The Point of the Holiday Season to an Atheist

In a conversation with a friend, who is also atheist, the topic of holidays came up. Someone questioned why she would have a Christmas Tree. She said “Umm, why not?” I also thought it was a strange question. I said “I’m atheist, but I love the holiday season.” However, when my cousin (who is not atheist) questioned this “…and what exactly do you love about it?,” I started wondering if maybe this wasn’t so obvious to those who don’t understand atheism. Perhaps this question deserves to be fleshed out a bit.

Every atheist has a slightly different definition of atheism. Going into the nuances is outside the scope of this post. Suffice it to say we don’t believe in God and tend to shun the institution of religion in general.

So my desire to celebrate the holidays with family and friends is considered strange behavior for an atheist. First of all, what is Christmas? It’s the celebration of the birth of Christ, although with a little research, I could come up with the names of at least two other non-christian deities who also celebrate their birth around this time (an inexplicable coincidence), but that’s another topic for another day. If you’re Christian, this idea of “birth of Christ” is not lost on you. You may go to Church, but even if you don’t, you recognize that this holiday has the aforementioned religious element to it. I don’t believe in Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Christ, and I don’t celebrate it any more than I celebrate Hanukkah or Ramadan. Christmas, specifically, holds no significance for me. However, the holiday season in general is a different matter.

If you set aside religion for a moment, do the days in and around November/December feel like normal work days? Of course not. Decorations are up, Christmas trees and Hanukkah bushes are up, people are shopping for gifts and visiting with friends and family, and the atmosphere is just generally more festive and cheerful.

We decorate the house and put up a tree if we’ve got the time. It’s pretty to look at and it helps to create the festive atmosphere that we enjoy as much as anyone else does. We don’t stress out if it doesn’t get done. It’s not about responsibility. It’s about doing what we enjoy doing without losing perspective. After all, what’s the Christmas tree got to do with the religious aspect of Christmas anyway? It’s just another decoration for the house. We exchange gifts just because that’s what’s traditionally done, although we rarely do so on Christmas day. It just happens, frankly, whenever the hell we feel like it.

So, what do I love about the holiday season? Essentially everything that my Christian friends and family do. The only difference is that I don’t recognize it as a celebration of the birth of a man that Christians consider their god. I use it as an opportunity to celebrate the things that are important to me — my family and friends.

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Finally got off my butt and ran. it’s been 8 days

Friday evening, I decided to tape up my ankle and jump on the treadmill. It had been 8 days since I sprained it. This is what it looked like the night of the injury:

See and download the full gallery on posterous

And now, eight days later:

See and download the full gallery on posterous

I didn’t want to risk another injury by running outside again, and frankly, I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to do it.

It’s been over a week and, although I’ve been off the crutches for several days, I’m still taking Vicodin and Motrin for pain pretty regularly. Plus, my foot’s sportin’ every color of the rainbow.

I started off at a slow walk/limp pace for a couple of minutes and then tried to step it up to a slow jog. Well, let me tell you, that sucked. Treadmill said 3MPH and my ankle felt like someone had shoved a bunch of broken glass inside my ankle joint. I really thought that was it. I was going to have to quit.

I really wanted to spend at least 10 minutes on the treadmill before giving up, so I tried to push through the pain for at least a few minutes with the thought that I’d walk for 5 minutes if I had to, but I wanted to at least run some of it. Well, after a minute or two, the ankle settled down and didn’t hurt quite as much, so I kept going.

Every step was painful, but ultimately I was able to suck it up and get 3.5 miles in. The pace was pitifully slow (about 45 minutes), but it’s more than I expected, so I’m pleased with it.

I took today off to rest it, and I haven’t decided if I’ll go again tomorrow or wait until Monday. It’ll depend how it feels and how much pain I’m in the mood to tolerate. I really hate running treadmills, but I think I need the predictability to minimize the risk of re-injury until my ankle is a little stronger and a little less sore.

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Stargate Universe

I’m a week late, but I just caught the series premier of Stargate Universe.

I like the new show, but, of course, I have to offer a little perspective. I loved the original movie, Stargate. I’ve seen every episode ever created in the 10, or so, years that Stargate SG-1 ran and I’ve seen every episode ever created in the 5 years that Stargate Atlantis ran, so my liking this new series is kind of a no-brainer.

I am a little concerned though. Although Stargate SG-1 was wildly successful, as evidenced by its run time, they cancelled Stargate Atlantis after only 5 seasons, presumably due to ratings. The new series, Stargate Universe, is a new cast in a new story arc, but I’m not sure it’s different enough from Stargate Atlantis. If Atlantis died early due to ratings, I’m not sure this won’t suffer the same fate.

Stargate Universe lives in the same world as the other Stargate shows, and there’s some overlap of characters, with guest appearances by Col. Carter and Gen. O’Neil, and even Walter, but otherwise, it’s a whole new cast. The main premise is that they discover a gate address with a 9th symbol and when they dial it, they end up stranded on a broken “Ancient” ship hurling through intergalactic space at superluminal speed. They have no idea where they are or how to get home, and the ship is breaking all around them. So, presumably, this show is about their efforts to find a way home, with the exception of one character, whose motives have not been made clear. In a way, this sort of reminds me of Star Trek Voyager.

Again, I liked it, and I’ll watch it faithfully, as I did with the other series,’ but as I said above, I’m an easy win.  We’ll have to see.

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Lesson for the day: iPhone update and VMWare Fusion don’t play nice

This is not a particularly scary thing to see on your phone…unless you’ve been using it for months and already have 32GB of data on it.

I use VMWare Fusion to run Windows Vista on my Mac for work. I was in there when I was notified by Apple of an update to the iPhone software. I switched over to iTunes (in OS X) and initiated the update. i then switched back to Windows to proceed with my work while the update ran.

Unfortunately, one of the steps in the update was for the phone to restart. Well, naturally, when the phone attempted to restart, Windows recognized the new device and started to install device drivers for it. I cancelled the driver install and switched back to iTunes, but it was too late. The update failed because iTunes lost its connection with the phone (due to Windows trying to snatch it up).

It forced a phone restore, which I attempted. The first attempt failed. I had to disconnect the phone and reset it manually, then run the restore again. It succeeded on the second attempt, but it completely wiped everything from the device.

I’m currently in the process of reloading all my apps, music, pictures, etc. This will take a while, and I’ve lost trivial things like the locations of apps on screens and other settings, but it appears that no data was lost.

I just hope when it’s done that I haven’t lost all my email and calendar (CalDAV) settings. This will be a pain to reconfigure.

Ugh!

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First thoughts about Google Wave

I’ve put a few hours into Wave, and I know that doesn’t make me an expert by any stretch, but there’s one little piece of perspective I’d like to offer.

Right now, we have some of the smartest, techiest geeks on the planet in there with their hundreds of thousands of Twitter and Friendfeed followers. Whenever someone like Scoble or Steve Rubel starts a wave, half the US tech population wants to jump in and be involved with these Internet Icons. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but I am suggesting that it may not be a typical use-case. it’s like jumping on a conference call with 8000 of your closest friends and everyone trying to talk at once.

I think when some of the hype dies down, people will start using it in smaller groups for more specific conversations and the interactions won’t be nearly as confusing. I’m also guilty of this because none of my personal contacts is on Wave yet, so I’m stuck driving the Autobon on my unicycle and trying to keep up without getting run over. Once I have some personal contacts on Wave and can engage them in more focused conversations, I’ll have a better idea what niche (if any, as Rubel suggests) this fills.

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Testing the ability for Google Wave to post to my Posterous blog using the Posterous robot for Wave

Testing the ability for Google Wave to post to my Posterous blog using the Posterous robot for Wave

This is a test post. Trying to see how formatting works when posting from a wavelet to posterous and also how/whether or not it does the auto-post thing to twitter/facebook, etc.

Also, instructions say “You can change your post settings before posting a blog by replying ‘/site’.” Not sure what this means.

via google-wave-robot

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The failure of Capitalism, Our Current Financial Crisis and How One Man Predicted It Years Ago

The Boston Globe recently did a piece on capitalism and why it’s inherently flawed. Before you call me Socialist and click away, please read on as I explain how one economist predicted our current financial crisis more than forty years ago as a result of his insights regarding the problems inherent in the American economy.

Hyman Minsky, a macroeconomist who died over a decade ago predicted our current financial crisis. When did he have this revalation? Roughly the 1960s. He believed that modern finance policies are the very mechanisms that “created the illusion of stability while simultaneously crating the conditions for an inevitable and dramatic collapse.

He argued that capitalism, as a whole, is inherently flawed. Minsky argued that the American economy was not the self-correcting machine that many of his contemporaries thought. “Far from trending toward some magical state of equilibrium, capitalism would inevitably do the opposite. It would lurch over a cliff.”

He explained the pattern that he recognized. Following the Great Depression, everybody, consumers and businesses alike, was being very conservative. Loans were not given out unless you were highly qualified and repayment of loans was the highest priority. However, as the years progressed and the Depression became more and more of a distant memory, people were steeped in prosperity and forgot the problems they faced. Borrowing became easier to do and it gave rise to the kind of speculative lending and trading practices that you saw just a couple of years ago. Despite his warnings throughout the 60’s, 70s, 80’s and even into the 90’s (just before his death), this house of cards continued to build until it hit an unsustainable peak.

The system collapsed under its own weight and this is where we find ourselves today. Although some of Minsky’s solutions for recovering from this death-spiral have been put into place by Bernanke and the Obama Administration, many of his solutions were considered too “socialist” for this current political climate.

This is a fascinating article and I highly encourage you to read it. It can be found here.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/13/why_capitalism_fails/?page=full

Posted via email from Kevin’s Ramblings

The failure of Capitalism, Our Current Financial Crisis and How One Man Predicted It Years Ago

The Boston Globe recently did a piece on capitalism and why it’s inherently flawed. Before you call me Socialist and click away, please read on as I explain how one economist predicted our current financial crisis more than forty years ago as a result of his insights regarding the problems inherent in the American economy.

Hyman Minsky, a macroeconomist who died over a decade ago predicted our current financial crisis. When did he have this revalation? Roughly the 1960s. He believed that modern finance policies are the very mechanisms that “created the illusion of stability while simultaneously crating the conditions for an inevitable and dramatic collapse.

He argued that capitalism, as a whole, is inherently flawed. Minsky argued that the American economy was not the self-correcting machine that many of his contemporaries thought. “Far from trending toward some magical state of equilibrium, capitalism would inevitably do the opposite. It would lurch over a cliff.”

He explained the pattern that he recognized. Following the Great Depression, everybody, consumers and businesses alike, was being very conservative. Loans were not given out unless you were highly qualified and repayment of loans was the highest priority. However, as the years progressed and the Depression became more and more of a distant memory, people were steeped in prosperity and forgot the problems they faced. Borrowing became easier to do and it gave rise to the kind of speculative lending and trading practices that you saw just a couple of years ago. Despite his warnings throughout the 60’s, 70s, 80’s and even into the 90’s (just before his death), this house of cards continued to build until it hit an unsustainable peak.

The system collapsed under its own weight and this is where we find ourselves today. Although some of Minsky’s solutions for recovering from this death-spiral have been put into place by Bernanke and the Obama Administration, many of his solutions were considered too “socialist” for this current political climate.

This is a fascinating article and I highly encourage you to read it. It can be found here.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/13/why_capitalism_fails/?page=full

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Russia yields to Obama Star Wars U-turn – Scotsman.com News

Check out this website I found at news.scotsman.com

Obama’s decision to change the plans regarding the Missile Defense Shield that was originally supposed to be deployed in Poland (with tracking systems in Chech Republic) was a very welcome change of direction by the Russian Government, which always thought these missiles were being put in place as a threat to them as opposed to defense against Iranian ambitions.

In response to this new development, the Russian government is planning to scrap its own plans to deploy counter-measures near the border of Poland.

I see the potential for a course-correction in relations between the US and Russia. There’s much to be worked out. The US is pressuring Russia to support Sanctions against Iran because of their unwillingness to stop their nuclear program. However, Russia is reluctant to go along with such plans because of the depth of their trade relations with Iran.

Russia has not yet given any signals that it’s ready to go along with these sanctions, but I believe there’s reason for optimism in light of this new information.

Posted via web from Kevin’s Ramblings

Missile shield and the state of politics in this nation

A thought occurred to me today as I was listening to a Newshour podcast. They were discussing the fact that President Obama is killing GW Bush’s plans for the Missile Shield in Poland and Czech Republic and replacing it with a new program that he feels more effectively addresses the immediate threat posed by the Iran missile program.

 They had two guests on the program, as they often do. One of them agrees with the new plan and the other thinks the change is a mistake. This post isn’t really about the defensive system itself, so I’ll only recap briefly.

 Essentially, the President’s position is that the old system was being designed to defend against ICBM threats posed by Iran. The assertion is that this Iranian ICBM program is moving more slowly than estimates indicated, but that short and medium range missile tests are progressing more quickly. Furthermore, the missile shield dreamt up by the former President has never been developed and has never been demonstrated to be feasible. So, President Obama is proposing a program that will more effectively defend against these short and medium range missile attacks which are considered far more imminent. The proponent suggested that the old system was a system that didn’t work going up against a threat that didn’t exist.

 The opponents of the plan think the President is giving in to Russian pressure and, in the process, leaving US interests and allies in eastern Europe vulnerable to attack.

 I tend to think that re-aligning our strategic assets to meet the needs as they exist today instead of trying to anticipate a need 15 years out with technology that has never been shown to work with any reliability is a far more pragmatic approach. And this doesn’t even begin to account for the goodwill gained from major players in the region by stopping a program that, since its inception, has been very unpopular to all involved.

 Here’s what I thought was interesting. One camp is sitting here telling us the recent changes are a big mistake for the reasons outlined above. The other camp is trying to convince us that this new plan is the only sensible option. We, the viewers and listeners, the voting public, are left in the middle trying to figure out who to believe. All the while, we have the President and his staff sitting in their offices laughing at how utterly naive we all are. They clearly have a plan, but no one outside his circle knows what it is. We’re all left to grope in the dark while he looks on from on high.

 I’m generally a left leaning person and have supported our President in most regards. I’m not suggesting that this situation is unique to Barack Obama, our current President. This little dance would be occurring no matter who was President and it happens for all issues, not just this missile shield.

 I don’t see a solution to this. Despite all the noble claims of transparency, there are just some things that the government will not allow to be public, and I’m sure the real reasons for this change are among them. Furthermore, unless we make ourselves experts on the dynamics of eastern European affairs and United States Foreign Policy, we can’t hope to figure this out for ourselves.

 So who do we trust, mainstream media? They presumably have the experts who can help sort out some of these details, but they’re so biased toward their political alignments that we’re still left trying to interpret the findings of our ‘independent’ sources.

 I don’t think there’s an easy answer.

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