Fundamental Difference?
So, I was pondering about whether there was some sort of fundamental difference between believers and non-believers. I'm sure there isn't any one simple thing. But I did run across what seems like a significant difference that I'm gonna explore a little here.
There's a family of arguments for the existence of God that all have a common basis. I don't know what the technical term is, so I call them Arguments that posit an extra-logical being to get around unwanted logical outcomes.
Here are some examples:
First mover arguments argue that every object has to have some external force move it. Therefore there must be some first mover to start it all off. And that mover is God. Some call this the Big Domino argument. Creator arguments are also of this ilk. Everything needs a creator, therefore there must be a God to act as that creator.
Designer arguments argue that everything has a designer, thus there must be some first designer, again, God. This is often posed as a watchmaker scenario. If we find a watch, we assume there was a watchmaker. Similarly, we see the watchmaker and we should also assume that there was a watchmaker-maker.
Another one is where folks argue that our morality can only exist is derived from the higher level authority, again, God. I call this the Big Daddy argument. Just as kids get their morality handed down from their parents, their parents get it from God.
There are certainly more arguments along this line. These are just the first ones that pop to mind.
They all take the same form. They all start by asserting for every A, B must be true. A can be real world objects or concepts like morality or something else. B usually refers to another A as the source for the current A. It'll be something like has a creator,
or derives from another source of morality.
The problem with these arguments is that they aren't really logically sound. If everything has to get their morality from somewhere else, where does God get his? If every object has a creator, who created God? These aren't logically sound arguments. (Realizing this propelled Bertrand Russell towards atheism.) The key is, they aren't meant to be logical arguments. They're really more a statement that logic doesn't suffice and that something extra-logical is required.
These arguments present situations which require an extra-logical concepts to exist in order to resolve things. The logical alternatives are unacceptable and demand the extra-logical being.
For example, if the statement is that everything truly needs to have a creator, then, logically, there are are two possible outcomes:
- There's an infinite chain of creators, or
- The statement is false and not everything needs a creator.
And, when faced with that choice, people seem to have one of two different reactions. Either they're okay with those options, or they can't accept either and instead posit an extra-logical being to resolve things. And that leads to the actual point of this (overly long) post. Is that reaction the difference between believers and non-believers?
Or put another way, does a fundamental difference between believers and non-believers lie in whether they find positing an extra-logical being to be a comforting answer to the logical situation that these sorts of arguments pose. (I'm not happy with using comforting
here. It sounds like I'm being judgmental and I'm trying hard to not be that way in this post.)
For me, having some sort of infinite series or just having things be created from nothing isn't a big problem. Sure, it doesn't square with common sense. But neither does relativity, much less quantum theory. And exotic particles actually do appear and disappear from the quantum foam all the time. I stopped expecting the universe to conform to my ideas of common sense long ago. But many, perhaps most, people have a real problem with those sorts of concepts and find positing an extra-logical being to be a good solution.
Conversely, for me, saying that God starts things off as the prime creator/designer/hander-down-of-morals doesn't really resolve things. I keep asking myself, well then, who created/designed/handed-morals-down-to God? But, obviously, for a great many folks, that's an answer that works for them.
So, are we looking at a fundamental difference here? Does it explain at all why believers and non-believers often talk past each other?
And, from my standpoint, the biggest question is why does positing an extra-logical being satisfy believers? (And they all want to ask me why it doesn't. :)
I really don't have any answers here. But it's what I've been thinking about on my last few walks, so I thought I'd write it down. I'd love to hear other folks' take on it. And I'll try hard to just listen to comments rather than argue against them.
Late Night Book Review
Well, it's 4:24 am and I can't sleep. So let's review some books instead!
Silver Needle Murder (Laura Childs)
I will freely admit that I love her mystery books. The mysteries are nothing special. But that's not why you read the books. You read the books because you like the characters and you like whatever theme the book uses. In my case, I like her tea-based mysteries. No, the mysteries don't revolve around tea. Rather, the sleuth runs a tea shop. (Childs also does a series based around scrap-booking. No lie. There's also a new series built around a diner.)
In addition to the characters, Childs does a nice job on descriptions of the various places in which the story takes place. It makes for a pleasant read.
Where the book falters is on the quality of the mystery. I quite literally pegged the murderer at his/her very first appearance. In Childs' books, characters are placed into two categories:
- Regular characters who putter around in their usual ways and are not suspects
- Story-specific characters who are introduced solely to either be killed or be suspected of the murder
But there's a catch. What every mystery writer wants is for the murderer to be revealed at the end and have the reader be surprised, but not scammed. In other words, the writer doesn't want the reader to actually figure the mystery out, but wants it to be possible for them to do so.
To achieve this, Childs' murderer is the one character who is introduced but is never fleshed out. She wants the character to be there, but she takes pains to exclude them from becoming one of the suspects. And, once you realize that, the character sticks out like a sore thumb.
What she really needs to do is have a smooth continuum of characters. Instead, she has a bucket of suspects and a bucket of regulars and one sore thumb.
But, again, the mystery isn't really the draw here. And I absolutely adore the books.
Vacuum Diagrams (Stephen Baxter)
This book reads like a series of short stories, tenuously connected by an over-arching storyline. Why? Because that's what it is. It isn't apparent from the cover. (Or maybe it is and I'm just a doofus.)
Most of the stories are interesting. A few fall flat. The over-arching storyline falls flat, as does the ending.
Overall, it's a nice read if you look at it as a collection of sorta-related short stories rather than one big one. Too bad it's billed as the latter.
Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans (Tim McCarver)
So, my mother-in-law decided she wanted to start watching baseball. (To try and form some sort of common interest with her daughter. You've never met two more dissimilar people in your life.) But, she really knows absolutely nothing about the game. So we went looking for a guide. This book wasn't it. We bought her something simpler. But I thought, being a decently informed baseball fan, I would get this for myself.
It's not a bad read. But it doesn't really deliver on what it promises, either. It's billed as a guide to watching baseball like a professional commentator like McCarver. What it actually is is McCarver's view as to how the game ought to be played, complete with examples of players and coaches that either do it right or wrong. Plus, it adds a little behind-the-scenes info.
From that, you can indeed glean some insight into how to watch the game. But you need to tease it out. It's really not presented that way.
Also, while the broad organization of the book is fine, within chapters, it all basically falls apart. It's just dense paragraph after dense paragraph. Again, you can tease out the insight, but it takes awhile.
Taken as it is, it's an enjoyable read. Taken as it's billed, it's a challenge.
Fuck You, Apple!
So, the iPhone OS version 3.0 is out. And it costs $9.95? Fuck you Apple!
Here's what you get:
- Buy movies, TV shows, and audiobooks via WiFi
- Stereo Bluetooth headphones
- Peer-to-peer gaming via Bluetooth
- Cut, Copy, and Paste
- Landscape keyboard in more built-in apps
- Spotlight search
Okay, let's look at this, bullet-by-bullet:
- Who cares? How often am I going to need to do this? Like, never? I don't download movies, I rip them from DVD. I don't watch much TV and what I do watch tends to be old TV shows, like the Mary Tyler Moore show, which I buy on DVD and then rip. And I don't listen to books. I read them.
- Can't use. First gens don't have Bluetooth.
- Ditto.
- Should have been in the OS from the start.
- Ditto.
- Who cares? How much actual data do you think is in one of these? On my desktop, cross-application searching is very useful. But on an 8 gig device? Not so much.
So, toting it up, we have 2 don't cares, 2 can't uses, and 2 features that should have been in the goddamn OS from the start. Again, fuck you Apple!
And the worst thing? I'm gonna have to buy it to get the 2 things that should have been there at the start.
I've realized that there are 2 Apple companies. One makes great computers with a great OS built on open standards. The other makes consumer devices and services that'll ram you up the ass at every opportunity!
(So, why do I have an iPod touch? Got it free with an iMac. I would not pay money for an iPod of any sort. And I don't buy a damn thing through iTunes. Damn kids! Git offa my lawn!)
What the Hell is the Globe Thing?
Just what is that little globe on the left that replaced the out-of-date Wordle? It's a little flash thingie that tracks from where visitors come. Each time someone comes to this page and stays for more than 15 minutes, their IP address is converted to a geological location and marked on the globe with a red dot. If you click on the globe, you're taken to a different site that provides a bigger globe. Hovering over the red dots there will tell you more about the location.
It's a freebie service. I think they use it as a way to bring you to their site and then sell you related services. Or maybe they collect your locations for some nefarious purpose.
Here's a quick list of the countries, other than the US, from which visitors have arrived over the past 24 hours:
- Algeria
- Australia
- Belgium
- Canada
- Chile
- Cyprus
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- India
- Malaysia
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- United Kingdom
- Yemen
The How To Make Tea page has its own little globe. It doesn't get as many visitors and many never look at the blog itself. Here's a few countries more concerned with tea than sexy red-headed nuns:
- Argentina
- Ireland
- Nigeria
- Serbia
Obviously, this blog doesn't get a ton of visitors. But I am genuinely amazed that people visit it from all these far-flung places.
I feel a bit silly about that. I set up my first web site in 1993. The global nature of the net shouldn't surprise me at all. Yet it still does.
But, what I really want to know is: Where's the Norwegian love? I hope this isn't because I declared War on Norway, twice.
Bing vs. Google
So, Microsoft has its new search engine thingie up. I say thingie
because it's billed as more a of a decision making tool. Anyway, I was curious as to which service was better. So I engaged in a rigorous test.
Testing Methodology:
- Provide each service with a decision question that has a clearly correct answer.
- Determine the rank at which the correct answer appears in the results.
- Whichever service puts the correct answer at a higher rank wins!
Test Decision Question: How do I make tea?
Correct Answer: How To Make Tea
Results:
Amazingly, Bing turns out to be the better service!
Ottawa
Just got back from a short trip to Ottawa, the capital of Canada. It's a nice place.
Things I Liked About Ottawa
- Ottawa is in that part of Canada that takes bilingualism seriously. (As opposed to the aggressive monolingualism distressingly common in the US.) Everything is in both English and French. It's just cool to see and lets me brush up a little on my French. (My French is even worse than my Norwegian, but better than my Hungarian.) And it's not just for show. About a third of the folks with which I dealt were French speakers. (Of course, they spoke in English for my benefit.)
- Ottawa's architecture for their main government buildings is a nice contrast to Washington DC. Instead of big-ass granite buildings fronted by ranks of phallic columns, Ottawa's buildings are done in a Gothic Revival style. They're impressive without being imposing. Granted, the Peace Tower juts up phallically, but it has nothing on our National Phallus, phallically speaking. (I'll be interested in the ads generated by the frequent use of phallus-related terminology. At least I didn't say
penis.
PENIS PENIS PENIS! (That's an in-joke for anyone in my High School health class.)) - I can get to Ottawa in about 4 hours, including layover time. Hell, it takes me nearly that long to drive to DC.
- When you return to the US, you go through Customs and Passport Control in Ottawa. I was really worried before I found that out. I switched planes in Dulles, but had only 90 minutes between the flights. Judging from the time it took us to get through Customs and Passport Control in Dulles after we returned from Norway last year, I wasn't optimistic about making my second flight. But, ah ha, you don't have to go through it in Dulles. You do it in Ottawa with no lines!
- Canada, like most countries, has pretty money. US money is just butt-ugly. It was okay when it was all green. But then we decided to add some color to it. And we just screwed it up. Now our money looks like puke. Really. It's that sickly yellow color. Have we no artists?
- The weather was gorgeous. I'm already sick of Virginia heat and humidity. (The folks there assured me that it gets hot and humid in August. Yeah, I'm sure it does. The difference is that Virginia is that way from May through October.)
Things I Disliked About Ottawa
I was panhandled more times than I expected, about six times over the course of three days. That's more than I usually see in DC. But less than I've experienced in San Francisco. The odd thing was that most of the folks approaching me were young white guys. I sorta wanted to yell at them What's your fucking excuse!
It's not that I'm cheap. I once gave $20 to a guy on the street because he was friendly, helped me find my hotel, and seemed genuinely down on his luck. But it's not usually that clear-cut.
I never know what to do about panhandlers. Will they blow it on booze? (Whereas I'll just blow it on toys.) Are they scamming me? (The guy outside the Baltimore Convention Center is scamming you. He didn't get beat up and he doesn't need bus fare. Trust me on this one.) Are they genuinely in need? Even so, is giving them a buck or two the best way to help?
One approach I thought of was counting the number of times I'm approached and then send $5 per approach to some charity in the area. That seems like a way to address the issue in a constructive way.
But, of course, I haven't actually done that yet. To be honest, I first thought of it in San Francisco. The sheer size of the resulting required donation frankly made me just, well, not do it.
I suppose I ought to send off a check for $30 to an Ottawa charity.
Yeah, that's it. I really liked Ottawa. Oh, well, maybe you don't need three Irish/Scottish pub/restaurants in two blocks. There! That's two things!
Five Guys WTF?
Williamsburg recent obtained its own Five Guys hamburger joint. So, we tried it out.
Horrible! Why would anyone eat there? The hamburgers are greasy and are on soft white buns that make each bite wad up in your mouth like a soiled diaper. (Not that I've ever had a wad of soiled diaper in my mouth. Ewww!)
The fries are horrible, a fetid combination of burned exteriors and underdone interiors. They're all smashed into a cup to ensure that they get soggy from the trapped steam.
The only tasty thing in the building are the peanuts. Yes, they have big boxes of peanuts-in-the-shell. You can eat as many as you want. You'll want a lot because nothing else is edible.
Unfortunately, someone decided that the optimum location for this box of edibles was on top of the garbage can. Health code FAIL!
Oi! Oi! Oi!
It's been awhile since I went to a punk show at a small venue. But my buddy Fred brought me along to the Canal Club, in Richmond's flood-zone, last night. (The torrential rains on the drive made us wonder whether it would get washed away before show-time.)
I'm always a little leery of Oi! bands, due to the right-wing racism that's sometimes associated with the music. But I didn't really catch any of that with this show. Just seemed like your basic punk show. (Actually, it got a little too we're all brothers in this together, kum-by-ya
for me by the end of the night.)
The opening act was The Bottle. They were sort of cuddly fat white guys, with a skinny little Asian guy on bass. But they really rocked out. I'm sure they're just some little local band. They didn't even have any CDs or T-shirts for sale. But they were pretty damn good. You know a punk band is good when you can tell the difference between songs even though you're hearing them for the first time in a live venue. They played the kind of driving punk I really like. I really wish they had CDs. Shit, it's not like you can't make your own these days.
The second act was The Ladies. I bought one of their T-shirts before they even played. It's just so outrageous, I couldn't help myself.
I figured that the band itself was either an all-female line-up, or perhaps a Queercore band, either of which would have been cool. But, nah. It was just some guys. Well, were they any good? No, they weren't. The songs all sounded the same. (And, yes, I know, all punk sounds the same to some people.) Y'know, even punk needs to have hooks. These guys didn't. Their between-song patter was considerably more interesting than the songs themselves. At least the songs were really short, as was the whole set. They had actual vinyl 45s for sale, but I declined to buy any.
The next band up was Flatfoot 56. They're one of those Celtic punk bands. In their case, Celtic
means adding bagpipes and mandolin to the din. Played live, I didn't really hear anything Celticy other than the aforementioned bagpipes and mandolin. Regardless, what they did play sounded great. I liked them well enough to pick up two of their CDs at the merchandise table. They also had a nice selection of T-shirts and other merch. So I got a shirt, as well.
The band itself is a trio of brothers plus an adorable little blond kid in a kilt playing, yes, the afore-aforementioned bagpipes and mandolin. Once I looked them up, this morning, I saw that they're also a Christian punk band. Well, that's fine. It puts their inter-song patter of brotherhood in a different, but not bad, light. And now the fact that they led the crowd in singing Amazing Grace
seems a little less simple brotherhood. In other words, I think they meant it.
The worry about many explicitly religious music forms is not really the religious affiliation. It's simply that the genres usually suck particularly hard. Just as Atheist Gospel would certainly suck, so does Christian Metal. Thankfully (heh), this particular brand of Christian Punk rocks out really good. I'd drive up to Richmond to see these guys again, no problem.
The headliner was an old classic UK punk band, The Business. I was particularly pleased to see that they were part of the anti-racist faction in Oi! music. They also provided a great show. They rocked hard. They sounded good. Yeah, they were all old Brits with shaved heads, but so what. One thing I've always like about a lot of old UK bands is their rumbling rhythm sections. People are probably more familiar with Cook and Jones (Pistols and Professionals), but other UK bands had the same sort of driving back-beat. It's a depth of sound that US punk never really managed. (Nor wanted, I'd guess.) These guys had it in spades.
It was during Smash the Discos
that I had an epiphany of sorts. A sweet gimmick would be for a band to do just punk ABBA covers. They could call themselves Scabba. Genius idea, that.
The only thing marring the night, really, was the fact that my orthopedic insoles made my leather boots pinch my pinky toes. (Actually, they weren't really boots. They're black leather Converse Chucks.)
Night at the Museum
So, we went to Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian last weekend. Fun little movie.
It's a sequel to a movie I haven't ever seen. Luckily, that's not really a problem, as it can be summed up as Special tablet makes museum stuff come alive at night. Mayhem ensues.
It's funny and fun. There isn't any depth to any of it and I'm just fine with that. Some moments get played out a little long. (The monkey-slapping, for example.) But, overall it moves at a nice pace.
Only one thing in the movie really bugged me. At one point, Einstein reels off the first several digits of pi and then ends with precisely.
What? Wrong wrong wrong!
But that outrage is balanced out by the performance of Amy Adams. Well, not her performance, per se, although her performance was fine. In fact, I really enjoyed her bygone patter.
No, what I really liked was her butt. Yeah, that's what I said. She has a really nice butt and it's wrapped in form-fitting pants the entire time. I honestly could have just sat and watched that butt alone for 90 minutes. (I mean, I could watch just the butt and nothing else. Not that I want to sit alone and watch it. Although that wouldn't be bad either. Nudge nudge wink wink.)
I suppose that means that Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian belongs, along with Abba: The Movie, in the rarified category of Movies Tom will watch just to see a nice butt in form-fitting fabric.
Honestly, I would have enjoyed the movie without her butt, too. But it was a nice bonus.
Moonie Be Finished!
I finally finished my custom Moon Knight Minimate. (By finished
I mean abandoned,
like all great art.)
(Previous steps in this sordid tale: Conception, Preparation, and Implementation.)
I was a little rushed because the next wave of Minimate figures will actually include Moonie, so I felt compelled to finish mine before the real one came out.
I'm not totally thrilled with the results. In particular, the little crescent moon emblem on his chest has been a pain. I tried making a stencil, which I then painted white, followed by tracing the edge of the stencil with an ultra-fine black marker.
My first attempt totally failed. I pretty much drew a black line across it trying to do the outlining. I scratched off the paint and gave it a second shot. The second attempt is what you see in the photos. Not great, but not so bad that I feel compelled to try thrice.
I went for two different looks. My first idea was to take the cloak from a Cloak figure and paint it white. (Except for the inside of the cloak, which is black because it's always in shadow, of course.) Then I'd paint Cloak's head black, except for the eyes. I'd pair that with Dagger's white body, spinning it around to hide the cleavage. The cloak is all moody looking, like Moonie often looked towards the end of his first comic series.
Then, while looking at other Minimates online, I saw one for the Spectre. He has a nice white body, but with some musculature drawn on. He also comes with a nice cape and hood that looks much like Moonie's does when he's in beating up bad guys
mode. So, cool, I'll paint that white as well and use the Spectre's body. (He also has a better head than Cloak does. His eye's are bigger and stand out much better when the rest of the head is painted black. (Note: Moonie's mask
in the comics is a white piece of cloth, but it's often shown as shadowed black with glowing white eyes. (Isn't LISP fun?)))
One thing missing was a belt. Other Moonie Minimates I've seen simply draw one on. And that's pretty accurate because, while Moonie does wear a belt, it's a very simple one. It isn't like Batman's utility belt. It holds his pants up and has crescent throwing thingies attached to it. But I didn't relish trying to draw such a thing. Instead, I took the belt piece off of a Spymaster figure and painted it white. It's not super-accurate to the character, but I like how it looks.
In the end, I also replaced Dagger's hips and arms with ones from a Penguin figure I had lying around. Dagger's cleavage cut-out descends onto her hip-piece. (Yes, comics are mainly drawn by lonely men.) I had painted it out, but by using the Penguin, it wasn't an issue. His arms were a nicer shade of white, too. Dagger's looked a bit translucent.
So, now that they're done, I'm both please and disappointed. The moody
Moonie just doesn't look right to me. He looks like a guy with a towel wrapped around his head. (Actually, he looks alot like Moon Knight did before he became Moon Knight. He did go off to avenge with a towel wrapped around his head.) Here he is:
But I really like the action
Moonie. The moon emblem is a bit rough, but it's good enough. He's sitting on my desk right now, looking to kick Batman's ass!
I'm now working on a Super Hero Squad Moonie, based on a ground-down Doctor Doom torso and Daredevil arms. And maybe a Mighty Muggs one, from a blank white figure and a Count Dooku cape. (Why the Count? He was on sale, that's why!)
