Month: March 2005

Are Atheist/Agnostic Universities Best?

Another area where you see athesit/agnostic fundies are in university “diversity” efforts. Typically what is meant by diversity is actually just warmed-over conformity to a rigid political ideology. And, frequently, the religious need not apply (especially since most religions are the complete opposite of “diversity’s” sappy relativism — believing that some things are actually right or wrong when everyone knows morality is just about preferences).

I think The Princeton Review accurately reflects this in its contrasting criteria between what it calls “Diversity Univeristy” vs “Monochromatic Institute”.

At Monochromatic Institute, “Students pray on a regular basis.” At Diversity University, however, “Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis.”

That’s diversity — everyone should look different, but think alike.

Source:

Best 357 College Rankings Demographics. Princeton Review, Undated, Accessed: March 24, 2005.

40th Anniversary Spider-Man CDROM Review

Back in September I mentioned the 40th Anniversary Spider-Man CDROM Collection — Amazing Fantasy #15 plus issues 1-500 of The Amazing Spider-Man all in one CD-ROM collection for about $40.

I finally managed to pick up a copy recently. Basically, what we have are 501 PDF files containing relatively high-resolution scans of each comic book. This has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, everything is included in each book, including inside covers, advertisements, letter pages, etc. If its was in the book, its in the PDF. Unfortunately, many of the comics that were used for the scans are clearly showing their age. Even more recent books tend to show quite a bit of wear. This is in contrast to Topic Entertainment’s previous Marvel Comics CDROM collection which achieved stunning images by scanning the black-and-white original art in Marvel’s archives and then adding a digitally colored layer which could be turned off.

Storing the scans in PDFs creates a number of issues — the most annoying is that the books were scanned in landscape which means each page in the PDF usually represents two comic book pages. I find this a bit annoying. It does preserve the occasional two-page layout, but for the most part I’d have preferred to have my monitor filled with one page rather than two.

The user also has to use Adobe Acrobe 6.0 or later, or a “Marvel” watermark will appear superimposed on the pages. That watermark always appears when you print the page, so if you really want to print anything you’ll need to grab a screenshot. That’s stupid behavior IMO. What’s the point in nerfing printing like that, especially since its trivial to circumvent?

Other than that, the PDFs aren’t DRMed, in that you don’t need to register the Acrobat Reader or anything. I quickly copied all 6+gb of PDFs to my portable hard drive so I can read them on any computer I happen to be using at the moment.

Overall, its not perfect, but at less than a dime per comic, this is the bargain of the century. And coming soon is a Fantastic Four CDROM reproducing the entire 30-year run of that book. It truly is a great time to be alive.

Fundie Atheists

In the spirit of this discussion about atheism, this speech by Natalie Angier is a good example of the sort of nutcases who are representative of “mainstream atheism” (for lack of a better term. Angier is discussing how to raise “100 percent guaranteed god free children” and mentions her daughter, Katherine,

Admittedly, Katherine is lucky. She lives in a very liberal community, Takoma Park, Maryland, which went 91.8% for Kerry; and a lot of other kids, she told me, share her views about god. A couple of times she’s been told she’s going to go to hell – or, as she phrased it, the opposite of heaven; she’s remarkably curse-averse – but she says she doesn’t care because she doesn’t believe in either destination anyway. But in some places in the United States, it’s extremely tough to be an atheist, even fatal. Last October, in Taylor, Michigan, a former Eagle Scout shot another man to death because, he said, the man was “evil; he was not a believer.” We all know the sort of tolerance they teach in the Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts of America, of course. No gays allowed – guess you don’t expect them to be very good at pitching tents and tying knots, right? – and no atheists. They kicked out Darrell Lambert, a model scout if there ever was one, because he refused to say he believed in God, remember? At which point, I’m proud to say, my husband, who was a boy scout and an eagle scout and learned many skills as a scout and had earned many patches and badges, decided to send back his eagle scout medal to the Boy Scouts of America; and he wrote a beautiful essay about his decision for the Washington Post. The director of public affairs at the organization sent him an answer, saying, We accept your decision, but we hope that someday, you will come to be more open-minded in your views.

So, what advice do I have for nonbelievers trying to raise their children in a rigidly religious, small town environment? Move.

I kid you not. I went to high school in a small Michigan town, very religious, lots of baptists, also lots of drunk drivers, and believe me, they were the worst four years of my life. Move to a big city in just about any state, or move to a medium-sized city in a blue state, move to Takoma Park, or move to Canada if you can stay awake. Move to a university town. Because there are plenty of secularists out there, oh yes. Sure, weÂ’ve been told repeatedly, weÂ’ve been beaten practically comatose, with the notion that we live in an extremely religious country.

The shooting Angier mentions was committed by 49-year-old Arthur Shelton. He murdered his 62-year-old roommate, Larry Hooper, in October 2004 after the two had a long argument over religion. Shelton is apparently a very disturbed individual. He told police that his roommate was the “anti-Christ” and his public defender filed a motion saying that Shelton was “delusional” and unable to cooperate in his own defense.

And from this, Angier would actually have us conclude that living in places like Taylor, Michigan, is dangerous if you’re an atheist and that, should you find yourself in such a city, the best option would be to move out. And, on top of that, of course, implies that the Boy Scouts are churning out killers because they exclude gays.

And Angier has the gall to lecture others about the scientific method and rationality?

This view that religion is dangerous because it is irrational is one that is relatively common among nuttier atheists on the web. It makes about as much sense as conservatives such as George Gilder do when they try to link atheism with the crimes of Communist mass murderers of the 20th century. One could make exactly the sort of fallacious argument that Angier does about atheists, noting that from Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot, many of the most prominent mass murderers in history were atheists. What do you do if you find yourself in a country governed by an atheist? Move, ASAP!

Sources:

TAYLOR: Death is result of debate about God. Joel Thurtell, The Detroit Free Press, October 28, 2004.

RAISING CHILDREN WITH SECULAR VALUES IN A RELIGIOUS WORLD. Natalie Angier, December 14, 2004.

Terri Schiavo Is Not Brain Dead

If you’re going to write about something, you should take a minimal amount of time to get the facts right and avoid embarassing yourself. Dave Winer makes the bizarre claim that

Re Terry Shiavo [sic], the woman whose brain is dead, Congress and the President should not have gotten involved. They made a mistake.

Schiavo is definitely not brain dead. Rather she is in a persistent vegetative state. Schiavo suffered apparently severe brain damage, but her brain is currently functioning although not normally.

If you’re brain dead, you’re just plain dead — no one recovers from brain death. People do, rarely, recover from being in a persistent vegetative state, which is why Schiavo’s parents still hold out hope for her.

Regardless of your opinion on whether or not Schiavo should have her feeding tube removed (and I favor letting the state court decisions stand), it doesn’t help to spread misinformation like claiming Schiavo is actually brain dead.

Still Riding High on Netflix

John Robb complains that Netflix is on the skids and he no longer recommends the service to family and friends — though he doesn’t say which service superior to Netflix he does recommend.

Netflix is clearly not as efficient as it was, say, 6 months ago, but its still an amazing value.

In February, Netflix billed me $31.79 for their 5-DVD-at-a-time plan. That same month they shipped a total of 31 DVDs to my house.

I just haven’t come across a rental service yet that can rent me that many movies per month at that low of a cost.