The cashier looked over my shoulder as he brushed my box of Triscuits over the scanner. A funny sort of smile crossed his face, and he gently shook his head. It was one of those slight smiling head-shakes you give when you hear on the news that some poor bastard was shot and killed in an armored car robbery. You didn't know him, or his family, but some small part of you inside still feels for them, and you give that sad little face of empathy and gently shake your head.
I looked over where he was looking, but saw only other shoppers and other cashiers at other check stands. Nothing of note.
"What?" I asked him gently.
"Huh?" He was embarassed. It seemed he had been having what I call a public-private moment, and forgot himself in it. I had shocked him out of his reverie.
"What was that little face you just made all about?" I asked with a soft smile, as you might ask a scared child.
"Oh. Sorry. When you've worked here a while you just start to notice things."
Again, I turned and looked but did not see what had grabbed his attention.
"Well, what did you notice just now."
He leaned in a little and lowered his voice. "You see the guy checking out in the next lane, right behind you?"
"Yeah. What about him?"
"I just felt bad for him. He's got a really bad cold."
"How do you know that?"
"Look at what he's got there; two bottles of orange juice, a dozen cans of chicken noodle soup, two boxes of Kleenex and a paperback novel. He's not planning on leaving the house for a few days."
I looked up into the other customer's eyes and really saw them. He had a far-off, glassy eyed stare that a person only gets when they are ill... or drunk. Then I noticed the complexion of his nose was slightly pinker than the rest of his face, as if irritated by too many tissues. Now that I took all that in, I couldn't understand how I had missed it before.
"Wow, you've got a real gift there."
"No, I just pay attention."
Friday, December 26, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Creepy Veepy
“If he wants to diminish the office of vice president, that’s obviously his call"
-- Dick Cheney on Joe Biden's remarks. Read full article HERE
The Vice President isn't supposed to have any power, you megalomaniacal jackass!
According to the laws set up by our brilliant founding fathers, the Vice President does the following and ONLY the following:
1 Takes up the mantle of The Presidency ONLY in the event the sitting president is killed or otherwise incapacitated.
2 Casts a vote in the senate ONLY in the event of a tie.
Other than that they play a large diplomatic role, but they wield no power, or they shouldn't anyway. I hope Mr. Cheney's attempts at reinventing the office do not become precedent.
Here's one more blurb from the above linked article:
"And he said the president “doesn’t have to check with anybody” — not Congress, not the courts — before launching a nuclear attack to defend the nation “because of the nature of the world we live in” since the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001. "
That sounds an awful lot like another famous politician...
"If the president does it, it isn't illegal."
--Richard Nixon, in a famous interview with David Frost.
Like with Nixon in the past, Cheney doesn't seem to be a fan of that whole silly "checks and balances" nonsense.
I know drawing historical parallels is something the right wingers usually emply (it's usually a nazi reference from them) and I know it's not an extremely useful thing to say, but when comparing attitudes towards the use of power, Cheney and Nixon have too much in common for my comfort.
“If he wants to diminish the office of vice president, that’s obviously his call"
-- Dick Cheney on Joe Biden's remarks. Read full article HERE
The Vice President isn't supposed to have any power, you megalomaniacal jackass!
According to the laws set up by our brilliant founding fathers, the Vice President does the following and ONLY the following:
1 Takes up the mantle of The Presidency ONLY in the event the sitting president is killed or otherwise incapacitated.
2 Casts a vote in the senate ONLY in the event of a tie.
Other than that they play a large diplomatic role, but they wield no power, or they shouldn't anyway. I hope Mr. Cheney's attempts at reinventing the office do not become precedent.
Here's one more blurb from the above linked article:
"And he said the president “doesn’t have to check with anybody” — not Congress, not the courts — before launching a nuclear attack to defend the nation “because of the nature of the world we live in” since the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001. "
That sounds an awful lot like another famous politician...
"If the president does it, it isn't illegal."
--Richard Nixon, in a famous interview with David Frost.
Like with Nixon in the past, Cheney doesn't seem to be a fan of that whole silly "checks and balances" nonsense.
I know drawing historical parallels is something the right wingers usually emply (it's usually a nazi reference from them) and I know it's not an extremely useful thing to say, but when comparing attitudes towards the use of power, Cheney and Nixon have too much in common for my comfort.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Sh*t Stirring
Apparently I cannot avoid it. Most of my social and religious opinions are very controversial in some circles, so I really shouldn't be surprised. At any rate, I received an email from someone who said the comment system wasn't working. Here is my reply.
I made no such statement that any religious person is an idiot. Upon reading my original post with that in mind, I can see how I might not have been very clear, but I was attempting to talk about myself and my own situation. I imagine that if I myself had been on the streets or on death row or some other such rough position that I might not have ended up at the same conclusions about the world. I was pointing out that I see myself as fortunate to not need religion. Other healthy, educated and intelligent people don't need it either, but they do seem to want it. That want is their right and prerogative. I was not attempting to equate that want with stupidity.
Since sh*t has been stirred, yet again, and the conversation has been opened, I will further address the points you made in your email. You mentioned Einstein, Newton and Kant as examples of intelligent, educated men who believed in god. I will never understand why people continuously refer to Einstein as an example of a man of science who believed in god. That's just like the many people who insist on saying that Hitler was an atheist. Hitler, by the way, was most certainly a christian of some kind. If you're a history buff and you've ever read any of his books or speeches, he refers to god quite often, but I'm getting off topic. We're talking about Einstein here. He most certainly did not believe in any such thing. The following are two direct quotes from his own collected letters:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
Einstein spoke often about the ethical and cultural value of organized religion to society, but he was not by any stretch a religious man. And as far as Newton and Kant go, they can hardly be counted as antithetical to my remarks, if anything they support my argument. The both of them lived, worked and wrote their opinions in a time when the world still needed stories for humans to explain it. The microscope was a revolutionary new invention. The concept of germs being teeny tiny agents of disease was very new in their day. They were brilliant minds, but they simply did not have all the facts, all the ideas and tested theories that we have today. Go back even further in time and find that Thomas Aquinas was one of the most brilliant minds of the 1200's and also one of history's most prolific writers on the topic of God and especially the devil and demons. That hardly discounts my point. During the lives of all these men human culture had not made the strides towards the real answers I mentioned in my first post. If it were possible to bring Kant and Newton back to life today, I would wager a hefty sum that neither would have stuck to their religious convictions.
And besides that, one of my favorite bits of Kant's philosophy, as I understand it, was as follows:
1 The human mind can only think in terms of cause and effect
2 There are such things that the human mind can never fathom the causes of, like whether the universe always existed or was created by some intelligence, or whether or not such an intelligence even exists
3 If we cannot find the causes then those questions are ultimately unanswerable by the human mind.
4 If the answers to these grand questions are unknowable to the human mind, then those questions are outside the realm of debate, and therefore irrelevent to the grander human conversation.
That may be an over-simplification of what he said on that topic, but it is a fair representation of his meaning.
And though Newton and Kant both clearly believed in a supreme being, they disagreed with many things in the Bible, and the church itself. Scholars today argue still about what exactly Newton believed. He was a complete heretic, going against the church and the bible repeatedly, which would lead me to believe that the more evidence he was provided, the less a man of faith he would have been.
Apparently I cannot avoid it. Most of my social and religious opinions are very controversial in some circles, so I really shouldn't be surprised. At any rate, I received an email from someone who said the comment system wasn't working. Here is my reply.
I made no such statement that any religious person is an idiot. Upon reading my original post with that in mind, I can see how I might not have been very clear, but I was attempting to talk about myself and my own situation. I imagine that if I myself had been on the streets or on death row or some other such rough position that I might not have ended up at the same conclusions about the world. I was pointing out that I see myself as fortunate to not need religion. Other healthy, educated and intelligent people don't need it either, but they do seem to want it. That want is their right and prerogative. I was not attempting to equate that want with stupidity.
Since sh*t has been stirred, yet again, and the conversation has been opened, I will further address the points you made in your email. You mentioned Einstein, Newton and Kant as examples of intelligent, educated men who believed in god. I will never understand why people continuously refer to Einstein as an example of a man of science who believed in god. That's just like the many people who insist on saying that Hitler was an atheist. Hitler, by the way, was most certainly a christian of some kind. If you're a history buff and you've ever read any of his books or speeches, he refers to god quite often, but I'm getting off topic. We're talking about Einstein here. He most certainly did not believe in any such thing. The following are two direct quotes from his own collected letters:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
Einstein spoke often about the ethical and cultural value of organized religion to society, but he was not by any stretch a religious man. And as far as Newton and Kant go, they can hardly be counted as antithetical to my remarks, if anything they support my argument. The both of them lived, worked and wrote their opinions in a time when the world still needed stories for humans to explain it. The microscope was a revolutionary new invention. The concept of germs being teeny tiny agents of disease was very new in their day. They were brilliant minds, but they simply did not have all the facts, all the ideas and tested theories that we have today. Go back even further in time and find that Thomas Aquinas was one of the most brilliant minds of the 1200's and also one of history's most prolific writers on the topic of God and especially the devil and demons. That hardly discounts my point. During the lives of all these men human culture had not made the strides towards the real answers I mentioned in my first post. If it were possible to bring Kant and Newton back to life today, I would wager a hefty sum that neither would have stuck to their religious convictions.
And besides that, one of my favorite bits of Kant's philosophy, as I understand it, was as follows:
1 The human mind can only think in terms of cause and effect
2 There are such things that the human mind can never fathom the causes of, like whether the universe always existed or was created by some intelligence, or whether or not such an intelligence even exists
3 If we cannot find the causes then those questions are ultimately unanswerable by the human mind.
4 If the answers to these grand questions are unknowable to the human mind, then those questions are outside the realm of debate, and therefore irrelevent to the grander human conversation.
That may be an over-simplification of what he said on that topic, but it is a fair representation of his meaning.
And though Newton and Kant both clearly believed in a supreme being, they disagreed with many things in the Bible, and the church itself. Scholars today argue still about what exactly Newton believed. He was a complete heretic, going against the church and the bible repeatedly, which would lead me to believe that the more evidence he was provided, the less a man of faith he would have been.
Religion (again)
For those religious readers, please know that (for once) I am not stirring up sh*t here. I am not poking the bear with a stick to watch him roar. I am just sharing some conclusions I have come to for myself. Feel free to disagree, but lets keep it civil.
I saw Bill Maher's new film RELIGULOUS on Saturday. Good times. It got me thinking about a conversation I had a couple summers ago with a good friend. I remember him citing some kind of innate human need to have a spiritual life, or something to that effect. He mentioned the same thing that many religious people often mention: the fact that nearly every major civilization that ever existed on earth had religion of some kind. He wanted to know how I could explain that obvious human need that crosses all culture and race lines. I don't remember exactly how I addressed it at the time, but I do know that I didn't have an answer of any kind of substance. Much time has passed in reflection, and after all I've read and seen and thought about since then, I have an answer now. It's not an original one, but it makes sense to me.
I think what we humans actually have is a powerful and innate need to feel that we understand exactly what is going on around us. We need to know why the earth is here, why we're here. We need to explain birth and death and the changing seasons, why the sun rises and sets, etc. etc. This need is in our blood, and I mean that literally. Our genes cry out to us to piece together an understanding of the world so that we may better move through it, and this need exists in all cultures and goes beyond all borders.
In early man's quest to understand the world he needed to categorize and label everything. Early man did not have the tools necessary to do this using only his five senses, so he began coming up with stories. These stories were connected to an immaterial (and I would say imaginary) sixth sense. With this soul, or spiritual sense, or third eye, or whatever it is you want to call it, we humans began to feel as though we were perceiving the presence of a higher power at work.
This helped early man to label and categorize everything. Anything he couldn't wrap his primitive mind around was explained through some kind of fanciful tale, and that was all he needed to feel he had a handle on the world. Why did the world go cold and snowy once per year in winter in ancient greece? Easy: Demeter (goddess of grain and harvest) is upset because her daughter spends a few months every year in the underworld with Hades, so sad Demeter shuts down the earth for a bit.
Why bother learning more about it? After all, it is simply the will of (insert a deity name here). Nearly all cultures applied these same tactics, but different cultures had different perspectives and different needs, and it follows that the stories they created contained different priorities and different constraints. And in this short paragraph here I have not only answered the question asked about the human need for religion, but also the unasked question about why the answers of the various different cultures to the same questions were all so very different. Further exploration of the reasons behind those differences, however warrants another essay... no, in fact it warrants an entire book.
Fortunately for us, in this day and age, we do have the tools to further understand the world around us. With the help of microscopes and telescopes and particle accelerators I can perceive with my five concrete senses what is actually happening. I don't need a story to tell me, I can literally see it, hear it, touch it, etc. I don't need to imagine that the universe is a representative democracy with a president (also called God) and through my vote (also called prayer) I can pass a meteorological referendum for rain to fall. I know that the weather is a chaotic system and rain will happen whenever it's going to happen, and there is nothing I can do to change that.
So, yes, I think we probably do have this innate leaning towards a spiritual life, but I think that is a byproduct of our even more powerful innate need to understand the forces at work on our lives. I find that need is fulfilled quite easily with astrophysics and evolutionary biology. They are cold, unfeeling forces who don't listen to my prayers, or anybody else's, but I kind of like that. I like that nobody is given anything by any deities in my world. Nobody has a leg up, and everybody has to go out and get what they want for themselves, or at the very least seek corporeal help.
I also recognize, as does Bill Maher, that I am incredibly fortunate to have lived a life that brought me to these conclusions. I know that I am lucky to have had the education and oppotunities I have had that release me from the need to lean on an all powerful and all loving imaginary friend. I recognize how those less fortunate might need that. I really understand that, I do. I do not share in that need. I revel in the world around me for what it is, and I don't need anything else to make me feel loved or secure.
For those religious readers, please know that (for once) I am not stirring up sh*t here. I am not poking the bear with a stick to watch him roar. I am just sharing some conclusions I have come to for myself. Feel free to disagree, but lets keep it civil.
I saw Bill Maher's new film RELIGULOUS on Saturday. Good times. It got me thinking about a conversation I had a couple summers ago with a good friend. I remember him citing some kind of innate human need to have a spiritual life, or something to that effect. He mentioned the same thing that many religious people often mention: the fact that nearly every major civilization that ever existed on earth had religion of some kind. He wanted to know how I could explain that obvious human need that crosses all culture and race lines. I don't remember exactly how I addressed it at the time, but I do know that I didn't have an answer of any kind of substance. Much time has passed in reflection, and after all I've read and seen and thought about since then, I have an answer now. It's not an original one, but it makes sense to me.
I think what we humans actually have is a powerful and innate need to feel that we understand exactly what is going on around us. We need to know why the earth is here, why we're here. We need to explain birth and death and the changing seasons, why the sun rises and sets, etc. etc. This need is in our blood, and I mean that literally. Our genes cry out to us to piece together an understanding of the world so that we may better move through it, and this need exists in all cultures and goes beyond all borders.
In early man's quest to understand the world he needed to categorize and label everything. Early man did not have the tools necessary to do this using only his five senses, so he began coming up with stories. These stories were connected to an immaterial (and I would say imaginary) sixth sense. With this soul, or spiritual sense, or third eye, or whatever it is you want to call it, we humans began to feel as though we were perceiving the presence of a higher power at work.
This helped early man to label and categorize everything. Anything he couldn't wrap his primitive mind around was explained through some kind of fanciful tale, and that was all he needed to feel he had a handle on the world. Why did the world go cold and snowy once per year in winter in ancient greece? Easy: Demeter (goddess of grain and harvest) is upset because her daughter spends a few months every year in the underworld with Hades, so sad Demeter shuts down the earth for a bit.
Why bother learning more about it? After all, it is simply the will of (insert a deity name here). Nearly all cultures applied these same tactics, but different cultures had different perspectives and different needs, and it follows that the stories they created contained different priorities and different constraints. And in this short paragraph here I have not only answered the question asked about the human need for religion, but also the unasked question about why the answers of the various different cultures to the same questions were all so very different. Further exploration of the reasons behind those differences, however warrants another essay... no, in fact it warrants an entire book.
Fortunately for us, in this day and age, we do have the tools to further understand the world around us. With the help of microscopes and telescopes and particle accelerators I can perceive with my five concrete senses what is actually happening. I don't need a story to tell me, I can literally see it, hear it, touch it, etc. I don't need to imagine that the universe is a representative democracy with a president (also called God) and through my vote (also called prayer) I can pass a meteorological referendum for rain to fall. I know that the weather is a chaotic system and rain will happen whenever it's going to happen, and there is nothing I can do to change that.
So, yes, I think we probably do have this innate leaning towards a spiritual life, but I think that is a byproduct of our even more powerful innate need to understand the forces at work on our lives. I find that need is fulfilled quite easily with astrophysics and evolutionary biology. They are cold, unfeeling forces who don't listen to my prayers, or anybody else's, but I kind of like that. I like that nobody is given anything by any deities in my world. Nobody has a leg up, and everybody has to go out and get what they want for themselves, or at the very least seek corporeal help.
I also recognize, as does Bill Maher, that I am incredibly fortunate to have lived a life that brought me to these conclusions. I know that I am lucky to have had the education and oppotunities I have had that release me from the need to lean on an all powerful and all loving imaginary friend. I recognize how those less fortunate might need that. I really understand that, I do. I do not share in that need. I revel in the world around me for what it is, and I don't need anything else to make me feel loved or secure.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Finally
Besides Nanowrimo distracting me, another reason I was not posting very frequently was because I lost my internet at home. Business has been sh*t for a couple months now thanks to our floundering economy. Business is still terrible, but I have received a settlement check for a car accident I was in back in March. As of yesterday afternoon I have the internet at home again.
Not too much to report today though. I just wanted to share something I found that was short and funny as hell.
On THE HISTORY CHANNEL'S WEBSITE they have these funny little animated shorts that give you entertaining little historical nuggets. Take the link HERE TO SEE SOME OF THEM.
In my links section is a site called ONEGOODMOVE.ORG and they have credit for introducing me to it. They put up all kinds of entertaining / educational clips daily. Check them out too.
Besides Nanowrimo distracting me, another reason I was not posting very frequently was because I lost my internet at home. Business has been sh*t for a couple months now thanks to our floundering economy. Business is still terrible, but I have received a settlement check for a car accident I was in back in March. As of yesterday afternoon I have the internet at home again.
Not too much to report today though. I just wanted to share something I found that was short and funny as hell.
On THE HISTORY CHANNEL'S WEBSITE they have these funny little animated shorts that give you entertaining little historical nuggets. Take the link HERE TO SEE SOME OF THEM.
In my links section is a site called ONEGOODMOVE.ORG and they have credit for introducing me to it. They put up all kinds of entertaining / educational clips daily. Check them out too.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Background
Wednesday afternoon I had my first experience as an extra, also known as "background" in the business. I say Wednesday afternoon, but it also included a big chunk of Thursday morning as well.
This will be my last experience in such a role.
The money is pretty crappy, and the hours are worse, that part I knew and was expecting. But this gig was just plain awful. I love Ricky Gervais, but he's full of sh*t with that Extras show of his. It's not really anything like that. Extras are kept in a separate area from the principles called "holding" and we are implicitly forbidden from interacting with the leads unless we are blocked into a scene with them. Forget about entering their trailer secretly like he does with Patrick Stewart.
This particular project was the worst I have heard of from the handful of people I know who have done this type of work before.
Firstly, we were called in at 3:30 PM on Wednesday, and they kept us there for 15+ hours, which might have been okay if that didn't bleed into the next work day where most of us have dayjobs to get to in the morning. And none of the male extras for this scene were called onto set after 1 AM. They insisted on holding us their until 6:30, even though they had moved all the equipment on to a new scene they had us sit there.
For those of you who don't know, when all the equipment and crew move from say the bar of the hotel lobby to say the hotel swimming pool, they are not going back. Most likely not ever, but definitely not that night. They shoot all they need in one spot before they move on, because it takes lots of valuable man-hours to move all that stuff, and they won't want to waste time moving it all back. So for five and a half hours we men sat tired, starving and shivering knowing full well they weren't going to use us again.
Yes, I said starving. I can't remember if the union standard is a meal break every six or seven hours, but either way, they didn't feed us for the final eight and a half hours.
And yes, I also said shivering. To top all of that off they didn't turn the heat on in the building our holding area was in, so once we cleared about 2 AM it started to get really damn cold in there, and by 4 AM my feet and hands were partially numb. Around 4:30, after we complained for hours, they finally turned the heat on, but with the massive vaulted ceilings we couldn't feel the difference until right around 6:30... right when they finally let us go.
Imagine being stuck in a room with forty other guys and every single one of them is beyond exhausted, starving and shivering AND THIS IS A JOB! We're not homeless people, we are on a work site.
I will leave the title out, to avoid the google visitor happening on my bitching. But look up a Wilson brother who isn't Owen, and the guy who played Phoebe's brother on Friends, and that's the project. Lenka and I are both in it as "background." She will be in a restaurant scene, and I will be a bartendar at the awards show.
But seriously, never again. It's not good experience, it's not fun, it doesn't pay well, and it is nowhere near the networking opportunity that Gervais makes it seem. Maybe it might look good on a resume... if I planned on pursuing extra work full time.
Wednesday afternoon I had my first experience as an extra, also known as "background" in the business. I say Wednesday afternoon, but it also included a big chunk of Thursday morning as well.
This will be my last experience in such a role.
The money is pretty crappy, and the hours are worse, that part I knew and was expecting. But this gig was just plain awful. I love Ricky Gervais, but he's full of sh*t with that Extras show of his. It's not really anything like that. Extras are kept in a separate area from the principles called "holding" and we are implicitly forbidden from interacting with the leads unless we are blocked into a scene with them. Forget about entering their trailer secretly like he does with Patrick Stewart.
This particular project was the worst I have heard of from the handful of people I know who have done this type of work before.
Firstly, we were called in at 3:30 PM on Wednesday, and they kept us there for 15+ hours, which might have been okay if that didn't bleed into the next work day where most of us have dayjobs to get to in the morning. And none of the male extras for this scene were called onto set after 1 AM. They insisted on holding us their until 6:30, even though they had moved all the equipment on to a new scene they had us sit there.
For those of you who don't know, when all the equipment and crew move from say the bar of the hotel lobby to say the hotel swimming pool, they are not going back. Most likely not ever, but definitely not that night. They shoot all they need in one spot before they move on, because it takes lots of valuable man-hours to move all that stuff, and they won't want to waste time moving it all back. So for five and a half hours we men sat tired, starving and shivering knowing full well they weren't going to use us again.
Yes, I said starving. I can't remember if the union standard is a meal break every six or seven hours, but either way, they didn't feed us for the final eight and a half hours.
And yes, I also said shivering. To top all of that off they didn't turn the heat on in the building our holding area was in, so once we cleared about 2 AM it started to get really damn cold in there, and by 4 AM my feet and hands were partially numb. Around 4:30, after we complained for hours, they finally turned the heat on, but with the massive vaulted ceilings we couldn't feel the difference until right around 6:30... right when they finally let us go.
Imagine being stuck in a room with forty other guys and every single one of them is beyond exhausted, starving and shivering AND THIS IS A JOB! We're not homeless people, we are on a work site.
I will leave the title out, to avoid the google visitor happening on my bitching. But look up a Wilson brother who isn't Owen, and the guy who played Phoebe's brother on Friends, and that's the project. Lenka and I are both in it as "background." She will be in a restaurant scene, and I will be a bartendar at the awards show.
But seriously, never again. It's not good experience, it's not fun, it doesn't pay well, and it is nowhere near the networking opportunity that Gervais makes it seem. Maybe it might look good on a resume... if I planned on pursuing extra work full time.
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