Case in point: this Ted Talk, which you may have [...]]]> I think I’d probably be interested in this upcoming discussion if Dawkins was not participating. Even if it’s not being characterized as a debate, it will almost certainly turn into one, and Dawkins is not one to participate often in fair argument.

Case in point: this Ted Talk, which you may have seen when I linked to it earlier. In it he says things like this quite often:

Now, it may sound as though I am about to preach atheism and I want to reassure you that’s not what I’m going to do. In an audience this sophisticated, that would be preaching to the choir.
Richard Dawkins on Militant Atheism, 04:49

A few more lines of these and you might begin to suspect that Dawkins believes only stupid people believe religion. Either that, or he’s just too fond of emotional appeals to pride.

In Fringe-ology, author Stephen Volk describes the Dawkins approach thus:

Religion tries to scare people into believing its tenets. Follow our rules or burn in hell. Dawkins declares a kind of intellectual fatwa against belief itself, swaying fence sitters to his position through fear of ridicule. Forswear belief or be called a superstitious dullard, a dangerous fool? Atheists shall be known as “brights,” and believers “dulls.” Is this an improvement? It all works out the same. Believers and unbelievers alike operating as mean, petty bullies.
Volk, Steve (2011-06-07). Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn’t (pp. 15-16). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

This strikes me as pretty accurate, no matter how upset the New Atheists get when you compare them to so-called “theists.” I mean, they claim they should get a pass because they are right and the other guys are wrong, but quite a few religious folk use the same argument.

Speaking of which, the article I read announcing this discussion also has this tidbit on a recent Richard Dawkins Foundation survey of English attitudes towards religion:

According to the survey, the numbers of those who self identify as Christians have dropped from 72% to 54% in the period between the last two censuses. Of these, 49% do not think of Jesus as the son of God, 4% doubt he existed at all, and 6% don’t think that God exists.
Dawkins provided the following response to the survey; ‘despite the best efforts of church leaders and politicians to convince us that religion is still an important part of our national life, these results demonstrate that it is largely irrelevant, even to those who still label themselves Christian.’

You can see the actual survey here to see for yourself whether those conclusions are justified. But (like many Atheists) Dawkins tends to confuse orthodoxy with being religious, and doesn’t really understand much about religion that’s beyond their Christian experience.

Anyway, I’m not sure the discussion will be particularly productive. If you watch it and thought otherwise, let me know.

I don’t want to care about Tommy Jordan. His daughter is not my daughter, and I don’t live [...]]]> Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have been looking into the effectiveness of different parenting strategies. Good timing, especially given the national debate we’re having about when it’s appropriate to shoot your daughter’s laptop.

I don’t want to care about Tommy Jordan. His daughter is not my daughter, and I don’t live in his house, so normally it wouldn’t be my business. And the whole situation and public argument about it is depressing.

I’m sorry his daughter was disrespectful to him. But he’s now polluted my brain with his family’s dirty laundry, which is disrespectful to all of us. That suggests self-centered arrogance is a family trait.

The thing is, I keep trying to draw a line between the punishment and desired response and I just can’t see one. I’m puzzled about what he’s trying to accomplish.

Which also means I find the “atta boy” response he’s getting from a lot of people even more puzzling. Yeah, it’s tough. He sure showed her who’s boss. I bet she’ll be … grateful … from now on … I guess.

Does it really work that way?

The New Hampshire study suggests probably not: authoritarian parenting creates children who are “discontent, withdrawn, and distrustful.” In my experience, it also creates kids who are violent, bullying, and wild. The kind of child who needs their computer shot now and again.

Is that really a better result than permissive parenting? According to the New Hampshire study, those kids are “the least self-reliant, explorative, and self-controlled.” Also, I suspect, spoiled and self-centered. Arrogant jerks, maybe, but not generally violent and destructive.

Fortunately, the New Hampshire study suggests a third parenting style, which they call “authoritative:”

Authoritative parents are both demanding and controlling, but they are also warm and receptive to their children’s needs. They are receptive to bidirectional communication in that they explain to their children why they have established rules and also listen to their children’s opinions about those rules. Children of authoritative parents tend to be self-reliant, self-controlled, and content.

That sounds like my parents, who would would never have shot my computer (or hacked into my Facebook account), not because they never needed to, but because the lesson it taught would have been the wrong one. And it’s the kind of parenting I strive for, whether or not some people think it’s too permissive. Some folks think anything less than a daily whipping is too permissive.

I will make this promise, though. If I ever do anything that makes “Reality” TV producers start calling me with pitches, I will reevaluate my entire life.

Mixing the two just wasn’t working very well for anyone, especially me. I’ll see some of you over there.

The decision has not required any real time or attention from me, however. There’s no credible opposition to Obama from the left. [...]]]> I’m voting for Obama this year, just like I did four years ago. I am somewhat less enthusiastic than I once was, but that’s probably likely any time your candidate faces re-election.

The decision has not required any real time or attention from me, however. There’s no credible opposition to Obama from the left. And when I woke up this morning I checked and no, I have not turned into a fundamentalist Christian, I like gay people, and I seem to remember most of what I was taught about economics. Based on the bits and pieces I’m hearing from the debates, that pretty much makes me ineligible to vote Republican.

This gives me a rather strong advantage I think; with the opposition opinion so alien (and even actively opposed!) to my own, I really don’t have to spend much time forming an opinion on them.

In fact, however, while millions of atheists are indeed walking our streets, it would be difficult to find even one who could accurately be described as militant. In all of American history, it is [...]]]> I stumbled across this post by Daniel Florien discussing David Noise’s post claiming militant atheism does not exist:

In fact, however, while millions of atheists are indeed walking our streets, it would be difficult to find even one who could accurately be described as militant. In all of American history, it is doubtful that any person has ever been killed in the name of atheism. In fact, it would be difficult to find evidence that any American has ever even been harmed in the name of atheism. It just does not happen, because the notion of “militant atheism” is entirely fantasy. The Myth of Militant Atheism

Noise’s argument seems to be an entirely semantic one, and dependent on conflating “militant” with “violent.” Militants can certainly be violent, but it’s not a necessary precondition. Making it so is another abuse of language.

My dictionary defines militant as:

combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods

It seems militant would apply rather nicely to many atheists, as well as tea-partiers, 99%-ers, gay-rights activists, anti-abortion advocates, and — well — anyone inclined to stand on a street corner and yell about how everyone else is wrong about everything.

Richard Dawkins springs to mind as a great example of militant atheism. He is combative, aggressive, and supports confrontational methods to combat what he sees as rank stupidity. In this video titled Richard Dawkins on militant atheism, he says:

Now, it may sound as though I’m about to preach atheism, and I want to reassure you that that’s not what I’m going to do. In an audience as sophisticated as this one, that would be preaching to the choir. No, what I want to urge upon you is militant atheism. But that’s putting it too negatively.

He says it’s too negative, but confrontational is certainly what Dawkins — author of a book called The God Delusion — is. More to the point, Dawkins identifies another atheist thinker as “militant:” Darwin’s friend Edward Aveling. Aveling was loudly atheist and tried to push Darwin to be more loud himself. But as near as I can tell, Aveling never actually killed anyone either.

This is certainly not to say that atheists need to be quiet, modest, or decorous. Militancy has a place; it is often necessary to change things. I happen to agree with Dawkins that atheists could get more respect by being more obviously atheist and less tolerant of hatred directed their way. If there really is no such thing as a militant atheist, then maybe that’s part of the problem. I think that’s the point Dawkins was trying to get across.

Most of my early shopping was done online, but I was having trouble. “I spend most [...]]]> Since my monitor is about four years old and nearing the end of its operational life, I went display-shopping today. The fact that the Elf got a new monitor for Christmas has nothing to do with it. I swear.

Most of my early shopping was done online, but I was having trouble. “I spend most of my day staring at small text,” I said to Elf. “I need a monitor that does a good job with that. No one reviews these based on how they display nine-point monospaced type.”

“Maybe you should go to Best Buy and look at some,” she said. “Not buy. Look. Then you can see your yourself.” That seemed like a reasonable suggestion, so off I went. And to maximize the potential, I added two other major chains in Christiansburg: Wal-Mart and Staples.

When it comes to technology, we’re not exactly spoiled for choice.

Anyway, Wal-Mart had precisely four monitors, each a different size and brand, and none of them were turned on or hooked up. The Wal-Mart experience compared to online: no reviews, no demonstrations, and greater chance of hitting slow-moving pedestrians in the parking lot.

Best Buy had a double-handful of monitors on the back wall, brightly lit by bare flourescent lightbulbs placed just a few inches above the screens. Hardly what I’d call ideal lighting for judging monitors. They were also showing a video demo rather than a computer interface, so there was no real way there to judge what the programing experience would be like on any of these. I have a really good idea of what an elephant’s skin looks like on AOC, Asus, Acer, Samsung, and LG monitors, but not 9pt Menlo.

Staples fell somewhere between the two with a measely selection of monitors that were at the very least on. They, too, were showing a video demo. But either the video demo was low-resolution or the monitors were not set to their native display resolutions, because all of them looked like crap. I think it was a native resolution problem, though, because the Norton Antivirus warning dialog box on all of them was freaking huge.

Overall, I have to say that shopping the brick-and-mortar stores was pretty frustrating. I had to find parking; I had to look online for reviews anyway, and at Best Buy I had to wait ten minutes for a stock-check on the one monitor I was interested in.

After all was said and done, I ended up ordering the Asus VE228H from Amazon for about fifty dollars less than the out-of-stock monitor I was interested in at Best Buy.

I’m also far less likely to go into any of these stores for a product I have to research; if the brick-and-mortars are going to compete with online sales, they’re going to have to figure out what it is you can do in person that you can’t online, then focus on that.

Last weekend I took some time to prune my RSS and Twitter feeds. If we’ve exchanged emails or worked together, don’t worry — I was pruning people who didn’t know me and probably didn’t [...]]]> Wow, a month between updates? Amazing. Doubly so, considering that it’s less than a year to Election Day.

Last weekend I took some time to prune my RSS and Twitter feeds. If we’ve exchanged emails or worked together, don’t worry — I was pruning people who didn’t know me and probably didn’t care whether or not I was following them anyway.

I read fewer weblogs, too. I am a shadow of my former social media self.

In the process of weaning myself from outrage I’ve discovered that I don’t want to hear news and opinion immediately any more. I’d prefer to get a broader, more complete picture. That’s something that really can only happen with the passing of time and the attention of a skilled, dedicated writer. Not a professional journalist, necessarily, but someone dedicated to gathering facts and telling a story.

Turns out there’s something to be said for the less personal, more narrative longer-form writing. Something weblogs aren’t good at.

The problem with the day-to-day, build-a-regular-readership form of weblogs is that they rely on that regular readership. The communities become insular, with their own lingo and inside jokes. This is even true of very large communities like Reddit, which has an entire language of cartoons. It makes it difficult to get into reading one of these. Like leaping into Lost in the middle of the fourth season.

What we need is something that takes a longer view, assembles facts from many sources, then tells the story in a compelling and interesting way. Something that’s willing to sacrifice responding in the same thirty-minute news cycle to gain some perspective and not report the first available rumor (and the next and the next…). That sounds like something we used to have a long time ago. Something called a mmm… mmmm… mmaa…

Magazine!

Remember magazines? Ones you actually pay for? They used to be excellent at these kinds of things. I hear there are still a few good ones out there. Ya’ll read any? Which ones?

You may recall that we’ve been migrating our clients off of Flash already — mostly at their own request. Adobe’s announcement yesterday that they were going to stop supporting a mobile device version of the Flash player will only serve to hasten that. Protestations otherwise, it’s hard to see Adobe’s announcement [...]]]>

You may recall that we’ve been migrating our clients off of Flash already — mostly at their own request. Adobe’s announcement yesterday that they were going to stop supporting a mobile device version of the Flash player will only serve to hasten that. Protestations otherwise, it’s hard to see Adobe’s announcement as anything but a no-confidence vote either in their platform or their ability to sell it. What they’ve done is reinforce in client minds that Flash is a dying technology, and few people want to hitch themselves to that.

I actually appreciate The Walking Dead a lot. I’m happy there’s original programming out there somewhere that’s not reality television, even if I’m a little mistifyed why this is The American Movie Classics channel’s responsibility. The series is well acted, well-written, and has high production values. People who like it have every reason [...]]]>

I actually appreciate The Walking Dead a lot. I’m happy there’s original programming out there somewhere that’s not reality television, even if I’m a little mistifyed why this is The American Movie Classics channel’s responsibility. The series is well acted, well-written, and has high production values. People who like it have every reason to do so. But I don’t think I do.

Watching The Walking Dead does help me identify what it is I’m looking for in speculative fiction by having next to nothing of it. They’ve got gore, action, and loads of interpersonal drama. What they don’t have is mystery. There’s the first half of the pilot episode where Rick wanders around town in his hospital johnny trying to figure out what happened, but after that no one seems to be particularly curious about it. People got sick and turned into zombies. What else do you need?

After watching two-point-five episodes, I looked through some episode guides to see what I’d get out of the show by fast-forwarding all the interpersonal drama and significant looks, and it looks like I’d have a much, much shorter show.