only there was a way to tell how to proceed.

Perhaps a magic 8 ball is the trick, eh?

I'm not the only one worrying...

A discussion of how historians are a bit distressed about the future of keeping a handle on science. They used to have letters shared by scientists. Now, they have only email - and that material is ephemeral at best.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/20/1/8/1

And even the knowledgeable can be ignorant...

With further investigation, I have also discovered that not only were Japanese-descended American citizens interred during World War II, but also other nationalities - mostly Germans and Italians. The latter receive even less attention than the Japanese, mainly because their numbers were so fewer...

Ah, so much more not to forget...

An example of edited history

Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior under Franklin Roosevelt, In the Washington Evening Star, September 23, 1946:

As a member of President Roosevelt's administration, I saw the United States Army give way to mass hysteria over the Japanese... it lost its self-control and, egged on by public clamor, some of it from greedy Americans who sought an opportunity to possess themselves of Japanese rights and property, it began to round up indiscriminately the Japanese who had been born in Japan, as well as those born here. Crowded into cars like cattle, these hapless people were hurried away to hastily constructed and thoroughly inadequate concentration camps, with soldiers with nervous muskets on guard, in the great American desert. We gave the fancy name of "relocation centers" to these dust bowls, but they were concentration camps nonetheless...

In 1990 and 91, I was a high school teacher in Texas. In a couple of my classes, I had high school seniors as students and often we'd have talks about current events and history, just as something different to do. On one occasion, I felt drawn to ask if any of the students had heard of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. I was shocked to learn that not a single one knew of this atrocity. It was not reported in their history textbooks and not a single history teacher had deemed it important enough to even touch upon it mildly. Mind you, most of my seniors were some of the best students in the school - they'd not have just forgotten such a thing.

When I was in college, this event was glossed-over in the history where I came across it. The concentration camps were, as Ickes noted, called "relocation centers" and were spoken of lightly as a mistake, but not a big deal. Nothing was ever noted about how the process essentially destroyed the lives of Japanese Americans in the west by taking away their homes and businesses and leaving them with nothing. When they were finally released, they were released without a home or job into the cloud of a hostile, mistrusting public.

I am still amazed by the number of people who have never heard of this disaster mounted against American citizens. Only in 1988 did survivors receive reparation and an apology from the government - a $20,000 check and an apology letter from President Bill Clinton. While it was certainly a generous gesture, it also seemed to be another attempt to brush it all under the rug...to help continue the attempt to unremember the act of stripping citizens of their rights.

Granted, against some of the other atrocities of World War II, the generally peaceful internment of these citizens seems to pale. But when one places this occurrence up against the liberties of the Constitution which are said to be the pillars of American life, the horror of it becomes patently distasteful.

I recently read an unrelated article about the atrocities in Chile during the rule of Pinochet. The article noted a common litany passed down from the bloody dictator and his cronies (who killed and/or tortured thousands of their own citizens in the most unrelenting brutal fashion) was for the people of Chile to just forget the past and move on. But to forget the past is a prescription for repeating the past. I am very concerned about America forgetting this portion of their past.

In the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, in which the US formally apologized to those taken to these camps, there is a list of reasons for the act's creation. Among them:

(3) provide for a public education fund to finance efforts to inform the public about the internment of such individuals so as to prevent the recurrence of any similar event;

(7) make more credible and sincere any declaration of concern by the United States over violations of human rights committed by other nations.

Where is the education? Why is this being forgotten? We know our government has recently been imprisoning individuals for no just cause. We know human rights violations are being perpetrated with the express consent of the executive office. Will these things also be forgotten?

Perhaps its time the nation stop thinking that it can't happen here. It has already happened. And someday, if we don't keep this in our collective memory, it will happen again - and maybe it will happen to you and I.

History

While I'm on my technology screed, I also was reminded about history and how it is being reworked thanks to the Internet. I was scanning a blog the other day where someone was complaining about some big business suing a smaller business over a domain name. I agreed with the blogger's annoyance that a big business was going to court in order to get their domain name, instead of buying it from the owner, but the blogger tried to maintain that the company's name being used in the domain name hadn't existed at the time that the domain was registered in 1994.

In fact, the company's name had existed since early in the 1930's in their own country and later began use in the US in the mid 1980's. So this blogger decided that he would rewrite history to make his point.

There is a magnificent quote that I have tacked to my wall (sadly I can't recall the name of the Latin American filmmaker who said it), "History is not how it was; it is how it is remembered." This blogger rewrote history to his liking - and some people are going to read it and believe it. How often is this happening out there?

Just go to Snopes.com to see how much history is created in the form of urban legend to get just a tiny taste of it. I read inconsistencies in history quite regularly in the blogs I frequent. Usually, they are simply accidents. But these kinds of things perpetuate themselves until, like in Orwell's 1984, people are erased or we forget who we're at war with until the government tells us who we're at war with. It is amazing how quickly we forget...and how easily we are duped to a voice of authority.

But I shan't go there today. :o)

So far, so good...

My eldest daughter turned 13 yesterday. I had told her that I wasn't going to let that happen - that she'd have to stay 12 until she was old enough for us to kick her out of the house, but she countered that if that happened, then she wouldn't be able to drive herself anywhere until she was 18, so I decided to allow her to become a teenager. So far, there's no drama involved with teenagerdom. Sure, its only the first day, but from what I hear from friends, I need to take each victory as I get it.

In other items, along the same lines as a previous post where I wondered about the impending obsolescence of many of our digital photographs, I remembered coming across a very cool program in the past that allowed you to create a sort-of interactive journal or family history. You could put pictures into it and type lots of cool stuff with neat backgrounds and then view it later like an electronic book. It really was a neat program and I even had a friend who used it and was really into it.

Unfortunately, the information was saved in a proprietary format that required the program in order to read it. The program was designed for Windows 95, as I recall, and the last I heard, some folks were having fits getting it to work under Windows XP (they probably didn't know how to use the compatibility mode). Now, with Vista on our doorstep, it is likely this neat little program may become completely non-functioning, thereby destroying any number of fantastic little journals or histories since nobody can run the software anymore. I hope it had a hard-copy output...

Due to this problem, pretty much anything I really want to hang around when I disappear, I've made a hard-copy of. If I'm really wanting my thoughts to be maintained, I journal them on paper. I have a cool little book at home that has small questions about my life in the past that is designed for me to answer them, then pass down to my kids later about my own history. Its not quite as cool and glitzy as the admittedly wonderful program noted above, but it will be readable 100 years from now, barring fire, flood or bookworms to the pages.

A sharp-minded reader might then call me names for writing a blog at all - committing notes that will certainly someday disappear into the ether when the business model of the blog finally implodes. But hey, what I write here is either not particularly important to me to save for posterity, or if I think it is, I will later create a hard-copy, probably in my own handwriting, to put into my paper journal.

And hey, I'm a techie - I generally have faith in technology. But there are just too many examples of lost information that have already occurred in such a short time during the computer revolution that I don't have much faith in it during the ensuing years. Sure, the important stuff may be saved, but who gets to determine what is important?

Get your kicks...

Just finished reading a cool little book for those who like vintage cars and sports car racing. It is called The Last Open Road. I have always admired the title as it has always caused in me a small gasp of sadness. Finding an "open road" nowadays takes some doing for most of us.

For me, and open road is one that is close to going to nowhere. If somewhere along the route you wonder WHY the road exists at all, that's a good sign that you're on an open road. But of course, that's not a requisite. There are plenty of great open roads that go from A to B...but they do so in a fashion that does not include lots of traffic, signals at every intersection, and businesses lining both sides of the road. Amenities should be few and far between. Roadside gas stations will likely not have credit card readers.

Curves, like those that make women so interesting to us men, also adorn the open road. Sitting behind the wheel while traversing I-20 in western Texas is not the open road - it is just driving. Give me curves like these CURVES and I'm a happy driver. Keep my mind involved with negotiating the next turn, or wondering what is over the next rise.

I was born in the San Francisco bay area and my dad showed me a few of these sultry roads that meandered in the hills above Oakland and San Jose. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to drive and when I finally was...I was living in Dallas - land of the gridwork highway system. Not a curve to be found that wasn't a dull 90 degree critter bordering a pasture or farm. Things haven't gotten significantly better for me in the intervening 25 years. A stint in eastern Texas was nice, but lacking. Houston - don't get me started on that mind-numbing metropolis. Kansas City? Nope...while Missouri has its share of nice roads, they're all down in the far southeastern portion of the state in the Ozarks - requiring many hours of dull driving to get there. Yes, we do have Route 66, but the kicks just aren't there anymore.

I do remember one magical summer when my parents still lived in the Oakland hills of California. I took my car out there during the summer break and spent every available moment zipping around the roads that most people in the Bay Area have no idea exist in the east-bay hills. They were open roads that connected civilization with...well...other civilization. But in-between was magic.

So now, I want to go back. I want to fly to San Francisco and rent something like a Miata then head north up 101. I'll zig-zag back and forth through the mountains between the ocean and the inland valleys. I'll stay at whatever hotels show up along the way (the smaller the better), or sleep in the dang car (Wisest words I've ever known: You can sleep in your car, but you can't drive your house). I want to find those open roads that still exist because they are still out there.

It's just that some of us have to work to get to them.

More of the nightmare

I think it has been well-noted here that I kinda like connections with the past. It used to be that people wrote letters to each other...many would keep them and many famous people had large libraries of letters that could be published and we'd see into their lives. Diaries of the famous had a tendency to be published.

Now, what do we have? Blogs. E-mail. Considering that we need a "Wayback Machine" web site that lets us see the web that used to be, it would seem that so much effort nowadays is going into the maintenance of material that will disappear when the effort to maintain it also disappears. Page through this blog site and you'll see any number of blogs that are abandoned - including mine for awhile.

Correspondences that used to be able to be tracked for years between historical figures via their saved mail will no longer be possible as e-mail is flushed and destroyed as a matter of course. There are a precious few who still use analog diaries. But it seems that all this has degraded and the famous simply publish memoirs where they can make their history as palatable as they wish.

Is this progress? I am more and more inclined to agree with Neil Postman's view that we may very well "amuse ourselves to death" before long.

Forward into the past

I've been shopping for digital cameras. Finally, the SLR's are getting to a price that doesn't make me feel like I need the GNP of a small European principality in order to buy one. And then I remembered the nightmare.

The nightmare centers upon all the floppy disks I have sitting at home in closets - disks with files on them that I can no longer read due to either equipment obsolescence, disk failure, or software obsolescence. I have word processing files from a Commodore 64 computer (using PaperClip software). My C64 was given away years ago. From my PC days, I have desktop publishing files from a no-name publisher that have pithy comments that I printed and stapled around my classroom ("Trying is not doing - just try to pick up a pencil"). I have boxes of games that no longer run on any PC. These things are from only 10 or so years ago.

Then the nightmare goes something like this - fast forward a mere 10 years from now. What am I going to do with these gigabytes of digital photos? Will I even be able to read them? Will they have been destroyed in a hard disk crash, and my DVD backup also failed due to a bad dye layer?

Years ago, I was a professional photographer - so yes, I realize that printed photographs also degrade. But not in 10 years. Not due to the electronic whims of a storage medium gone bad. Almost everyone I know stores photos in JPG format - and frankly, it really isn't all that great due to its compression algorithm that tosses out information it feels it doesn't need. I can certainly see how a better format may become all the rage - and then I'd have to spend untold hours (yes, this is also part of my nightmare) converting all my JPG's into the newer, slicker and better format. I've already found myself at a crossroads between MP3 and MP4 sound files.

Maybe it is such nightmares that keep me looking to the past - wandering aimlessly through antique stores and fingering the ancient photos, furniture and knick-knacks. These things are time machines - tangible connections with the past from which they emerged. All my digital photos won't be touched until I print them out on an overpriced printer on overpriced photo paper...and then, the inks are only good for a few years. (Did I hear you say dye sublimation? Where's that GNP of that small European principality when you need it...)

What's interesting about my nightmare is that it continues during the day. Every day. Even now. It is screaming its message to me even as I type this. And I want to turn around and run.

Dat's just me, baby...

Connie did this, so I figured I would too...

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey
Name:	Erik
Birthday:	February 6
Birthplace:	Oakland, CA
Current Location:	Greenwood, MO
Eye Color:	Gun metal blue
Hair Color:	Blondish brownish stuff
Height:	6'
Right Handed or Left Handed:	Right
Your Heritage:	Swedish
The Shoes You Wore Today:	Er...business dress shoes...who knows what kind...
Your Weakness:	Pizza
Your Fears:	Not being able to provide fer my fam
Your Perfect Pizza:	Chicago style pepperoni
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year:	Get a gig in KC
Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger:	:)
Thoughts First Waking Up:	Here we go again
Your Best Physical Feature:	Legs
Your Bedtime:	11-ish
Your Most Missed Memory:	I can't remember
Pepsi or Coke:	Coke
MacDonalds or Burger King:	Whataburger (which we don't have in KC)
Single or Group Dates:	Single - more romantic
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea:	Lipton
Chocolate or Vanilla:	Chocolate
Cappuccino or Coffee:	Coffee
Do you Smoke:	Nope
Do you Swear:	Rarely
Do you Sing:	All the time
Do you Shower Daily:	Yep
Have you Been in Love:	Yep
Do you want to go to College:	Been there, done that
Do you want to get Married:	Been there, dont that, too
Do you belive in yourself:	Usually
Do you get Motion Sickness:	In airplanes
Do you think you are Attractive:	Reasonably
Are you a Health Freak:	No
Do you get along with your Parents:	Yes
Do you like Thunderstorms:	Yes
Do you play an Instrument:	Yes
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol:	Yes
In the past month have you Smoked:	No - though I practically did on seconhand smoke
In the past month have you been on Drugs:	No
In the past month have you gone on a Date:
In the past month have you gone to a Mall:	No
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos:	No
In the past month have you eaten Sushi:	No
In the past month have you been on Stage:	Yep
In the past month have you been Dumped:	No
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping:	No
In the past month have you Stolen Anything:	No
Ever been Drunk:	Yes
Ever been called a Tease:	No
Ever been Beaten up:	No
Ever Shoplifted:	No
How do you want to Die:	Want to die? Gimme a break...
What do you want to be when you Grow Up:	Grow up? Gimme a break...
What country would you most like to Visit:	Sweden
In a Boy/Girl..
Favourite Eye Color:	I like 'em all
Favourite Hair Color:	Dark
Short or Long Hair:	Long
Height:	5' 3" to around 5' 8"
Weight:	A little more than is fashionable
Best Clothing Style:	Jeans and whatever goes with 'em.
Number of Drugs I have taken:	1
Number of CDs I own:	Around 350
Number of Piercings:	0
Number of Tattoos:	0
Number of things in my Past I Regret:	About 4

In Mortalitas Operor Nos Secui

I found out today that a friend of mine had died this weekend. He was responsible for giving me my first set of racing tires for my former race car - sure, they were used tires, but they were exactly what I needed at the time. He and I were never close enough to call each other on the phone and get together, but we had lunch a few times and we always chatted about the work he was doing on his cars. He was an engineer who was always working to use that skill to make his car faster. I've always been fascinated by using engineering in racing, and this guy was someone I KNEW who was making it happen. I've always been fascinated by the guy. The last time I talked with him was in November - we chatted about how his race in a national championship had come to an end 2 laps from the finish when something broke on his car and he went spinning off track. We were already looking forward to next year's event.

And now he's dead. Cancer. I didn't even know he HAD cancer. He was apparently very private about it and only a few people knew. That he LIVED his life so fully in the face of what he must have known was diminishing returns is quite humbling. I can hardly get the gumption to mow the lawn, let alone work on my own classic cars - and I'm not dying. Where does one find that kind of motivation? Does one have to look death eye-to-eye in order to gain it? Makes one wonder...

And I apologize to any Latin readers out there for my butchering the language with my title...but its the closest I could come to what I was trying to say...and in English, it just doesn't have any pizazz! Best of luck translating it, to anyone who tries...