Heaving Dead Cats

High Treason

2012-02-25T05:13:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, we ate the same basic meals all the time. I was a picky eater, but my mom was good in the kitchen and she taught me how to cook at an early age.

I left home when I was 14 (There's a point to all this reminiscing, I'm getting there.) and had to learn to eat slightly different foods, but basically I was the cook so I could keep making the same things as I grew up with.

When I was in my early 20's I was living very close to my mom again, and we started having Sunday dinners together. My mom made a cabbage stew which I had always loved, so I asked her to make it one week.

Imagine my shock and horror when I took a big bite and it tasted drastically different than my memory! It wasn't what I had expected at all. While I wasn't mad, I did find myself upset, and I felt a little betrayed. How could she ruin it like that?

Turns out she had learned from her previous husband to add a can of V-8 juice to the recipe. Well, my tender taste buds thought that was a really bad idea. I don't think I ate any of the offending stew.

Why would I feel betrayed? I've been thinking about it. We form memories and attachments to certain smells and tastes. Taste and smell seem to get locked in.

For example, I went outside yesterday and that distinctive spring rain smell was in the air. You probably know it. It's really clean and fresh. I used to think it was ozone but I heard on The Naked Scientists that it's actually spores released by the rain into the air. That smell makes me feel optimistic and happy, maybe because Spring is my favorite time of year.

It seems that my mood can be changed by what is in the air, especially when it involves food. If it evokes good memories, like pumpkin pie or cookies baking in the oven, it's just the best thing ever. I guess that's what people call Comfort Food - stuff that evokes good memories.

I thought it was interesting that it seemed like high treason for my mom to just change her age old recipes. We had many discussions after that regarding food. I wanted to make sure she would make her pumpkin pies exactly like she used to, or not put anything funny in the mashed potatoes.

Bless her heart, she never tried to make the cabbage stew with V-8 juice again, when I was there. Now I live far away again, but every holiday season, I make sure to ask her how she is making the sweet potatoes. I don't tolerate insurrection lightly!

Do you have any foods that you need and expect to taste a certain way, especially if made by your mother/father/grandmother/etc? Has a parental figure ever changed the way they made a food suddenly? If so, did you find it discomfiting? Or am I just overly sensitive?

Consensual Reality

2012-02-22T22:33:00.000-05:00

I have heard from quite a number of people over the past couple of years, this idea that "you can't know anything" therefore it's all meaningless. Usually people throw that sort of concept out without ever explaining it. It sounds nihilistic, doesn't it? I've heard this from a philosophy professor, but also from normal people who don't seem to be able to explain what they are saying. Often it seems reactionary.

I've always had a problem with this school of thought, but I've never been able to really wrap my head around why, and what I thought was the more accurate way to look at the world.

But lately, I've formed this idea of reality that I thought I'd share with you. I've never taken a philosophy class, so excuse me if it sounds silly.

Ok, if I say "finger", most of us on the planet know what I am talking about. You can lift your finger triumphantly in the air and waggle it about. You can touch your keyboard with it. Even babies can learn what a finger is and how to use it to pick their noses and do other fun things.

Language helps us form a consensual reality. This reality is basically universal. For instance, I can say "love" and translate that into Japanese, and a Japanese person can get the general idea of what I am talking about. If I form a sentence, "I love my child", that other person on the other side of the planet can relate to that statement and agree or disagree.

Consensual reality has often been explained as "if enough people believe something, then it's real." This is not necessarily true. For instance, most people believe in a deity, but there is no evidence of anything supernatural, so most people are probably wrong. But just about everyone knows that water is wet, and they are correct.
Read more »

I'm an Evangelist

2012-02-18T01:37:00.000-05:00

This picture and quote from the Dalai Lama was put on my Facebook wall by a future relative who we will call Rachel.

Now, considering our mildly confrontational Facebook exchanges in the past, I felt chided and I admit I got a bit defensive in the conversation that unfolded.

I won't bore you with the whole exchange, but here is the key point she made:

Rachel: ..."It basically says that changing the beliefs of others and judging the Life Path of others is not your duty or responsibility, just as it is no one's duty or responsibility to change YOUR beliefs or judge YOUR Life Path. When one makes a mission out of converting others to their way of thinking, they become a missionary... an extremist. And no one likes an extremist. Live and let live!"

Now, I certainly felt she was accusing me of being a missionary for atheism, and therefore an extremist. Which of course, is faulty logic. (I believe that's the slippery slope) In other words, she's saying if I talk about my atheism to try to change another's beliefs, I am an atheist missionary which means I am automatically an extremist. It's excluding the middle and saying if you do it at all, you go to the Extreme! (you have to shout the word extreme like you are in a commercial for the WWE)

I'm glad she posted this picture and said that to me because it helped me to clarify how I go about interacting with people. First, I do not go onto the walls of other people on Facebook and foist my worldview onto them. I do not engage with people unless they come to me first and start the conversation.
Read more »

If Only It Were True

2012-02-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

I live under a (nice mossy) rock, so I am pretty slow to hear about things that are all the rage. During the Superbowl, we were at a restaurant with TVs. (Unfortunately I saw a bit of Half Time and have had Madonna singing "Like a Prayer" in my head ever since... gah!)

Anyway, I saw a commercial for something called Sensa, a weight loss product that you sprinkle on your food. I noticed in the ad they didn't explain at all, so I wrote it down and looked it up later.

Now, the reason I'm writing this article is not necessarily to debunk Sensa exactly, but to talk about what went on in my head as I read their site. I am happy to call myself a skeptic, and I try to use critical thinking and reasoning whenever I can.

So first I went to the site that was in the ad: Sensa.com. The site has an embedded video with an anecdotal story from a TV personality, they offer a free trial, there are shiny pictures of people eating healthy foods, a seriously simplistic explanation of how it works, and several big red buttons to click to try it for free*.

There are a number of logical fallacies, your classic marketing, strewn about. But in the midst of the typical BS, there is a clinical study that is mentioned over and over. A few places scattered about different sites claim that the study was peer-reviewed (by the Endocrine Society?) but there is no mention of that paper on that site, and apparently that journal says they never did the peer review. I also read that the journal that apparently reviewed the study is partly run by Alan Hirsch, the creator of Sensa. Another red flag. So take all of that with a grain of salt!

So here are the findings: 100 control people did not use the Tastants. 1,436 men and women did. The control group lost an average of 2 lbs. The people in the treatment group lost an average of 30.5 lbs in 6 months, which was nearly 15% of their body weight.

This is really important. The participants were not required to change their normal diet or exercise. Also, they were told to stay on whatever diet they were on before they started.

Now, I had read the front of their site, and I found myself believing it. I noticed that I really wanted it to be true, it was all so shiny and wonderful, and there was a study, so it must be real!

Last year I lost 45 lbs through a radical diet plan (eat less, eat healthier and move a lot more.) But I was often hungry, and am even now for large parts of every day, which totally sucks. So I was thinking, I don't need to lose any more weight, but if this could help me feel full, I'd be so happy! And my husband Butch is still trying to lose weight. It could help him too!

I thought it was fascinating that I took everything at face value at first and believed the hype, the surface marketing. When I started reading other things that were red flags, I noticed that I tried to rationalize them! We all do this, I am pretty sure. You'd have to be a Vulcan to not rationalize something that you really wish were true.

The difference is, I didn't just order the stuff and disregard the red flags. I looked deeper and put my Critical Thinking cap back on.
Read more »

Any Regrets?

2012-02-07T23:38:00.001-05:00

My birthday is fast approaching. As I get closer to the end of another year's journey around the sun, I am thinking more about my age and my life. I'm going to be 43 (only 43!) so if I live to a nice happy age of 86, this is Middle Age.

Side note: Do women have Midlife Crises? We always hear about men having them, but I've never heard of women going through them. Have I just not seen the signs?

Last year, about 2 weeks before my birthday, I saw my first grey hair. I was sort of proud of it - for all that I'd gone through to get that grey hair, but also felt a pang of dread as I realized my life was half over.

Now it's even more half over but I don't feel the same dread as I did last year. I have a couple more grey hairs now, and am hoping soon I'll have enough to start looking wise.

So as I think about my life, where I've come from, where I am now, and where I'd still like to go in my future, I came across an article written about a nurse who has recorded the regrets of the dying on a blog and now in a book: The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing by Bronnie Ware.

From what I gather it's a memoir. The article listed the 5 regrets, so of course, I am going to share them briefly:
Read more »

A Plan and a Prayer

2012-02-02T09:01:00.000-05:00

I saw this Philosoraptor picture on Facebook the other day and smiled because he's is spot on, as usual.

"If God has a plan for everybody, then why do people pray for change?"

I hear this bandied about often among my heathen friends, usually with a perplexed expression. We struggle to understand how people can muddle through life with so much cognitive dissonance.

But if you're one of the True Believers of the Abrahamic faiths, you probably believe that God has a hand in your life to some degree, and you probably still pray for assistance of some sort. Do you see the irony?

This verse is quoted often:

Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. (NIV)

But what is it saying? That God lets little sparrows die, and that he knows about it and still lets them get eaten, get sick, freeze to death, starve, get diseased, and does nothing? If he lets sparrows suffer and have hard lives, what do you think he does for his favored creation? (hint: read your bible and find out! It's not pretty!)

I told you of the little boy I babysat for, when I was in my teens. He was born with a terrible defect in his heart. Did God let that defect happen? Did God have that child be born into a life of years of pain and intense suffering? Why would he do that? (By the way, humans and modern medicine were what saved him and let him live at all.)

And religious people, stop right there. Save your apologetics for yourself. I am not interested in your twisting of reality, your logical fallacies, your cognitive dissonance. You worship a deity who lets innocent children be born and suffer their whole lives and you make excuses for that monster.

I've never ever heard an argument that can fully explain the god of the bible in terms that are completely loving and caring. If you do, then you are cherry-picking out only a tiny fraction of the content of your holy book. You are a cafeteria christian, and therefore I am not interested in arguing with you either.

So God has a plan for all of us, right? In fact, in Romans, it says we are predestined. Well, more specifically God predestines those who will follow him. This chapter also has a bit about prayer which is relevant to us today, so here is the whole section:
Read more »