Sheikh Ahmed Deedat vs Sjoberg – Is Jesus God? [Debate]

Thursday 19 January 2012 - Filed under Journal

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Wednesday 23 November 2011 - Filed under Journal

As you can plainly see, I haven’t been blogging much lately. I still enjoy long(er) form writing and I intend to keep writing on this blog. I’m sure it will continue to emb and flow a bit. My RSS feed is still screwed up, so most people aren’t paying attention anyway! One of these days I’ll get that fixed up. You know the story about the cobbler’s kids having crappy shoes….

I am still sharing my thoughts, though, mainly on Twitter and a little on Google+. You know what to do!

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-11-23  ::  lolife

Mike’s Light Bread Machine Bread

Monday 5 September 2011 - Filed under Journal

• 2 heaping cups white bread flour
• 1 cup wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons dry milk powder
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 2 teapoons salt
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 packet quick rise yeast

I like to mix the honey in 1/2 cup of the water so that it doesn’t sit in one place in the bread machine. My machine says to put dry ingredients first, then oil and honey and then water last. My machine also has a little yeast dispenser so it adds it at the right time. You can just sprinkle the yeast on last if you don’t have that.

In my machine I can make this on the BAKE RAPID setting, which is basically a white setting. You can bake it on the wheat setting, too, or a regular white setting.

As long as you don’t forget the oil, this makes a nice, light loaf that the kids will eat but you’ll like too.

Variations:

You can use olive oil instead of canola oil. It makes the bread more European. You can use butter instead of oil, too. You can also use molasses instead of honey or just use 2 tbsp. sugar. I don’t know how to use liquid milk, but that would be fun to try.

M.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-09-05  ::  lolife

Atheism and Veganism

Friday 3 June 2011 - Filed under Atheism + Religion

I was paging through a Skinny Bitch book. I’d like to have better nutrition and lose some weight. I’m also not opposed to vegetarianism and veganism on culinary or philosophical grounds. So I flipped through and read a few bits.

They immediately pissed me off. I’m paraphrasing here, but they said, meat is gross and disgusting, cow’s milk is for baby cows and coffee is the dumbest thing in the world you could possibly drink.

They didn’t give me a bunch of facts about why this is so (although I’m guessing they do elsewhere in the book). They just piled on a bunch of condescending crap about the kinds of foods I grew up eating. And they fucked with coffee. No one fucks with coffee and lives to tell the tale.

It made me realize how off-putting it can be when people come across that way — self-righteous, condescending and insulting. Atheists are often accused of this and there has been much debate about “framing” and the value therein.

I’ve become a very vocal atheist. The religious notions that people talk about seem absolutely absurd to me. That serious and intelligent people believe bronze-age mythology and speak about God as if he were a certainty just befuddles the hell out of me. There is no doubt in my mind that the supernatural beliefs of all religions are false.

Yet I’m like those Skinny Bitches. I’m attacking a way of life, a family bond, a lifestyle spanning generations and I’m closing the door immediately to really challenging people’s beliefs. They stopped listening because no one likes to listen to self-righteous, condescending assholes discourteously shredding their deeply personal beliefs.

What could the Skinny Bitches have done to not turn me off to their ideas? They could acknowledge that they know my views are important to me and were developed possibly across generations. They could state the facts that make me reach the conclusions instead of ramming their conclusions down my throat. They could say that I don’t need to throw out everything I love, that I can find my own path based on their advice and experience.

I think people should say whatever they want. I’m not telling people like PZ Myers to approach the debate differently. PZ pushes a lot of people off the fence and they appreciate it afterward. That approach works well for the prepared mind.

But we can be more effective with people less sympathetic to our views if we keep them listening and engaged. We can’t do that if they think we are self-righteous assholes. That’s just a no-brainer.

Why do I want to convert people to atheism? Because I think we need all the fact-based reasoning we can get. I’m afraid of the hugely negative impact that religious thinking can and has created. There are people so far gone that they think science is the enemy! We need more people who put reason first. To do that we need to think carefully about how to lead people to the conclusions we’ve reached.

3 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-06-03  ::  lolife

Teachers who made a difference

Tuesday 3 May 2011 - Filed under Journal

It’s National Teacher Appreciation Day. I thought I’d take a moment to remember some great teachers in my life.

Mr. Deseth (Roosevelt Elementary) He was cool. He was also firm but fair.

Mr. Moen (Kelly Elementary) He was funny but took his job seriously and expected you to, too.

Mr. Martin (Schroeder Jr. High School) He made it clear to me that knowing stuff is more fun than not knowing stuff.

Mrs. McCaffery (Schroeder Jr. High School) She taught us all that being a tiny woman does not make you one less bit intimidating. Really big burn-out dudes were afraid of Mrs. McCaffery.

Mr. Fosse (Red River High School) He was an excellent theatre teacher in a way that changed people. He was hilarious, unique, bold, creative and he made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives, including mine.

I could go on but I’ll do this again next year.

I think the teachers I remember are the ones that made me enjoy learning and/or made me learn about life, not just about the subject matter at hand. Being good at math, for example, is certainly a huge benefit to a math teacher. But inspiring kids, being a good example, rewarding creativity, teaching discipline and the other million things that teachers do — those are the skills that make a difference in the world.

1 comment  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-05-03  ::  lolife

Why I don’t follow you

Monday 11 April 2011 - Filed under Computers

Why I don’t follow you:

1. Most of your tweets are @replies.
2. You retweet nice things people say about you.
3. You have one-on-one conversations on the public timeline.
4. You auto-reply to new followers.
5. Your tweet about how awesome you are.
6. You serial tweet real-time events.
7. You filibuster my timeline.
8. You beg for RT’s, diggs, likes, followers.
9. You publicly celebrate every time your follower count can be divided by 100.
10. You’re a name-dropper.

Here’s some examples of things you should never, ever tweet:

@joan we should grab lunch sometime.
RT @lolife is über fucking hot.
Touchdown!
“The 32nd smart thing this speaker just said” #somedumbconference
Only 1023 more followers and I’ll be at 2000 followers!

Why I do follow you:

1. You make me laugh.
2. You make me think.
3. You don’t do the 10 things above.

With that said: tweet whatever the fuck you want. The only major crime is to give a shit what I think!

2 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-04-11  ::  lolife

The problem is not Free Speech

Monday 4 April 2011 - Filed under Atheism + Religion

The problem is not Free Speech, the problem is extreme, violent action by religious extremists.

PZ sums it up very well:

We live in a world where some Catholics will froth at the mouth and send death-threats and call for people to be fired over insults to a scrap of magic, holy bread; we live in a world where some Muslims will kill random people if someone insults their magic, holy book. That ought to be recognized as the real problem and a call for more criticism, not less, of religion…

Recall that 99.99% of Christians, Muslims and Atheists alike do not provoke each other senselessly. I don’t care what you believe, provided you keep me out of it. I don’t think specific pieces of bread are sacred and I don’t think a collection of pieces of paper with ink on them is sacred. You are not keeping me out of it if you force me, by law or violence, to treat them as sacred. Like I said, I’m not going to desecrate pieces of bread or paper because it’s not how I choose to express myself and I consider it needlessly provocative. I do think it is “valid” protected free speech.

It is untenable if the reaction to extreme speech is violence. There can be no peace if that is the case. The only valid reaction to free speech is more free speech. We must universally condemn violent response to free speech. It’s not the retarded preacher in Florida’s fault that people chose to react with violence. It’s ludicrous and indefensible that people would consider violence an expected or appropriate response.

Focus on the right problem. The problem is not free speech. It’s religious extremism.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-04-04  ::  lolife

Cooperation over competition

Wednesday 26 January 2011 - Filed under Journal + Politics

In another thread I am having a conversation with “carter”, who seems to be a smart and thoughtful person, and a fellow rocketeer, by the look of it. The following is a response to one of his comments that I felt deserved the spotlight of its own post, especially considering how rare I blog these days.

He said, among other things:

I’ll admit there is a sweet spot for taxation and regulation.

How should we figure out where the sweet spot is? This is perhaps my prime problem with the “small government” rhetoric of the Right. It would be lovely if we could set a certain policy, run the experiment and then rewind, use a different policy, run the experiment again, etc. and really truly find out the right amount of taxes and regulation to make for the strongest economy. We can’t do that.

So instead, like astronomers, we have to observe different experiments in action and then try to normalize them somehow and get our insights that way. What are the other experiments? They are the other countries that are also experimenting with varying degrees of taxes and regulations.

The odd part about this is that the US is an anomaly. There is no Westernized country more conservative than us. There are none with lower taxes. When you look at the other thriving economies of the world they all, every one of them, have more taxes and regulation.

The Right likes to point to this and say – see! We are on to something here in the USA! Less taxes and less regulation make for a stronger economy. Unfortunately that is a statistically insignificant sample of one. There are a lot of other factors that have contributed to the strength of the American economy besides the conservatism of the last few decades.

So I’m glad we agree – there is a sweet spot for the level of taxes and regulation. You think we have erred in one direction and me the other. I really try to imagine your view as correct. I do trust people to look after their own best interest. I do see how the government screws some things up.

The reason I end up disagreeing with you is this: homo sapiens rose above the bloody fray of survival of the fittest and started cooperating in larger and larger groups. While the law of the jungle certainly applies, a stronger “law” has led to the great success of our species: cooperation. We all do better when we all do better. I can’t escape this ideology and economists have been unable to prove me wrong. I think we should put our efforts into making government better (for we are the government, after all) rather than trying to dismantle it.

I have written elsewhere on this blog why I think progressive taxation is fair and smart. Moving from taxes to fees is regressive. For certain things, I think it is viable and useful. But our government is so more than a service provider.

I also agree that Amy’s child safety law had ridiculous unintended consequences.

Thanks for the great conversation.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-01-26  ::  lolife

Swiss Tournament Formula

Tuesday 25 January 2011 - Filed under Journal

For a Swiss tournament with n players in r rounds, you can calculate how many players will lose l number of games with the following formula:

For example, you have 56 players playing in a 4-round tournament. You want to know how many people will lose 2 games. So n=56, r=4 and l=2.

In this example, 21 people of the 56 people will lose exactly 2 games.

This formula assumes there are no ties and ignores byes.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-01-25  ::  lolife

Hate begets violence

Friday 14 January 2011 - Filed under Politics

In the wake of the assassination attempt of a United States congresswoman we must reflect on what separates the United States from places like Iraq and Columbia, to name just a couple, that cross the line from politics to violence. The difference of course it that we don’t kill each other or each other’s representatives in this country. We argue and debate and the rhetoric gets heated, but none of us wish actual harm on the other. Political violence is very rare and it should be, it undermines the heart and soul of democracy.

I don’t think you can blame this shooting on Sarah Palin alone. There are a lot of influential people who purposefully enflame the issues and cross the line from debate to hate. Ask yourself why they do this. What do they have to gain? The answer is again obvious, they get paid. The hate mongers like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and 65% of Fox News get paid to hate. The Left has their haters too, although none as brazen and intolerant as the Righties. They are experts at hateful, intolerant exaggerations and they constantly use the metaphors of violence, conflict and war.

Why would we be surprised that there are people deranged enough to act on it? The American equivalent of the Taliban are armed, eager and whipped up in a factless frenzy of hateful intolerance toward anything resembling progressive thought.

I know most conservatives deplore violence and some even reject the 24 hate parade of the Right Wing media. There are many thoughtful Republicans who are focused on a civil political debate. But those thoughtful Republicans have to reel in the hate machine. When the ramblings of a violent criminal are indistinguishable from the daily rants of leading “conservatives”, something is wrong. Conservatives are not well represented by these idiots and more intelligent and thoughtful voices should be expressing the ideas of the Right.

We can’t have a successful debate of ideas if we demonize each other to the point of hate. We should be more thoughtful, all of us, because we are, in fact, in this together.

6 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-01-14  ::  lolife