Fish in Space

The following is a fairly meta post about stress and dealing with stressful times. I'm neither a neurologist nor a psychiatrist so I do not have an expert opinion on the topic, I have only my personal experience and the tactics I've learned to deal with it. People who are close to me often describe me as extremely calm and patient, which always surprises me. I never really think of myself that way but in the end appearances matter. The reason I bring this up, of course, is because I'm feeling a lot of stress at the moment. A lot of it is personal and per my usual policy I won't go into details here. My usual response to events that provoke me is to stop, take a step back and breathe, let myself feel the emotion and once the moment has passed try to look at the problem as objectively as I can. It's important that I feel emotions but it's even more important that I act more than react. In this article in the Washington Post (I strongly recommend you view the pa...

The Chicago Tribune published an opinion piece called "Your response to Trump’s racist ‘shithole’ comment will be remembered." For those who weren't paying attention or enough time has passed for that day's scandal to have faded from memory, the comment in question was a complaint about protections for immigrants from "shithole" countries, namely Haiti, El Salvador and African nations. It was not an unusual comment from Donald Trump, serial racist that he is. The man has no respect for anyone who isn't white, rich and filled with flattery for Donald Trump. But the fact that what was surely an off-hand remark isn't unusual has no bearing on how reprehensible it is. He not only denigrated the kind of people who come from those countries but the countries themselves. That's why there's been so much public outcry and demands for apologies from dozens of nations around the world. My response to Donald Trump? You are not my President. Donald Tru...

I have previously addressed the Problem of Evil in a another post but I'm not sure I really addressed the Christian apologetic of divine command theory. In its most simplified form, Yahweh can never be evil or immoral because he's the god. This god quality automatically makes everything he says or does automatically moral because of who he is. Because we do not have this god quality we have no right to pass moral judgment on anything he says or does. No matter how evil or immoral any action (or inaction!) he takes it is automatically made moral by dint of his authority as the god. If we do the same evil, immoral thing citing Yahweh's action as precedent we are still evil and immoral because we do not possess the god quality. The Profit of the Church of the Fridge wrote an incredible essay comparing the morals of Superman against the morals of Yahweh and I highly recommend it. The Christian answer to the Problem of Evil is that there's no problem at all. Just ignore...

I truly believe that religion is a personal matter, a decision we all make about what reality is and how it works. As an atheist I don't believe religion has anything valid to say on the matter based on my observations of reality versus claims religions make. But I can't force anyone to agree with me and refuse to support public policy that would criminalize religious belief or worship. When someone tells me that they approach politics with a religious mindset I can't help but roll my eyes. This is an example of what we're talking about when we refer to beliefs informing actions: how do you expect to formulate good public policy if your foundation of truth is a fantasy? I can't stop people from voting that way but I can uphold secularism in which people are entitled to believe whatever they choose but can't use our laws to coerce compliance with religious belief. I draw the line when people try to inject religion directly into politics. It is a direct violation ...

What I'm about to discuss here is not ground-breaking. Many people will already be aware of the topic but I feel it worth exploring. Working in IT I have necessarily learned a little bit about automation. Learning to write computer scripts to automate common tasks has been a significant boon to my life in computer support like when someone is constantly losing their network mappings or there's a folder that constantly fills up with old, unused temp files but never gets cleaned up and ultimately slows down the operating system. Yes, I'm looking at you Microsoft. The point being is that scripts are labor-saving devices, tools we can launch to automate a process that would take more time and energy to do by hand. What's interesting is how we do this in our daily lives in ways that have nothing to do with computers. Did you ever drive somewhere familiar to you but with the mental note that you need to make an extra stop, then miss it? You were driving on autopilot. Did you ...

First, because so many of us seem to have forgotten it, a reminder of what America used to be. For those who have forgotten or never knew, this is what's inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, the gift we put on display to represent what America is supposed to stand for. We were never a nation of nobility ruling over serfs. We were never a nation of priests passing judgment over the laity. This was never supposed to be a club where you had to pay to get in. It was supposed to be a land of refuge where no one could tell you which god to worship or which master to serve. Whether you were poor or rich, brown or white, godly or heathen this was supposed to be a place where you could come to find your own way and not have to conform to anyone else's demands about who you are. Now we've entered an era where all of that has changed. Now we're afraid of newcomers, suspicious of strangers if their skin is brown or they pray to strange gods. If they eat the wrong foods or say the wr...

I've argued this before but the topic is still hot so I'm going to approach it from a different perspective. Believe it or not, Muslims are not inherently bad or evil. It's one thing to challenge their claims and criticize their actions when they behave badly, but that's not what a lot of the criticism is doing. I don't like vilifying Muslims as a group for a number of reasons. One is because they're not a majority in my society the way Christians are, so it's not as easy to punch up. Were I living in Iran or Saudi Arabia that would be a different story, but that would carry its own set of problems worthy of criticism in their own right. Vilifying Muslims in a Christian-dominated society doesn't promote secularism or anti-theism so much as give shade to Christian agendas. Even if you're not intending to promote Christian supremacy, unintended consequences are still a thing. If we want a post-religious society then I strongly believe that secular...