My Backyard

This is the view right now from my patio. Some months ago the apartment owners decided to do a major renovation of the entire complex, since this involves 8 large buildings and the grounds surrounding them this has been one big project. Didn't bother me for a long time since I'm in building #7, but they finally got to me a couple months ago. Since then there have been major hassles with the patio blocked off, loud machinery running all day long and various other annoyances. At first I was glad they were starting up front and wouldn't get to me for a while, now I see that was very bad. They got all the front building done amazingly fast, by the time they got here they must have gotten tired because they are now as slow as molasses. All last week they had a back hoe in here tearing up the lawn, so this is the sight I've had to view for the whole weekend, and it's been very cloudy all day, making things dim, cold and feeling like I'm in a foreign land without modern amenities. All the neighborhood cats have been delighted, like all cats they think everything is all about them so they think people were nice enough to build giant cat boxes just for them.

The Dresden Files - The Book

I finished Storm Front, the first of the Dresden series and I've got to say I'm a quite disappointed. Story was good and it was well written, nice flow to it and easy to read, I like that and hate books I have to plow through. Use of magic was well done, especially when he wrapped some sunlight in a napkin then pulled it out when being attacked by a vampire. The sunlight burned her and saved Harry's life, quite clever.

What disappointed me was the character, the way Jim Butcher writes him he's a total loser who makes a mess of everything and manages to succeed - and stay alive - by sheer luck more than anything else. Twice people sneak up on him and beat him up. What good is it to be a wizard if people can sneak up on you? In both instances Harry should have died and didn't through no effort of his own. When he gets in a battle the first thing he does is lose his staff so he can't fight well, and he spent half the book dressed in sweatpants and cowboy boots because he didn't have anything else to wear. Not a good image.

If I hadn't been watching the TV series and already liked Harry because of the excellent job Paul Blackthorne does I might not even have finished the book. As it was I wasn't sure if I was going to buy another one, but eventually decided I would just to see if he makes Harry any more competent in the future. I can understand him not wanting to make a wizard character too powerful and to keep him more human and vulnerable but he went too far in the other direction to the point that I had to wonder how a doofus like this ever became a wizard. Then he'll suddenly have Harry doing amazing deeds of awesome power. Very inconsistent. But, like I said, I will buy the second book to see what he does with Harry next time - when I get around to it. No real rush.

Fire In Hollywood

Normally fires in Southern California are no big deal, off in the boondocks somewhere where no one I know has ever lived. This time it was just north of the Hollywood sign. This picture is practically the view from my window in my old apartment, my view would have been a bit more to the left but just about the same size of the Hollywood sign.

I used to live on the corner of Cahuenga (pronounced cah-when-ga) and Franklin, which is 2 blocks north of Hollywood Blvd. The fire is in the Cahuenga Pass which was just up the rode from me. Just surprised me to see it even though it's been about 28 years since I lived there. Living in Hollywood was lots of fun, if I was bored I just had to walk down to Hollywood Blvd and take a stroll and look at all the weirdos. That was especially great fun on Halloween.

Massimo Pigliucci

Massimo Pigliucci is my second favorite skeptic after Richard Dawkins and I just discovered he has a blog! Can't believe I never thought to look for one. It's called Rationally Speaking and I'm going to put it in my links on the right. And on the blog they have links to his other web sites, and there are quite a few; science, skeptic and philosophy.

And on top of of that I also just discovered that Dan Barker does podcasts! What a day this has been!

I have my email friend, Dr. Don, to thank for the links.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

I don't know how long this has been on YouTube but it's way too funny for me not to post it...

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

I finally saw the movie and it was far better than I thought it would be. Thought I knew a lot about global warming but he had lots of stuff in there I didn't know. The catch phrase on the movie poster is "The most terrifying movie you will ever see" and it certainly was. I was getting a stomach ache watching it, it's all much worse than I thought it was and I'd already been thinking it was too late to do anything, which seems even more true now.

Here I thought all we could blame Republicans for was enormous debt, a horrible war, corruption, the end of our civil rights, the world's worst health and school systems and a vanishing middle class, but the truth is they've actually destroyed the planet. They are just plain evil and the rest of us, and our kids and grandkids, will have to pay the price for it.

Gore was great, if only this was the Al Gore we had seen during the election he might be president right now. He might have gotten so many votes the Pubs wouldn't have been able to steal the election, but no help for it now. I'm still hoping he will step in and take the election away from everyone but I really have no sense of what he is going to do, I suspect he does know himself. He's probably watching everything to see if he can jump in or if it's better if he stays out. Frankly, I think he's too smart to run, and maybe it would be better to have him traveling the world and sounding the clarion call for everyone to act now, than it would for him to be president, where global warming is only one of many, many problems Bush has left for the next guy.

In the movie he quoted Winston Churchill: “Humanity is entering into a time of consequences.” I thought A Time of Consequences would have been a better name for the movie.

JOHN EDWARDS

I've always like Edwards, he was my choice in 2004 but the nomination was already sewn up by the time the primaries reached California. He's the guy I'd still vote for today.

My only problem with him is he appears weak whenever I see him on TV. Considering the things he's been through in his life there is no way he is weak, but in politics today appearance is more important than reality.

Today he announced his wife had her cancer return then talked about continuing the campaign and why they will continue. For the first time I saw real steel behind the pretty boy looks - I knew it had to be there. I sent him an email expressing my concern and telling him he needs to show that steel more often, like all the time, wouldn't hurt to look even a little scary. I hope he reads it and it strikes a cord, not likely but you never know.

Realistically, I'm sure I'm going to be voting for Obama in the main election but for a few moments I'd like to imagine something different.

Or how about Al Gore getting in the race and we end up with a Gore/Obama ticket, that would be the best of all world's. The facts are that this time we have too many good candidates while the Republicans have none. It's so bad even Fred Thompson thought he might have a chance. I like Hillary less than Gore, Edwards and Obama but she is still a better choice than Kerry was and I think she'd be 100 times better than Bush.

If Edwards was a Republican he'd be drawing up divorce papers right now and visiting his mistress (sound familiar, Newt?). I've always found it odd that the democrats are the ones who continually demonstrate serious family values but the Pubs keep voting for people who have been married 3 times and had several affairs.

The Dresden Files

When the Sci Fi channel started the show I was pretty excited, I love combining a detective story with either a futuristic premise or a magical one. Purely by accident I picked up a book called Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison about a year ago. She created a new modern world where all the magical beings in stories became real and commonplace, and the main character was a detective, I had no idea this was becoming a new genre, but I was hooked. I was planning on reading some more series in this genre when The Dresden Files came out.

I was a bit disappointed with the first episode, not much of a story and not much magic, and Harry was too nice a guy. When I bought the first book just last Sunday (see previous blog) I could tell in a few pages the book was far better than the show. Last night I watched Sunday's show (DVR is great stuff) and it was the book! What a surprise, and it was suddenly good, too. Lots of magic everywhere and Harry suddenly has some edges to him, a main character has to have some edges to be interesting.

I know what must have happened, last Sunday's show was the pilot but some executive, who probably should be handling the money and not the creative end, got scared that it was too far out there. What the hell does he think a sci fi viewer wants, anyway? So the first few episodes were made first to ease people into the magic aspect of it then they showed the pilot, and suddenly this is a good show. I hope they didn't lose too many viewers with the earlier episodes.

They did get a few things right from the beginning, though. The first was Paul Blackthorne as Harry, he does a great job and is probably the main reason I kept watching. The second was taking Bob out of his skull (in the book he's just a talking skull but I've just started it). Having Bob as a real presence for Harry to talk to was brilliant. So now that the series has some teeth to it I'm hoping for some good stuff.

A Trip To The Bookstore

Few things in life are more fun than a trip to Barnes & Noble and I scored today. Got the latest Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer. The subtitle of SI is Science, God, and (non)Belief - YUM! Also got my favorite magazine Scientific American Mind, all kinds of stories on the latest research into the mind. It only comes out quarterly so I love it when I get one. Then there's the books, I've been dying to get the first Dresden Files by Jim Butcher ever since the Sci Fi Channel's show came out and I found it. Just a little way into it so far and he's got a pleasant, easy to read style. And it's written in first person narrative, a favorite of mine, probably from reading all those Heinlein books as a teenager. Then a surprise find, something in the same genre as the Dresden Files but by a writer I never heard of, Charlaine Harris - Dead Until Dark. It just had a whimsical feeling to it that looked interesting so I gave it a try. I'll write reviews on all these as I read them but it will take a while, I'm a slow reader. This stuff will keep me busy for months, heh heh.

Transmit

Transmit is an FTP client similar to Fetch, but with many added features. For one thing it also supports WebDAV which means you can use it for your .mac account or any other WebDAV account, very handy. I've tested using Transmit and using the Finder for WebDAV services and Transmit is literally twice as fast and much less prone to interruptions. And the interface is very cool, very Mac-like. Extremely easy to connect and to save favorites, and to transfer file it's Drag and Drop, couldn't be simpler.

I had been looking for an app to sync some of my folders between my hard drive and my external drive when I realized Transmit does syncing but is there a way to connect the FTP side to my external? I sent an email to Panic about it and within 2 days they sent back a solution, it's actually very simple, I was quite please.

Panic also does CandyBar so it is clearly a good company.

Sam Harris Quote

"Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music."

The Richest Year in History

"According to Forbes, this is the richest year in human history ... for those people who are already mind-bogglingly rich. But what about the rest of us?"

This is an Alternet story, they have lots of good ones. The rich get richer and the middle class is disappearing, all in the name of a free market. It's nice to be rich these days. For the rest of us expect to die from an illness you can't afford the treatment for.

The Richest Year in History

Capture Me

This is not a program I use a lot, but it's very handy when I need it. It does screen capture but is very accurate because you have a window to drag around and position and size just right, then you can save instantly in any format you want. But best of all is the window floats above all other windows so I can snap a picture in one app, switch to another, and still have the image from the first app for a reference. The main reason I'm mentioning this is I just visited their new site and they quote me! What a thrill!

Capture Me

ShadowClipboard

One of my favorite Mac Apps is ShadowClipboard, and it's probably the one I use most after Path Finder. It's a multiple clipboard app, it not only keeps the last 20 or 30 copies to the clipboard it also allows you to set up clipboard sets. I have one just for web related stuff, another for working stuff, such as the DC legal line that must go on all DC Comics tee shirts, to a personal one.

Ever need to sign on to an FTP account for a download with info you got in an email? They always give you URL, Username and Password and each of these is on a separate line. To copy and paste with just the standard OSX clipboard you'd have to copy one from your email, switch over to your FTP app and paste it, then back to email to copy the next one and back to the FTP app, then do it a third time. Whew, I'm tired just writing about it. With ShadowClipboard you simply copy each item one at a time from email, then switch to your FTP app and paste them in one at a time, easy and simple.

I have to admit a special fondness for this one because I was a beta tester for the latest version. In fact, the latest update of the latest version was done because I was having major problems. I sent him many crash reports and he discovered a memory leak he didn't know was there, patched it up and did the latest version, worked great ever since. For my efforts I got a free upgrade to 3, which saved me, I think, $10. So this is the one app I actually have a financial stake in! I'm also fond of the company name which you will see if you click on the name at the top which links to the web site.

I HAVE A DREAM

I still get chills when I hear that speech. Today is the 43rd anniversary of a march led by King in Selma, Alabama. Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama are speaking in churches today in Selma literally yards away from each other.

I have to think about what an amazing thing it is to have a woman and a black man running for president. And not just running, they are the leaders. Odds are one of them will be sworn in as president in 2009.

What a contrast to a mere 43 years ago. 50 years ago black people still had to sit in the back of the bus and had different rest rooms from whites. Racism is not dead but we have come a very long way and that chokes me up as much as Martin's classic speech.

Obama said that King was Moses, who led the people to the promised land but could not enter himself, and that he, Barak, was Joshua, the one to lead us across. Very powerful. Hillary sounds like she's trying to imitate King and just sounds lame and even worse, insincere, as if she's just putting on the act she needs to for the occasion. Now I'm pretty sure Barak is going to beat Hillary for the nomination, although I wouldn't count out John Edwards just yet.

Richard Dawkins

I've been a fan of Richard Dawkins for a long time, not because of his genetics work but because of the articles he wrote on Atheism. I've also long been fond of his meme concept, simple and elegant and very true. So I was quite pleased when he came out with the God Delusion.

I bought the book because I'm a fan but I didn't expect him to say anything new about atheism that I didn't know, but he surprised me. The last half of the book was filled with quite a bit of scientific info I didn't know and was a very good read so I thought I'd make a link to the Official Dawkins Website:

The Oscars

I love the Oscars and this year all my favorite people won but I forgot they were on and only saw the last hour or so of it, damn, I usually watch the entire thing and Darcy puts up with it. Also, this was a year where I didn't see ANY of the movies, very disappointing. Unfortunately Darcy has just been too sick most of the year.

I love that Al Gore's movie won, now if only he'd run for president. I was also really pleased to see Jennifer Hudson win for best supporting actress in “Dreamgirls”, talk about a dream come true. I don't watch American Idol but I do like the idea of an ordinary person getting a shot at stardom and Jennifer is the perfect example of that, and man, is she sexy!! Forget those skinny, bony models, I'll take a full figured woman any day.

Forest Whitaker is an actor I've liked for many years who has never gotten much recognition it seems, so it was great to see him win. And he seemed like it was quite an emotional moment for him, I hope he enjoys every minute of it. Helen Mirren is worthy of an Oscar as well, but the high point of the evening was Martin Scorsese, I was so happy to see him win. I thought he'd been robbed several times, especially losing with "Gangs of New York" to "Chicago." Chicago was fun but what the hell was the Academy high on THAT year? Most will say Scorsese's older movies were better, but I still think Gangs of New York was his best.

Of course, I can only talk about the people since I haven't seen the movies themselves, sigh. I'll probably see them all on DVD.

The Oscars

The Academy

THE NEXT PRESIDENT

Subject: [usjf] $23.5 MILLION CAMPAIGN TO STOP HILLARY!!!

That's the headline from a conservative Christian organization that sees Hillary as pure evil.

After reading 2 Alternet articles on Hillary the Hawk (Hillary’s Calculations Add Up to War & Clinton To Anti-War Voters: Bring It On) I'm rooting for them, I just don't like her. The ideal situation would be these guys spend all their money attacking Hillary so she loses the primary, Obama stumbles along the way due to inexperience and John Edwards takes the Democratic nomination!! And the opposition is broke
and tired after trashing Hillary.

Remember, you heard it here first. Edwards was the man I wanted in
2004, running neck and neck with Wesley Clarke (Clarke would get my
vote today but he's too smart to run again, proving himself the best
man for the job). I like Edwards even more today than I did then, now
that I know more about him.

He's the only guy in the race really telling it like it is and not
feeding people what they want to hear, or what he thinks (or what his
handlers think) they want to hear. He was born into a very poor
family and worked his way up to being a multimillionaire lawyer,
mostly from class action suits, representing the little guy against
the corps, meaning he's a GOOD lawyer who hasn't gone to the dark
side. He lost a son and his wife just fought off breast cancer. This
means he's a guy who understands how most of America lives and knows
what very tough times are, and he's actually accomplished something,
having done everything on his own. He's the anti-Bush!! His polar
opposite.

And best of all he's a white guy from the south, which I think gives
him the biggest appeal of all of them. I think Hillary and Barak are
only in the lead right now because the press only seems to cover them,
but as northern liberals (not to mention being female and black) I don't
think we would carry any southern state with either of them, but we
might get several with Edwards on the ticket. And Barak as VP!!

I really hate it that even today, here in the 21st century, a black man or a woman cannot get elected president. I almost hope I am wrong and one of them does get elected, but I really like Edwards best.

CandyBar

One of the things I wanted to do on this blog was talk about the OSX applications I like but I've fallen down on the job. CandyBar is a favorite, it allows me to change all the system icons to anything I want, I've also downloaded a ton of premade icons from the web and made a few myself with some other nifty applications and I just found the perfect folder icon which is why I'm thinking of it.

This is a screenshot of my external hard drive. The brown, round Japanese boxes are my default folder icons, much better than those ugly light blue things. Then I've put individual icons on certain folders so they stand out. One very cool trick is I have specific icons for each of my client's folders so I can find them instantly. My comic book guy gets superhero heads, Flash, Superman, Martian Manhunter, Batman and Wonder Woman. I did use a full figure of Green Lantern just for variety, other clients just get a single icon for all their folders. All my zip and dmg files are a cool black and unknown documents are cool blue orb instead of a blank sheet of paper. Other images are my defaults for Illustrator, InDesign and Preview apps.

Now, applications that mess with your system can be dangerous but the beauty of CandyBar is it merely replaces the icons at the system level then it's turned off, so it isn't running all the time to cause problems. It doesn't have to maintain the icons just put them in once and it's done. There are times I don't even open the app for months at a time, so I've had zero problems with it. It can be downloaded for free and used up to 25 times, after which you can no longer make changes but all changes will remain if you want them. So if you get all your icons set up just right within 25 uses you never have to pay for it, but I did because I'm always changing things around.

Bush and Iran

This is an article from Alternet:
No One's Drinking Bush's Kool-Aid on Iran

From the Article:

If that makes no sense to you, well, that's because the whole thing makes no sense. It's a farcical replay of Iraq 2002, when the White House demonized Saddam Hussein with fake intelligence, turning him into a menacing al-Qaida backer armed with weapons of mass destruction. This time, however, the lie factory has been dismantled. All by himself, the president is trying to turn Iran into a scary, al-Qaida-allied, nuke-wielding menace. But he's not fooling anyone. The potent "war president" of 2002-2003 is now an incoherent, mewling Wizard of Oz-like figure, and people are paying attention to the man behind the curtain.
___________________

Bush is beginning to look insane to many people, and it is definitely inane for him to think anyone is going to believe him this time. Clearly he wants to attack Iran and is trying, badly, to build a case for it, but he's lied too many times now for anyone to buy it.

On Keith Olbermann last night an intelligence expert said that yes, Iran is sending in arms to the Shias, but Saudi Arabia is sending arms to the Sunnis. 90% of our troop's casualties come from the Sunnis yet there is no mention from Bush about invading Saudi Arabia.

I still haven't figured out what Bush's (or is it really Cheney's) agenda actual is. Why did he start this war and why does he want to expand it? Many have said oil but they really aren't getting much oil out of Iraq, just too volatile there, and he's got to know he doesn't have enough troops to occupy Iran, or to even fight with them.

Back when Bush was first in office (I won't say elected since he wasn't) I said he was an ideologue, not a Christian one, a Neocon one. And he is the type of ideologue who totally believes and can't accept any part of the ideology not being correct. I said he could be inside the White House with it collapsing around him, both himself and America brought low by his policies, and he would still be yelling "Wait, just wait, it's all going to start working any second!!"

Global Warming

The Iraq war seems to take every one's attention but the fact is that the one single thing we should all be working on at top speed and total effort is global warming.

I'm not too worried about it because I figure it's already too late and humanity is screwed, and I'll be dead before the worst happens, anyway. Now I don't mean the end of humanity but a natural disaster that will look like the last 20 years of all natural disasters combined. Climate will change and people will starve, the coasts will flood and there will be refugees even in the first world. Millions will die and the entire globe will take a tremendous economic hit.

We have George Bush to thank for much of this, a guy on the oil companies payroll who has even had wording of scientific documents changed and made sure most of America didn't take the whole thing too seriously. And all this has been due to Exxon, the worst culprit. I always wonder about guys like that, do they simply fail to consider that their children and grandchildren are going to have to live (and maybe die) in the world they are creating? Or does that just not mean anything to them next to their one true god - Profit?

But for those who still want to try and do something here's an article that talks about that:

The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Stop Global Warming

For those who just want to get angry at Exxon:

ExxonMobil's War on Science

By Robert Kennedy Jr.

With an elaborate network of phony think tanks and slick public relations firms, ExxonMobil has become today's Big Tobacco, defrauding the public and waging a war on science.

What we need is a REAL president, someone like Jack Kennedy. Jack turned the whole country to the task of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 60's and we did it. A real leader, which could be Obama, can do the same with energy, make sure we have viable alternatives to oil and gas within ten years, that is probably the only thing that will save us. And by "save" I mean 2 million dying instead of 40 million. I just hope Obama doesn't get assassinated.

Happy Darwin Day!!

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

"Darwin Day is the anniversary of the birthday of Charles Darwin on February 12, 1809.
Darwin provided the first coherent theory of evolution by means of natural selection. His theory has had far-reaching implications in almost all disciplines and has rocked the very foundation of our knowledge base. Human civilization has been deeply affected by Darwin's work, with over 200 years of evidence supporting his initial findings with modification and refinement continuing to this day. For his contributions to humanity and his commitment to scientific methodology, Charles Robert Darwin is celebrated globally. The date that is recognized by most is that of February 12th, the date of his birth."

Darwin's contribution to human knowledge is simply tremendous, perhaps only Einstein has had greater influence, but it's debatable. All biology & medical science today rests on the foundation Darwin laid down 150 years ago in "Origin of Species."

Evolution is the best scientific theory we have today, fully proven thousands of times of the past 150 years. It's so good a competing theory doesn't even exist.

Ammunition for Atheists

Just discovered a new book for atheists, the Quotable Atheist:

Link to Article

From the site:

"In his new book, The Quotable Atheist, author Jack Huberman has collected powerful quotations against organized religion and belief in God from figures such as Richard Dawkins, Phyllis Diller, Frederick Douglass, Michael Moore, Katha Pollitt, and yes, Jerry Falwell."

"I would of course have preferred a declaration by the president of the United States -- purportedly God's messenger on earth -- stating that neither God nor WMDs ever existed and that most religious beliefs are untrue and harmful, and urging citizens to bring their minds back up at least to an eighteenth-century stage of development. (I have proposed this plan in a letter to George W. Bush, but haven't heard back yet. They must be hashing out the details.) Failing that, it is up to atheist/secularist groups and individuals to do what we can to stop global worming (people groveling like worms before nonexistent deities). That's where this book comes in."

And, of course, we must have a quote from the book:

Thomas Jefferson: (1743-1826), third U.S. president.

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies."

_________________________
I love Jefferson quotes against religion, and there are a lot of them. I'll have to do a blog entry of just Jefferson quotes some day.

The Superbowl is Over

I love the Superbowl - but I hate it too, because it means that football season is over, can't watch it again until September. But it was a good game and I was glad to see Payton Manning win it, and Rex Grossman better not return to Chicago for a while, he lost the game all by himself. Was very disappointed last year when the Seahawks lost.

Everyone talks about the commercials but they have been getting worse every year. Now that they are such a big deal everyone is trying too hard and going for outrageous, because most people just aren't creative enough. There was one good one called The Happiness Factory, clever, entertaining and well done:

What Can Congress Do?

“The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it....It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

James Madison


Bush has no authority to attack Iran but I don't think that's going to stop him. Back before the Iraq war I suddenly got the feeling that Bush was going to do it, that it didn't matter what the facts were. I get that same feeling now, Bush is going to invade Iran, maybe not a full invasion, perhaps just bombing, but he's already made up his mind and we all know that NEVER gets changed. He will lead us all off a cliff without ever a shadow of doubt or hesitation.

The God Delusion

I finally got around to getting Dawkins' book and reading it, about one third into it and I have to control my impulse to keep posting quotes from the book. Dawkins not only has some good things to say but has many memorable qoutes from others.

I like what he says in his introduction, he talks about his wife hating her school as a kid, when she told her parents as an adult they were shocked and asked why she didn't tell them. She replied that she didn't know she could. And that is what this book is about, telling those who have major doubts about their religion, or just vague non-believers in general, that they can be atheists, it's perfectly acceptable. In some parts of this country someone might never have met anyone who isn't a Christian, and has only heard negative things about atheism, it can be hard to shake off what you've had drilled into you your entire life. These books give such people permission to be atheist. And the fact that Dawkins and Sam Harris have both made the best sellers list shows more than just the choir is buying these books.

But I have to do at least one quote, this one is from Douglas Adams and how he felt when he finally understood evolution:

"It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."

10 myths—and 10 truths—about atheism

I was just re-reading my post on atheism on my commentary blog and once again I'm reminded that - damn, I'm good! So I thought I would post the link again and put one of my favorite parts here:

Here In The Future

The general stance of most atheists is that we require proof of a proposition before we will accept it, science is really the only method to gain that proof in most cases. Guesswork or ancient mythology doesn't cut it. The people who wrote the bible didn't know the Earth was round or that the stars in the sky were really distant suns, clearly they were abysmal cosmologists, why in the world would we accept their cosmological expertise as to the origin of the universe? Or about anything in the universe since then? Science is the systematic methodology for finding out about the universe and how things work. More has become known in the last one hundred years of scientific research than the previous 10,000 years of faith based knowledge. It isn't hard to figure out which method works and which one is a complete failure.

The Diesel

Here I am at work, the last to leave which leaves me babysitting Diesel. He's Sean's dog but Sean sometimes goes home and forgets Diesel. Today he didn't but is just supposed to have gone to dinner and will be back for him. He forgot the dog yesterday so poor Diesel hasn't been home since yesterday morning (someone took him home so he didn't spend the night here). He looked so lonely when everyone left and is now hanging out at my desk for the company. I want to leave - it's getting late, but I hate to leave him alone, I know he will get upset and I'm afraid Sean is going to forget him overnight. Some people. . .sigh. But I need to leave soon so Diesel will be on his own.

He's such an ugly dog. And aren't cell phone cameras great?

The New iPhone

This is just about the coolest thing Apple has ever done, and that's saying something. It completely revolutionizes cell phones and even mobile computing because this is really like having a small Mac in your hand. But the most revolutionary part is the touch screen, I see a time in the very near future when touch screens on laptops is the standard.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to get one. Apple foolishly signed up with Cingular until 2009, who has a terrible reputation for service. I don't know of anyone who likes them and several who don't. I just checked out Consumer Reports and their most recent report is this month with a survey showing Cingular and Sprint fighting for last place with Verizon taking top honors. I have Verizon now and have had it for two years and have never had a dropped call and rarely any problems at all. As cool as the iPhone is the most important thing is getting - and keeping - a connection. And right now I can sign up for another 2 years with Verizon and get a $100 credit for a new phone, which means I can get a Chocolate for free right now instead of waiting until June to spend several hundred dollars. I'll probably wait and see if any terrific new phones come out of the CES show going on right now in Vegas, maybe there will be something to rival the iPhone.

But Apple more than hit one out of the park this time, this will be bigger than the iPod, I'll just have to wait a bit.

The New Year

It is now 2007, I'm continually amazed by this. I remember as a kid thinking that I would be 46 when the year 2000 came along and that was FOREVER.

But most important to me this year as it has been the last few years is that Darcy is still with me. She was given 2-4 years to live 13 years ago, had a lung transplant 8.5 years ago, and is still here. The other 4 people transplanted with her at the same hospital in the same month all died 3 years ago. So each New Year I'm enormously happy that she is still here to celebrate with me, and the fact that New Year's Eve is her birthday makes the celebration better.

Now I'm especially worried, it has only been a matter of time before we could no longer dodge the bullet and she has been ill for some months now. Nothing serious but constant, so she is continually getting weaker. Worst is the doctors can't find anything which might mean the meds are simply wearing her down, that's the one thing we can never beat. And if they can't find anything wrong they can't do anything for her, so she just keeps getting weaker. There are still more specialist for her to see this year so maybe that will help.

I can see the steady toll all her many and dangerous meds are taking on her, both physically and mentally, and she is now 59 years old. I just hope she will be with me on the next new year.