Analysis of religion, embracing reality

I've been thinking a lot about religion even more than usual lately as I read Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained. I'm not very far into the book yet, but an interesting approach the author seems to be using and that I've been contemplating is to break religion down into component concepts for more useful analysis.

Off the top of my head (the book might mention some or all of these, but these are my own thoughts here, not a summary of Boyer's approach), what we commonly call religion usually incorporates some or all of the following:

• superstitions - belief in supernatural forces or beings, like god(s), angels, voodoo, ghosts, ancestor spirits, reincarnation
• culture - ritual, literature, art, music, food
• ethics - a system of morals, right/wrong, laws, punishments
• explanation of the unknown - creation myths, afterlife (heaven and hell), cosmology, medicine, hygiene
• politics - social hierarchies, governments, taxes/tithes, compromises, wars
• sexuality - gender roles, rules about sexual behavior, marriage/reproductive practices
  

A religion that doesn't incorporate most of the major items on that list wouldn't really make much sense as a "religion." There's probably a few more categories I could list, but you get the point. "Religion" is a very complicated and muddled notion that combines most or any of a number of human interests and behaviors.

Looking at the religion I'm most familiar with, modern Catholicism, that framework might look a bit like this:

• superstitions - belief in an all-knowing and all-powerful deity who hears our thoughts and words, belief in a virgin birth and resurrection of a dead man
  
• culture - large cathedrals, stained glass, hymns, Sunday gatherings, Easter and Christmas holy days, self-loathing
  
• ethics - 10 commandments, "do unto others", anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research
  
• explanation of the unknown - Creation myth as allegory, Afterlife based on earthly merits, scattered belief in miracles and haunting, otherwise fairly extensive embrace of science
  
• politics - Vatican, rankings: pope/cardinals/bishops/priests/others, lots of money and political power, abuse of authority (sex scandals)
  
• sexuality -male priests, taboo on sex outside of marriage, anti-homosexuality, encourage reproduction, discourage birth control

Anyway it isn't any big deal to suggest that breaking something down into component parts can be a useful tool for analysis. Its kind of like how the accounting concept "Net Income" can be useful in some very general kinds of financial analysis, but to really understand how that number reflects on a company's financial health you have to look at all the other items that add up to "Net Income." I almost see "religion" as totally devoid of meaning in and of itself. It is just a sum of much more meaningful parts, at least when it comes to understanding human behavior. Understanding people's religious behavior requires understanding the right combination of psychology, sociology, ethics, political behavior, and sexual biology.

But someone deeply indoctrinated in their religion could never see it that way, because for them their religion is actually their understanding of reality. They don't see their belief in a god as a superstition, a cute anthropological oddity. To them, their god is reality. He exists just as much as you or I do. There is no attempt to explain the unknown in their religion, because the Bible explains how the earth was made, so it isn't an unknown. They haven't made decisions about sexual behavior in any strategic way (to make more baby Catholics, for example), they're living the only appropriate way and anyone who does it another way is just wrong.

People operate as if reality is a subjective thing and anyone's opinion is just as valid as anyone else's. What do I mean by "valid" in that context? Well, especially in America, we've got this attitude that basically says "I can believe whatever I want and that's my right, so screw you if you disagree." And if people think that way, there's probably nothing that could change their minds. But that doesn't mean their beliefs are reflective of reality. Reality isn't subjective, even if our perceptions of it are. Religious beliefs might be valid in the sense that people have a right to their own mind, but they aren't valid as an accurate understanding of how the world really is.

An example of this whole relativist approach, and something that annoys me is when a person of faith engages an atheist in debate and makes the claim that atheism is just another religion (like in the comments here). Aside from usually being irrelevant, it just doesn't make any sense to me. What would be the Atheist religion, broken down like I just did for Catholicism?

• superstitions - none, by definition atheists don't believe in god(s)
  
• culture - there is no atheist culture, they blend into their local cultures and just avoid the religious aspects
  
• ethics - there is no set of ethics that all atheists follow, but most have a strong sense of secular ethics
  
• explanation of the unknown - most would say to use the scientific methods to solve mysteries
  
• politics - no organization, just a strong support for the separation of church and state
  
• sexuality -no unified stance, although there is a tendency towards support individual sexual freedom and rights
  

Clearly its pretty stupid to call atheism a religion since most of those categories have no real answer, and it would be easy to fill them up with Hindu or Islam or any of thousands of other religions. Atheism just isn't a religion by any reasonable understanding of the terms.

After being rebuffed, they'll usually say something like the guy in that link:

Let me make it clear, that I did not mean that atheism is a religion by definition. Call it a belief, call it whatever you like, but don't ignore the fact that every time you relate to something, it is because of your personal belief system.

According to dictionary dot com, atheism is, a "disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods". When you disbelieve something, that means you BELIEVE IN something ELSE.

YOU believe in atheism, you BELIEVE in the evidence againsts the existencence of God, how are people who believe IN God any different?

First of all there IS a difference between saying "I don't believe in God" and saying "I believe there isn't a God." Atheists don't necessarily "BELIEVE in the evidence against the existence of God," rather they don't believe there is evidence for God. It is a burden of proof issue.

Regardless, even if we ignore all that and get to his question - what makes atheists and believers different? Evidence does. Logic does. Commitment to reality makes us different. We go out in the world and figure out what is real. Believers make up a story or read something in an old book and accept it without testing it against reality.

He goes on to answer his own question in his own way:

Well I can answer my own question. They differ because their views don't agree with yours. You can't accept the idea that people believe in something else. So what does it make people like YOU then?

No matter what you believe, there is somebody out there who would be considered an "atheist" to you, a non-believer.

He's basically saying that because people will always disagree, that means all views are equally valid, which is just relativistic nonsense. In some disagreements there is a wrong side.

Some people just literally don't understand reality. They are incapable of logical thinking, either because of limited cognitive ability, or because they've been so brainwashed by decades of relativistic and anti-science propaganda that they just aren't able to see reality.

I acknowledge that it is possible that it is I who can't understand reality and I've got the limited cognitive ability. Maybe the right way to understand truth is by ignoring what I swhollyd wholy embracing dogma. But I'll never believe that. I don't even have need of the concept of "belief" because I don't really form definite conclusions. I just have tentative ideas that seem to work well in predicting what is going to happen.

It is 3:30am and I've been writing for almost 2 hours now. I'm not sure if I made a coherent point overall, but I've touched on a lot of topics that I've been wanting to address. I'd welcome intelligent feedback on any of it. By the way if you click that book link and buy it, I get 4% of the price I think, which would feed me for an hour.

Americans are ignorant fundamentalists

"Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals."




Ugh.

go

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

Beware the wrath of Cuban

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, but I love Mark Cuban. His enthusiasm might sometimes cross the line into obnoxiousness, but so would yours if you were a billionaire. Mine does and I'm barely an $11,000aire. If I gave out high honors on this blog, Mark would be the See For Yourself equivalent of a Man Beard.

My latest source of Cuban-love is a project of his, Sharesleth.com. Basically he's trying to find a way to take down corporate crooks and make money while doing it.

This post tells you what they're all about:

• "independent Web-based reporting aimed at exposing securities fraud and corporate chicanery"
• "looking for companies that were built for fraud, for executives who are enriching themselves at shareholder expense, and for businesses whose behavior runs counter to their stated objectives or to the public interest"

and best of all:

Unlike mainstream media outlets, we'’re going to have a clear bias -– against deception and corruption. We'’re going to depart from the traditional "“he said, she said" model of journalism, with its false balance and toothless objectivity. We'’re going to name names and show our evidence, by linking to documents, photographs and other information. We think that approach provides greater transparency than most newspapers, broadcast outlets and Internet news sites currently offer.

Their first investigative piece is out. Check it out for yourself, but it sure looks to me like Xethanol Corporation is a huge scam.

If you ever invest money in the stock market, you really ought to take a glance at the story. There are tons of people out there trying to rip you off (and then after you pick your broker there are tons of companies like Xethanol).

15 Zs

Slept from 8pm to 11am last night.

MAN BEARD BLOG

MAN + BEARD + BLOG = MAN BEARD BLOG


I seriously get dozens of hits every week from people searching for "beard growing" on Google. So I might as well run with it.

links adspar likes 4

Here is the 4th installment of a recurring feature, creatively titled links adspar likes. These should keep you busy with good reading material while you're bored at work, and it makes me feel productive because most of the links are educational and/or thought-provoking.


The Ten Commandments of the Ethical Atheist
from The Ethical Atheist

adspar's quick summary:
1. Thou SHALT NOT believe all thou art told.
2. Thou SHALT seek knowledge and truth constantly.
3. Thou SHALT educate thy fellow man in the Laws of Science.
4. Thou SHALT NOT forget the atrocities committed in the name of god.
5. Thou SHALT leave valuable contributions for future generations.
6. Thou SHALT live in peace with thy fellow man.
7. Thou SHALT live this one life thou hast to its fullest.
8. Thou SHALT follow a Personal Code of Ethics.
9. Thou SHALT maintain a strict separation between Church and State.
10. Thou SHALT support those who follow these commandments.

why you should read it:
People associate atheism with immorality or amorality. But I can't imagine a more respectable and moral way to live than suggested by this list. Aside from explaining this list, there's a lot of other good stuff at this site.


Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job
by Louis Uchitelle and David Leonhardt

adspar's quick summary:
Some dudes don't want to work.

why you should read it:
I guess I'm not the only one! If you ever thought maybe you'd be happier not working and just being poor, check it out.
The link requires a login, but you can use bugmenot.


Two Plus Two Internet Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8
by Mason Malmuth and David Sklansky

adspar's quick summary:
Ed Miller unexpectedly quit as editor, so Mason had to throw together an issue with a bunch of essays from him and David.

why you should read it:
Lots of good essays. I liked "Why (Some) Morons Do Better Than You" because all the morons did better than me. I suck.


The Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Smoking and Drinking
by Emily Anthes

adspar's quick summary:
Cigarettes may dull you to the effects of alcohol. Also, there is some evidence that smoking is more rewarding when you've had alcohol.

why you should read it:
Its funny to read about research that confirms what everyone who's ever been in a bar already knows.


Ramen, Pastor Boyd!
by Raindogzilla

adspar's quick summary:
The God is for Suckers blogger gives props to a evangelical reverend who said that "the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a 'Christian nation' and stop glorifying American military campaigns."

why you should read it:
Crazy religions are a whole lot more tolerable when they don't try to force their crazy beliefs on others. (Still crazy though.)


Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise
by Stacy Schiff

adspar's quick summary:
The New Yorker on Wikipedia.

why you should read it:
I'm just including this because I'm fascinated by Wikipedia. I like the anecdote about Congressmen being blocked from the site because they keep altering their own entries.


Inanity Squared
by PZ Myers

adspar's quick summary:
PZ looks up a bible passage and finds that god says that loving nature is evil and gay.

why you should read it:
PZ: "You know, I really don't need to compose arguments against religion: just quoting scripture is damning enough."


Phony Outrage and Senator Schumer
by Jason Rosenhouse

adspar's quick summary:
Jason documents how the religious right-wing is "frothing at the mouth" in response to statements made on the Senate floor by Senator Chuck Schumer.

why you should read it:
I'm shocked at how flagrantly the Catholic website Fidelis misrepresented Schumer's remarks, describing them as a "hate filled attack on religious Americans." You can read them for yourself, and if ANYONE thinks his remarks can be reasonably interpreted that way, I'd like to hear how. I don't know why I'm so surprised that these people are so willing to lie to cast their political opponents in a negative light. I guess I just expect better from the Catholic community I grew up in.



Thats all for links adspar likes 4, which is fast becoming all I do.

Today's links saved here. Preview of 5 here.

original content

I haven't felt much urge to write anything lately. I've been reading a lot online, hence all the links.

• Monday I went to the Legg Mason Tennis Classic and watched Agassi tank his match. We actually showed up without tickets only to find the event unexpectedly sold out, but Cliff Donkey used his mad tennis connections to somehow hook up 2 free passes. Deus ex machina!
  

• On the job front, I've had 3 interviews but none of them have gotten back to me, not even to say no thanks, which I find rather strange. I would think most companies would have some common courtesy. I guess it is possible that they're taking a long time to make hiring decisions. Maybe there's a typo on my resume and they've been trying to call me at the wrong number. Anyway, I'll have to step up my job search efforts, or lower my standards, because this isn't progressing at the pace I had imagined it would.

• In a couple weeks I'm seeing Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, which I'm pretty excited about.

links adspar likes 3

Here is the third installment of a recurring feature, creatively titled links adspar likes. These should keep you busy with good reading material while you're bored at work, and it makes me feel productive because most of the links are educational and/or thought-provoking.

I feel like if I was more ambitious I could form some grand thesis with all of these. Maybe someday it will turn into that. But for now I'm just linking up some cool shit for anyone who cares. On to it...


Freedom to choose won't make you happier
from Science Blog

adspar's quick summary:
Research shows that there is often no difference in how happy people are when they choose between options versus when the option is chosen for them.

why you should read it:
This is an idea I encountered recently in Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness. He actually takes it a step further and cites studies that indicate in many situations people are less happy when they have a choice than when a choice is made for them. This has important implications for the standard idea that an option is valuable by definition. Anyway, maybe next time you go out to dinner, just have someone else pick your meal for you.


How Cooperation Can Evolve in a Cheater's World
from Terradaily

adspar's quick summary:
Evolutionary biologists have developed a model that can theoretically explain how cooperation behavior can evolve.

why you should read it:
I'm not really sure that this is anything new. It reminds me a lot of the iterated prisoner's dilemma games that game theorists have played with for decades. But this study is applying it to biology instead of economics, which is useful to reference the next time I hear someone suggest that human altruism/cooperation is a challenge to the theory of evolution, which people often mistakenly see only as a "dog eat dog" kind of system. While eating your neighbor can be a good evolutionary strategy, teaming up with him can sometimes be better.



Government funding of studies you don't agree with
by Tara C. Smith

adspar's quick summary:
This is a good conversation about a general problem raised by the stem cell research debate. Should the government be conducting research that some people find objectionable?

why you should read it:
Some have made the point that people shouldn't have to see their tax dollars spend on something they find objectionable, excluding cases necessary for the maintenance of a well-ordered society (like military action). That sounds reasonable at first, until you consider that almost ALL scientific research is bound to piss off some tax-payer. How then should the government make its scientific funding decisions? Great discussion in the comments here.



Not cool: a brief rant
by Hume's Ghost

adspar's quick summary:
MTV's show My Super Sweet 16 is the most offensive show on television.

why you should read it:
I completely agree.



The Example of Fairness & Equality Being Exhibited by Representing Them at All Is, Of Course, Completely Lost of Them
from Godless Wonder

adspar's quick summary:
There is a church group that protests at military funerals. They say that God hates America because we're tolerant of homosexuality, and that death of troops is God's revenge on us. But there are laws that prevent picketing or protesting near funerals or cemeteries. The ACLU is representing this group in a lawsuit, claiming that such protest is protected free speech.

why you should read it:
First of all, those church people are scumbag bigotard assholes. I wish impotence upon them all. However I don't know what to think about the ACLU's position here. I'm generally supportive of the Voltaire (mis)quote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." But shouting hateful insults at funerals crosses some line of decency that I just can't agree deserves free speech protection. One of them had a sign that said "THANK GOD FOR 9/11." How do people become so twisted?



They make me feel like this angry German kid. Seriously, you need to watch that video, which contains insane displays of profanity.




Thus ends links adspar likes 3. All of the links for it are neatly available here. I actually had a lot more content, but I'm tired so I'll just push that all into link4.



RIP: APA

Quotes I like

I came across these quotes recently.

When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

-Stephen Jay Gould

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

-Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, 1782)

a poker thought

One of the hardest things I think that there is about playing poker successfully is being able to balance not fretting over the uncontrollable aspects of the game with also being able to succinctly and swiftly hold yourself accountable for the aspects of your game that are controllable, and being able to recognize the difference between the two.

That quote is from Mike Schneider's blog, and it really hit home for me. I think a huge factor in my poor results that last few months was that I really lost sight of what is and isn't in my control, and because of it I let my emotions get the best of me way too much. Even once I realized that on some level, I felt unable to fix it when I played. I'm hoping that taking a long break from the game will give me a chance to "clean out" the bad habits that developed and rebuild my game almost from scratch, instead of just picking up where I left off.

links adspar likes 2

Here is another installment of a recurring feature, creatively titled links adspar likes. These should keep you busy with good reading material while you're bored at work, and it makes me feel productive because most of the links are educational and/or thought-provoking.


Finch Beaks Change Size, Evolutionists Ejaculate Spontaneously, "“Darwin Definitively Proven Right"”
by Emperor Darth Misha I

adspar's quick summary:
A highly-opinionated religious conservative blogger makes fun of evolution, generating hundreds of comments, many of which are among the more ignorant writing samples I've ever encountered.

why you should read it:
The original blog post is pretty damn stupid, but the comments are truly astonishing. It really seems like a gag where each commenter tries to say something stupider than the last. But what is sad and scary is that these people are completely serious. Somewhere in the mid-100s some people start defending evolution seriously, and the responses to them are truly amazing too. Basically this post has pissed me off for weeks now, so I'm sharing it with you. These are the people who vote in America.


IOKIYAC
by PZ Myers

adspar's quick summary:
A highly-opinionated godless liberal blogger discusses the role of atheism in the ongoing investigation of Pat Tillman's death. I have no idea what the letters in the title mean.

why you should read it:
Well PZ is pretty fired up about anti-atheist bigotry here, but I'm not quite sure I'd take it as far as he does. You can read the original story from ESPN to decide for yourself. I do agree that the officer sounds like he has no clue how to deal with someone who isn't a Christian. I've just always been touched by the Tillman story, and I think this was a guy who deserves to be remembered and celebrated as a true hero. And his death certainly deserves an investigator whose squeamishness about Tillman's atheism isn't so pathetically obvious.


Am I partisan? When I'’m forced to be.
by the BABlogger

adspar's quick summary:
An astronomer reluctantly embraces anti-Republican partisanship when faced with that party's seeming determination to destroy science.

why you should read it:
He shows that the South Dakota Republican party explicitly endorses creationism. The comments point out that the Texas Republican Party explicitly advocates teaching Intelligent Design as science (page 20) in schools. Are you kidding me? How can this be real? What the hell happened to our country?


"Snakes" Deplanes Critics
by Joal Ryan

adspar's quick summary:
New Line Cinema has decided not to host advance screenings of its new movie, "Snakes on a Plane," effectively keeping critics away from it.

why you should read it:
After all the rest of the heavy stuff in these links you need something light, and there is nothing lighter than a plane full of snakes. Brilliant!



The tortured "logic" of the House GOP
by Hume's Ghost

adspar's quick summary:
Discussing a bill in the House regarding the "under God" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance, the blogger shows the terrible reasoning skills of some of our elected (Republican) leaders, not to mention their fundamental lack of respect fseparationion of church and state.

why you should read it:

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., said America was a nation of God-given inalienable rights and that's why the country is in a war against "radical Islamists." Democrats wouldn't want to "cut and run" in Iraq, he said, "if they understood the importance of those basic principles and that inalienable rights are impossible without a recognition of God and that's why the pledge bill is important and not irrelevant or trivial."

Unfuckingbelievable. Apparently American values don't work without magical invisibdeitiesies, and anyone who disagrees is a terrorist. UUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGH.


Question Skepticism
by Joseph j7uy5

adspar's quick summary:
A science blogger weighs in on church/state, specifically about the idea that we're a Christian nation because our founders were Christian. He also urges us not to over-simplify ideas into our impression of what someone's political agenda might be: "In the interest of clear thinking, let's keep the issues separate from the ideologies."

why you should read it:
I often hear political debates about issues of morality include something like "America is founded on Judeo-Christian values." I guess there is some truth to that. I'm no historical scholar. But I also thought that our founders were heavily influenced by the age of enlightenment, valuing reason and liberty. To go as far as to claim that "America is a Christian nation" because our founders were Christians is ridiculous. Was evolution a Christian theory because of Darwin's religious beliefs? Hilter was a Christian, does that make the Holocaust a Christian genocide? Religions have some good values, but our founders seems to have made their intentions about which values were appropriate for government pretty clear when they intentionalseparatedted church and state. So to make government decisions based on a majority population's religious values seems like a violation of our founders' intentions. Those are my thoughts anyway. This guy has some good ones too.


Free Speech or Fraud?
by The Two Percent Company

adspar's quick summary:
An interesting angle on an abortion issue. The argument is that evangelical groups that run abortion alternatives centers are committing fraud when they often advertise their centers as providing "abortion services."

why you should read it:
I just thought the argument, that free speech protection shouldn't extend into this kind of situation, was interesting.




Thus ends the second edition of links adspar likes. All of the links for it are neatly available here. I'll end with this YouTube clip that kind of ties everything together for you.




movie link

If you want a preview of my next edition, here's what I've gathered so far.

Later.

inevitable

I just cashed all the money out of my online poker accounts. I need a long break from poker.

I also need a job.

In honor of this moment, here's a picture that might express the exact opposite of my current emotional state:

links adspar likes 1

Reaction to my new template was lukewarm at best, so that change won't be happening any time soon. But since I want something new, I'm hereby starting a recurring feature, creatively titled links adspar likes. These should keep you busy with good reading material while you're bored at work, and it makes me feel productive because most of the links are educational and/or thought-provoking.



The Political Brain
by Michael Shermer

adspar's quick summary:
An Emory University study using MRI brain scans shows that people with strong political leanings automatically turn off the parts of their brains used for reasoning when they take in political information. Basically, we have built-in mechanisms that make us really really biased. Luckily, the scientific method has devised ways to help correct these biases.

why you should read it:
I'm pretty sure I've referenced this study before, but it is worth another mention. The unreason exposed by this study is a big part of the reason why everything about politics is so fucked up. Learn how to recognize and overcome your own biases.


Restoring Nature's Backbone
by Henry Nicholls

adspar's quick summary:
This Public Library of Science journal article explores the idea of large-scale "rewilding," suggesting that rather than simply attempting to preserve existing wildlife, that we attempt to restore "whole ecologies to something of their former glory." An example mentioned is seeding North America with elephants to replace extinct species of mammoths.

why you should read it:
We all know that we've been ravaging our environment with car exhaust and deforestation and greenhouse gases and whatnot, but maybe killing every large mammal in our path for the last 30,000 years has caused some problems too. I had never really thought about that, and had never heard of the idea of using close substitute species to replace the destroyed ones. The ecological argument and information in the article is fascinating.


The End of Marriage
by oneman on the Savage Minds blog

adspar's quick summary:
An anthropologist says that "...if the institution of marriage is going to survive, it does need defending. Not because marriage is the only or best source of truly moral living, but precisely the opposite: marriage is increasingly irrelevant in modern society."

why you should read it:
Traditions can be nice, but we need to know when to let go. If you've ever thought that marriage is a goofy idea, read this.


Rockstars' Ramblings
specifically the Doggerel Index

adspar's quick summary:
The Doggerel series is where the author of this blog "rambles on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless."

why you should read it:
This blog is fun and right-on-the-money.



The fraud of primitive authenticity
by Spengler

adspar's quick summary:
This sprawling commentary in the Asia Times Online is presumably inspired by Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn. Spengler wonders why it is that popular culture typically portrays primitive people as "peace-loving folk living in harmony with nature" and not the nasty, violent savages they really were. He concludes that as Americans move beyond Christianity, we're left without inspiration, so we'll take whatever we can get.

why you should read it:
The 2nd to last paragraph ends with one of the most incisive comments I've ever read. I truly felt shocked when I read it. You need to read the rest of the article to understand the quote properly, so I don't want to post it here yet. (Now I've built it up too much and you'll be disappointed. Sorry.) There's also a criticism of Jared Diamond that I don't really agree with, but I'll admit that could be my politically biased brain at work. Maybe I'll write more about that later.


Making Money in Basketball...
by Mark Cuban

adspar's quick summary:
Mark thinks that minor-league basketball teams should be signing high school kids and build around a business model of developing basketball players in a way that AAU, high school, and NCAA basketball can't do.

why you should read it:
A self-made billionaire freely sharing his business thoughts is a pretty sweet deal. Interesting especially for fans of basketball on any level.


That's all for the first formal edition of links adspar likes. In case you care, I've taken to using del.icio.us to organize my links, so you can find all the stuff for this under my link1 tag. Links I gather for the 2nd edition of links adspar likes will be under link2, etc.

New look?

I've been working on a new template for this blog. Messing with HTML is fun.

Here's how it would look.

Thoughts?

Why hasn't this story had more media attention?

When I put together my 9000 awesome words, I included a map of America, but I felt weird about it. My enthusiasm is more about the abstract idea of America than its current manifestation.

Nothing better illustrates my conflicting feelings about America than the story of Chester Smalkowski.

My synopsis:

His daughter refused to join her school basketball team in prayer, so they kicked her off the squad. After finding out that she refused because she is an atheist like her father, school officials made up lies about her to justify her removal from the team. Upset at about the events, Mr. Smalkowski went to speak to the school principal. The principal physically attacked Mr. Smalkowski, and then filed misdemeanor assault charges against him. He offered to remove the charges if they moved their family out of the state (Oklahoma), and when Smalkowski refused, he added felony assault to the charges. A string of defense lawyers refused to use atheism as part of the defense strategy, but finally the American Atheists got involved and found him a lawyer who was willing to talk about atheism in the heart of the Bible Belt. Eventually a jury found Smalkowski not-guilty.

Smalkowski's account of the ordeal is a must-read: Just Another Salem.

On the one hand you have a community full of people who blindly attack (physically, verbally, emotionally) anyone who challenges their beliefs. But on the other hand, the courts finally did the right thing in the criminal proceeding, and hopefully will in civil as well. I'm fairly surprised that they were able to find a jury of 12 people who were willing to consider the facts of the case without prejudice.

I love the idea of government by consent of the people, a government that serves to protect its citizens' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is inspiring to imagine a bunch of farmers banding together to overthrow a deeply entrenched and oppressive regime and form their own nation, adopting Enlightenment ideals. I also love the protection of freedom of speech and the separation of church and state.

But I don't see the USA as a country committed to any of those ideas any more. America is a mass of people with little respect for anything but their (mostly religious) belief systems. A teacher told Smalkowski's daughter "This is a Christian country and if you don't like it get out!" It seems to me that more American's would agree with that teacher than would agree with our Founding Father's ideals.

get it?

alas

the smart guys think i'm wrong

I had this exact same thought about AI

From the SportsGuy's NBA trade value column:

By the way, I've been watching the World Cup for four weeks trying to decide which NBA players could have been dominant soccer players, eventually coming to three conclusions. First, Allen Iverson would have been the greatest soccer player ever -- better than Pele, better than Ronaldo, better than everyone. I think this is indisputable, actually. Second, it's a shame that someone like Chris Andersen couldn't have been pushed toward soccer, because he would have been absolutely unstoppable soaring above the middle of the pack on corner kicks. And third, can you imagine anyone being a better goalie than Shawn Marion? It would be like having a 6-foot-9 human octopus in the net. How could anyone score on him? He'd have every inch of the goal covered. Just as a sports experiment, couldn't we have someone teach Marion the rudimentary aspects of playing goal, then throw him in a couple of MLS games? Like you would turn the channel if this happened?

Tommy Angelo

Just about everything Tommy Angelo posts on 2+2 is pure gold. He writes as if he has a secret that nobody knows. Here's his latest:

Artichoke Joe's NLHE. Folding is extra easy in this game for me because it is so much fun to watch.

The cast:

Player A, a regular who exerts Olympian discipline when he is ahead, sitting for hours without changing mood or stack size. If he takes a big beat that sets off his sense of injustice, he routinely flairs up his chips at the next reasonable opportunity. All regulars know that he does this.

Player B, not a regular. He is a poker player who rarely frowns and who enjoys full gambling pleasure as he routinely and enthusiastically accepts long odds allin headsup as bettor/raiser or caller.

Player C, a regular who doesn't do very well in this story.

Player C took a break. When Player C left the table, Player A was into the game for $2,000 and he had $3,000 on the table, and player B was into the game for $6,000 and he had $3,000 on the table. Player B had given indications of quitting soon, but Player A had not seen them. Player B was playing tight, but wound tight. He was ready to accept his current status of -$3,000 as his final tally for the day, but he was also ready to get even, or even stucker.

While Player C was gone, Players A and B played an allin pot. The money went in on the turn, when Player A had the best hand. Player B had five outs and he got there on the river. So now Player A had no money on the table and no faith in justice. Player B had $6,000 on the table and he was looking around for empty racks. Player A, pissed, bought $6,000 in chips. (Cash does not play.) Two hands later, Player C quit. Player A was exploding inside. He folded the next couple hands and I watched his bits fall back to earth and collect themselves. By the time Player C came back to the table, Player A looked fine at first glance, sitting behind his 6K stack, arranged in his usual way. But he was still plenty scattered inside.

Player C sat down and he saw that Player B was gone, and the usual question came to his mind which is, What happened? Did Player B leave with chips? The answer can usually be found without asking, by looking at stack sizes, and listening to the occasional after-murmurs that take place anytime anyone quits. This time there were no murmurs for him to go on, but he didn't need any. Because Player A’s stack had gone from $3000 to $6,000, Player C drew the obvious yet wrong conclusion that Player A had busted Player B, when actually it was the other way around. The next obvious yet wrong conclusion that Player C drew was that Player A would be locked down extra tight, when actually Player A was likely to head into one his little furies if the cards gave him a nudge.

Player C was into the game for $5,000 and he had $5,000 on the table. He took the big blind and he got pocket twos. One player limped UTG for $20. All the others folded to Player A on the button. Player A made it $200. To Player C, this meant Player A had a big pair. Not ace-king, not a medium or small pair, and not suited connectors. It isn’t merely decent poker for Player C to put Player A on a big pair here and not budge from that read. It would be impossible poker for him to do otherwise. It would be like you going all-in UTG on the first hand of the WSOP, and everyone at the table thinking to themselves, yeah, he must have 7-2 offsuit. That’s how wrong it would be for Player C to put Player A on anything but a big pair here, not because of this raise he made on this hand, but because of a dozen years of other raises just like it, never without a big pair, except maybe just maybe during one of his little tilt spasms, which this obviously wasn’t one.

Player C called the preflop raise, and the limper folded.

The flop came 3-4-5 rainbow.

Player C checked and Player A bet $300. Player C called.

The turn was an ace.

Player C checked and player A bet $500. Player C made it $1000. Player A moved allin, a raise of $3000 more. Player C called instantly and turned over his low straight, expecting Player A to show pocket aces. Player C might have even been thinking that he had tilt odds on this hand all the way from before the flop, that if he could crack Player A real good on a hand, that Player A might steam off some chips in the afterbath. Just one problem. Player A’s tilt was not starting. It was ending. He rolled 67 for the unbeatable untieable.


Tommy

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

We've got the potential to make a little magic here. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Just sit back and relax and see where the night takes us.

I'm fascinated with Wikipedia. Completely fascinated. People just built this whole thing in some weird collaborative effort. Anyone can jump in and edit something, and nobody knows who has done that to anything they've read. But everyone uses it, except maybe this guy who is scared of it. He's got some good points. I don't know what to believe. I think my fascination with Wikipedia is because it combines free information and voyeurism and free-association.

Anyway, after cruising through the Wikipedia article about Mitch Hedberg, I decided to check out Fight Club (the movie not the novel). Some things that struck me:

• I had no idea that it wasn't a huge blockbuster. The article says it opened hot, but then it didn't do very well in the theatres, but eventually did pretty well on DVD.
  
• I didn't know, but I'm not surprised that it received wildly mixed reviews from critics. The comment that interested me the most is that some critic compared it favorably to American Beauty, which was the other movie that year that really "moved" me (and I still call my favorite movie). I loved both of those movies and remember vividly feeling like they reached me in opposite ways. I was in my freshman or sophomore year of college, but I must have been home on some break because I remember coming home to my parents' house after seeing Fight Club. I was so full of ideas that I couldn't sleep, and foreshadowing my blogging efforts, I wrote this long letter by hand on notebook paper ostensibly to my college girlfriend but it probably was really just throwing down all my thoughts. I don't remember what I wrote except to compare and contrast Fight Club with American Beauty. Yeah, whatever.
• "In the scene where Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are seemingly drunk and striking balls into neighboring factories, the two actually are drunk and hitting balls at catering trucks." Quite a life these actors have.

High Stakes Poker on GSN is by far the greatest poker TV program ever. If you've ever watched any poker and thought it was good television, you need to tivo this shit immediately. Tournament poker is just a bunch of donkey amateurs occasionally tangling with pros. This show is a table full of the best in the world going to war against each other. Fascinating shit. Maybe more fascinating that its wikipedia entry. All players are paid $1250/hr by the producers to sit and play with their own money (minimum buy in is $100,000).

Why does everything have to flow evenly? She don't know, so she chases them away.

Just when I'm about to give up hope... regardless of how you feel about my atheism, this is some interesting shit:

"Attorneys and jurors in the Smalkowski case did a remarkable thing,"” added Kagin. "They checked their opinions about religion at the front door of the court house and looked only at the evidence."”

Good stuff. On that subject, dead pope JP2 told scientists not to study the origin of the universe. Luckily, those that defy him probably won't be burned alive.

Fine. That's it. I can't live up to the hype tonight. Butter.

Mitch

When you go to a restaurant on the weekends and it's busy they start a waiting list. They start calling out names, they say "Dufrene, party of two. Dufrene, party of two." And if no one answers they'll say their name again. "Dufrene, party of two, Dufrene, party of two." But then if no one answers they'll just go right on to the next name. "Bush, party of three." Yeah, but what happened to the Dufrenes? No one seems to give a shit. Who can eat at a time like this - people are missing. You fuckers are selfish... the Dufrenes are in someone's trunk right now, with duct tape over their mouths. And they're hungry! That's a double whammy. We need help. Bush, search party of three! You can eat when you find the Dufrenes.

RIP Hedberg

Faith is bad

Inspired in part by reading the first half of Sam Harris's The End of Faith, here are some more thoughts about religious faith.

1. Backwards

In almost any area of human discourse that concerns itself with attempting to understand reality, our society accepts that using logic and evidence is the preferred way to form conclusions upon which to base our actions.

• If a scientist were to offer an illogical theory with insufficient supporting evidence, that theory would be rejected by the scientific community.
• If a businessman invests in a project that makes no sense and has no research to suggest it would be profitable, he's being irresponsible with time and money. He might be fired by his boss, or sued by his shareholders.
• If our legal system were to convict a woman of a crime without any evidence against her, we'd condemn the court's actions as a travesty of justice.
• If a doctor urged an untested course of treatment for a diseased patient without presenting an available and highly successful conventional treatment method, he'd be guilty of medical malpractice.
• If a newspaper regularly published stories without any facts to back them up because the writers just felt that they were the truth, that paper would be ridiculed for its lack of journalistic integrity and would end up on the tabloid rack if it even managed to stay in business.

And yet somehow religion manages to completely evade this standard that works so well in science, business, law, medicine, and journalism. Not only does a vast majority of our population accept illogical religious claims without a shred of evidence, their unfounded belief is exalted as a virtue called "faith."

This backwardness never ceases to astonish me.

---

2. Grouping

With that idea in mind I'd group people of faith into these categories -

1. The (Functionally) Insane Fundamentalists - those that absolutely refuse to consider the merits of any idea that contradicts their religious beliefs in any way. These people simply have closed their minds to reason entirely, and live their lives on blind faith. Not only do they shun basic values that most of the free world has embraced, they often endorse the use of violence to advance their Insane Fundamentalist beliefs. In fact, many of them believe that being killed while fighting for their beliefs will win them eternal rewards in their afterlife. Harris argues convincingly that such people being armed with weapons of mass destruction pose a grave threat to the entire world.
   
2. The Misguided - those that generally appreciate the value of empiricism but don't see how faith runs contrary to that way of thinking. Basically they don't know how to properly evaluate evidence and apply logic, and consequently they're easily duped by junk like Intelligent Design that is couched in the language of science but without any genuine scientific content. They also tend to invoke Pascal's Wager.
   
3. The Inconsistents - those that generally appreciate the value of empiricism but think of it as just one way of seeing the world, but not necessarily the best or most effective. They realize that their faith isn't rational, but they think of that irrationality as part of a reasonable overall worldview. You hear them say things like "the methods of science do not apply to matters of faith," but usually only after someone has pointed out the failing in their attempts to defend faith with reason. For them, it seems like reason is the #1 way to explain something, but you can fall back on faith as #2 if reason fails. So they basically pick what they want to believe, regardless of evidence, and if they can then find evidence to support it, they use it. But if they can't find evidence, they invoke faith . The Inconsistents cling to the "god of the gaps," claiming that any area that science hasn't (yet) reached is the domain of faith. Is that the best way to decide which ideas are best viewed through the lens of science and which are to use faith? If science makes an advancement into those gaps, doesn't that show that science was the best way to look at those ideas all along?

None of that should suggest that believers are necessarily unintelligent. All 3 of those groups can and do contain smart people. Insane Fundamentalists simply refuse to apply their intelligence to be critical of themselves, but I don't think anyone would doubt that Osama must be a pretty smart guy to have organized his terrorist network. The Misguided often just haven't been trained in logic or the methods of science, which can be counter-intuitive even to a very intelligent person. And The Inconsistent are often very intelligent and college educated, but they combine a lack of self-critical thought and incomplete understanding of science. They actually tend to use their education to create more elaborate (but still illogical) arguments to support their beliefs, and are more adept at picking out (often legitimate) problems with the arguments of their opposition.

---

3. Hidden Threat

Obviously a well-armed and martyr-minded Insane Fundamentalist poses a threat to anyone within his blast radius. The Misguided and The Inconsistent seem harmless by comparison. But Harris shows an indirect but powerful way that these groups are dangerous as well.

Consider what would happen if you were to tell everyone you know that Zeus has chosen you for a divine quest to defeat the forces of Poseidon. After the first few dozen people look at you funny and slowly back away, you might start to feel insane. Maybe you'd even question your belief in the divine quest.

But if you did that in Rome 3000 years ago you might be able to recruit a whole anti-Poseidon team. Most people are strongly influenced by those around them. Its hard to stand up and say something that nobody around you will support, and it is easy to get swept up into something that everyone else supports.

If you truly accept that martyrs and their families hold a higher place in the eternal afterlife, you'd want to strap a bomb to your chest and get on the nearest bus. You'd be crazy not to blow yourself up. But if nobody else believed it, maybe you'd think twice before taking your own life along with the rest of the bus.

By making it seems normal for people to accept irrational religious claims without supporting evidence, Misguideds and Inconsistents contribute to the warped views of the Functionally Insane Fundamentalists. I call them "functionally" insane because unless their brains are literally damaged in some way, they might start to question the insanity of their beliefs if they were the only group in the world that embraced irrational faith.

In this way, the liberal philosophy of tolerance and respect for religious beliefs is dangerous.

---

4. How to Fight Back?

A common trait that I mentioned about both the Misguided and the Inconsistent is a poor understanding of logic and science. Combine that with the hidden threat of more benign faith, and that's why I think it is so important to improve the quality of our science education. The conflict between science and religious faith is pretty obvious though, as I mentioned recently, and religious people fight pretty hard against science education (evolution vs ID being a popular battleground of that fight).

A specific area of education I'd like to see improved is teaching people about how their own minds work. People should be educated about our brains' built-in cognitive biases, the distortions in the way our minds perceive reality. We should teach people about the logical fallacies we're all prone to committing.

Most students wouldn't be introduced to those topics until college-level courses in psychology and logic. I think they should be built into curriculum as early as possible. If we expose people to the idea that their minds don't always work as well as we'd like, and if we teach them to identify ways to compensate, we'd start closing the cognitive and logical loopholes that the bad ideas of faith tend to exploit.

here I go getting pissed off again

There's an excellent post on a blog I read regularly about the conflict between science and religion. There are lots of comments about the post, and those conversations are fairly standard for this topic, although a bit more civil than others I've seen. I want to highlight a couple comments.

Someone pointed out this article, which mentions that

A Christian pro-family advocate is linking youth violence to a godless, Darwinist worldview. Focus on the Family vice president Bill Maier says atheistic beliefs have led to an alarming increase in youth violence. Young people are more aggressive than ever, he asserts, with many participating in fight clubs and posting violent videos on the Internet. But that is what you get from Darwinist evolution, the Focus on the Family official contends. "If we have a prevailing worldview that teaches that, basically, human beings evolved from the slime and we have no intrinsic worth or value or meaning," he explains, "then naturally we are going to see individuals begin to gravitate toward behavior such as this."

In response specifically to the italicized section (my italics), someone made a great comment:

I agree with this statement completely, and this illustrates my point about science and religion being incompatible ways of being human.

If you teach kids that there is no value in being human unless you are a faithful servant of an ancient Near-Eastern war god, then when those kids learn that the god is a myth, they're going to lose the basis for their belief in the value of the human being.

If you teach kids that moral codes only have value if they are backed by the authority of the Great Cosmic Fairy-King, then when the kids realize there is no Fairy-King, they will question the value of morality.

But if you drop all that nonsense and teach kids to just pay attention to others and develop a healthy sense of empathy and a deep personal appreciation for the intrinsic value of justice and fairness in a world of interdependent people, then the Fairy-King becomes irrelevant and their sense of dignity, morality and fairness are not built on unreliable mythic vapors.

The problem is that religion keeps telling kids that the Fairy-King is essential to their worth and their goodness, and that they are essentially shitty creatures without the saving grace of the Fairy-King, and science keeps telling them the Fairy-King doesn't exist. Put those two things together and you've got a problem raising kids to be healthy, responsible, moral adults.

It's obvious that many religious people cannot conceive of morality outside of religion. And since their religious beliefs are nonsense, and they are inevitably going to be confronted with that miserable reality on a daily basis, the moral foundations of our society are weak and unreliable.

He's so right it hurts.

Our Leaders

"Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills."

– Tom DeLay, on causes of the Columbine High School massacre, 1999

Lest anyone forget how much I hate Comcast...

Poker: now what?

The job search is progressing more slowly than I imagined it would, but it has been ramping up a bit lately, and I have an interview coming up soon.

Its been about a month since I decided that its time to figure out some way other than poker to make a living. Since then I've barely played at all (just 2.5 hours in June at low limits, winning $100). I've been living off my savings and some advertising revenue from my blogs. Having taken some time away from poker, I'm starting to think that maybe getting back in the game would be good for me.

Specifically, playing with my original poker goals when I quit my last job - to make a little bit of money playing a limited schedule to help pay the bills until I figure out something else. Last time I lost sight of that plan, but that won't happen now. I've spent a lot of this last month trying to figure out my priorities, and I'm making progress. Reclaiming some poker income would give me some freedom to be selective about job opportunities, which would be a good thing as long as I can keep the negatives of poker income away.

All of that assumes that I'm capable of playing winning poker, which isn't necessarily a fair assumption. I was really freefalling. If I do come back, I'm going to start slow and small. Fewer tables, lower limits until I'm very very comfortable. Almost like I'm rebuilding my game. I'd want to turn off the auto-pilot and start thinking about poker again. Maybe turn off my real-time stats for a bit. Close the office door, turn off the music and focus for short bursts of intense concentration.

zion****m

Every once in a while this person IMs me. I have no idea who it is, and the messages are always weird. He seems truly to have embraced the spirit of the IM name I created for this blog: stalk adspar.

7/1/06 Fair enough.

zion****m: Would you like to hear about my recent confrontation with Scientologists?
zion****m: whoa!
zion****m: you're adding everything i say to you to your blog!
zion****m: i just noticed that!
zion****m: MAJOR UPDATE
zion****m: lol
zion****m: i'd sort of appreciate it if you'd remove my aim name.
zion****m: but it's really no big deal.


6/26/06 Location revealed as frequency increases

zion****m: whoa!
zion****m: italy won some soccer game, so the italians in toronto are out in force with their flags and honking and junk!
zion****m: i responded by waving a quebec flag and shouting slogans of quebec liberation and nationalism!
zion****m: some people got pissed off at me, but at least one girl smiled at me!

6/25/06 MAJOR UPDATE!

zion****m: whoa!
zion****m: just now, i was at the ymca sitting on a bench waiting, when a pretty girl walked by and so of course i SCOPED HER OUT like the perv i am.
zion****m: but then i noticed the two people walking behind her were her PARENTS.
zion****m: and, uh, not only that, but my NEIGHBOURS.
zion****m: oops!
zion****m: oh well!
zion****m: my neighbours never liked me anyway.
stalk adspar: WHO ARE YOU
zion****m: SOME WEIRDO FROM THE INTERNET
zion****m: I NOTICED YOU WERE INTERESTED IN POKER AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND ESPECIALLY PINKER
zion****m: i think in that blank slate book, pinker does a tremendous disservice to his colleauges in the humanities, especially michel foucault, who we claims doesn't believe in reality.
stalk adspar: its been a while since i read it
zion****m: yeah.

i've heard tell from people with more scientific knowledge than myself that the book, combined with the pricey speaking tour mr. pinker went on to tout its release, make it look like the book was less a scientific work than it was an attempt to bring in $.

but i REALLY like some of his earlier books, especially the ones that focus on language and the 'how the mind works' or whatever one.
zion****m: ANYWAY.
zion****m: You should start a tattoo parlour to take advantage of the influx of returning soldiers who will no doubt be jaded and want a momento of some sort to commemorate their experience.


6/14/06

zion****m: If I know where there's a license plate that says 'COATSE', which is almost like 'GOATSE', except first segment -VOICE, should I go take a picture of it?
zion****m: If it's like five minutes away?


5/23/06

zion****m: Is it wrong to forge articles on Wikipedia?


5/7/06

zion****m: i'm going to shoot a film where it's on a ship and the sound and video start out in sync, and gradually drift into sync, upon completion of which event the ship itself sinks.
zion****m: you're welcome to act in it, as long as you can pretend to be swayed back and forth without really being swayed back and forth.
zion****m: unfortunetly, the only compensation i could provide is my hospitality.

Proud to be non-human

Excellent post from PZ Meyers at Pharyngula about science and religion: I'm proud to be non-human.

An excerpt:

Listen, world. Dawkins and Dennett and Tyndall aren't arrogant: they're right. There is a difference. That's a real problem for scientists, that they keep saying unpleasant things like "the planet is getting hotter" and "smoking cigarettes can kill you" and "unprotected sex can spread some very serious diseases" and then they back it up with statistics and measurements and scary photos of tumor-riddled lungs, and ruin everyone's fun. Similarly, when Dawkins points out that religion is fueling terrorism and encouraging people to compromise our kids' educations, he's stating the obvious truthÂ…obvious to everyone who isn't blinkered by the false promotion of religion as a virtue. That's being right.

I'm not so sure though that being right precludes arrogance. Dawkins definitely can come across as arrogant, which PZ basically concedes. Watch Dawkins on The Root of All Evil and make up your own mind. Regardless of how right he is, anyone arguing against a deeply-held belief is going to have to jump through ridiculous hoops of diplomacy to avoid appearing arrogant, and I can't say I blame Dawkins for not wanting to do that.

Anyway here's a great quote (very thoroughly cited) I noticed on that same site:

What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful though, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.

- Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery" (1944) in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), pp. 239-40.

Adspar's Rebuttal to Adspar's Guide to Beard Growing

[Like beards? Visit Man Beard Blog today!]

I once told Robert F. Kennedy that only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. It is in that spirit that I write today, and I dedicate this blog entry to the eternal memory of my great wisdom. You see, it takes a great man to tell someone how wrong they are, but it takes a perfect man to admit to his own imperfections. So as the greatest of all perfect men, I shall defy paradox in this charitable effort to enlighten you the reader.

You might recall that last fall I published Adspar's Guide to Beard Growing. It contained what I thought at the time was valuable information about cultivating facial hair and beating women. I truly believed in the righteousness of beards and the worthlessness of females, and all of my words and deeds flowed from those deeply-held beliefs. I held them deep within my soul; they nourished me.

Yet here I am today, publishing Adspar's Rebuttal to Adspar's Guide to Beard Growing. If you're wondering why the change of heart, either you haven't seen The DaVinci Code or you're an ignorant fool who doesn't understand the central message of the movie. But that's ok. I'm here to help you.

In the movie, Tom Hanks teaches us that the Catholic Church has sponsored a huge conspiracy to hide the fact that Jesus was married to a prostitute and that his whore-wife, Mary Magdalene, is really the one we should all be worshipping.

It is shocking information that will shake things up across the whole world, but we know it is true because Tom Hanks is a Harvard professor of seismology so he knows what will shake the earth. And if that isn't enough proof, Gandalf showed us how the leader of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles painted a picture when he was at dinner with Jesus one time, and if you look at his painting you can see how Mary Magdalene was there being a whore right in front of Jesus. And if that isn't enough, the space between Jesus and his wife makes a letter V, which stands for Vagina.



Watching this movie, I began to realize that something was wrong with my life. I had been hating women because they were such whores. But if the True Savior was really a prostitute, that would have to mean that women aren't such a bunch of worthless bitches after all. And so Tom Hanks taught me to embrace the sacred feminine and the Holy Grail of her Vagina.

But if women were to be admired rather than despised, that clearly meant that beards had to be despised rather than admired. Suddenly everything was so clear to me. Revisiting my list of bearded heros, I saw that nothing good ever came from wearing a beard.

Famous Beards:

1. PJ Carlisimo - This guy is best known for being choked by a player on his team. Maybe if he learned how to use a razor Latrell would have had more respect for him.
   
2. ZZ Top - I can't even name one song they sing. I think maybe they sing that one song that goes "but now I might be mistaken, a ha ha ha ha!" but I'm not sure. If it was them, I guess that is a bit cool, but still, you can't understand another word in that song. They could probably enunciate more clearly if they hacked the disgusting masses of hair off their faces.
   
3. Sigmund Freud - The guy literally called everyone in the whole world a mother-fucker. Get a razor, a-hole.
   
4. Blackbeard - This guy was an evil, thieving, drunken pirate whose beard was crucial to his identity. His reign of terror didn't even last 3 years before he was beheaded by Robert Maynard.
   
5. Ricky Williams - He keeps getting suspended from NFL for drug use. And now he is so deeply in debt that he had to get a job in Canada. Pathetic.
   
6. Abe Lincoln - He tried to a good deed by freeing the slaves, but in the end his beard caught up to him, as he assassinated while watching some crappy play.
   
7. Zeus - He used to have a lot of bearded power, but he was debunked by Jesus.
   
8. Jesus - He used to have a lot of power, but he was debunked by Tom Hanks. His famous beard was such good padding that his "turn the other cheek" advice made some sense for him. But then he took that message to far as he let the Romans torture and execute him. If he had shaved his beard sooner, he might have realized that getting slapped across the face hurts. Then he would have called his father to totally beat down the Romans and his wife wouldn't have been suppressed by the Catholics.
   

We can all see a clear trend. Beards lead to substance abuse and often-lethal violence.

Tom Hanks' message was foreshadowed by Will Ferrell when the darkest days of Ron Burgandy's life were marked by the presence of a bushy beard. When the Anchorman wanted to get his life back on track, he knew that the beard had to go. Milk was a bad choice because milk comes from the sacred feminine, which naturally clashes with any brambling beard.

Yet still the milk nourished him, just as my hatred of women had nourished me. This subtle twist of irony brings me back to where I started: admitting that I was wrong to endorse the growing of beards and the hating of women.

Thanks to The DaVinci Code, my life is back on track:

• I now see that God loves Tom Hanks, women, and smooth-faced asian men.
• I believe that clean-shaven men are to be commended for their decision to embrace beardlessness.
• I know that Jesus was a phoney, and that his beard led to 2,000 years of lies.
• I understand that the only good beards belong to clams because the V is in and the cross is out.
• I've atoned for my sins by promoting these truths.
  

Park Ranger Blog Entry

I'm looking for a job. Here's what one site says I'm suited for. Poker isn't on this list, although somewhere I saw an essay saying that INTPs are perfectly suited for online poker.

Possible Career Paths for the INTP:

• Scientists - especially Physics, Chemistry
• Photographers
• Strategic Planners
• Mathematicians
• University Professors
• Computer Programmers, Systems Analysts, Computer Animation and Computer Specialists
• Technical Writers
• Engineers
• Lawyers / Attorneys
• Judges
• Forensic Research
• Forestry and Park Rangers

I finally got around to ordering The End of Faith. Here's an interview with the author, Sam Harris.

An excerpt:

Amazon.com: In what sense is your book a kind of "prayer"? Do you think ultimately that humans will be able to avoid the apocalypse that you argue is the greatest threat of religious faith?

Harris: I am not as optimistic as I'd like to be. It is an interesting state to be in, psychologically speaking, because I feel very motivated to make the case against religion, but I don't see any real basis for hope that anything will change for the better. It seems very likely that we have spent too long in the company of bad ideas to now arrest our slide toward the brink. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I would not be surprised if the human experiment runs radically off the rails in our lifetime. The people who have their hands upon the tiller of civilization are just not thinking, speaking, or allocating resources in the ways they must if we are to avoid catastrophe. The fact that we elect presidents who waste time on things like gay marriage, when the nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union lie unsecured (to cite only one immediate threat to our survival), is emblematic of how disastrously off course we are (it is also emblematic of the role faith plays in forcing us off course). So I am not hopeful. But still, each of us has to try to contribute positively to the world as we find it. What alternative is there?

Good links of the day

Poker: 50/100 hand against mahatma at UB

For the interested but unaware, mahatma is a legend of high-stakes online poker. This excellent thread about playing a NL hand against him illustrates how completely he can baffle his opponents, and gives some good insight into thought processes in the big no-limit games.


Bias: Stephen Carter on the ACLU

Ed Brayton makes the point that people tend to demonize their opposition, especially in matters of ideology like politics or religion.

But rational people, people who care about truth and accuracy, must fight this tendency. We must try and evaluate every claim using the same criteria. Does the evidence support it? Are the conclusions drawn from the evidence logical? Any claim that fails to meet those criteria should be rejected, regardless of whether it supports our agenda or not. Likewise, any claim that withstands that scrutiny should be accepted as valid, regardless of whether it supports our agenda or not. None of us will ever be Mr. Spock, but we should strive to evaluate all arguments as though we have no stake in the outcome.

Cognitive Science: Cognitive science podcasts from Science and the City

I haven't listened to them yet, but I came across this list of cognitive science podcasts. Should be cool.



Offensive Humor: Sarah Silverman music video

A sweet little love song from the funniest female comedian I can think of.

anti-spam

Fight spam!

STACKED first impression

Wow I just scanned over the first page of this blog and had to scroll a long way down before I saw any poker content. Guess that makes sense since I've played a total of 1.5 hours in June. But I finally got my copy of STACKED a few days ago, so I've played around with that a bit, so here's a quick report.

My initial overall impression isn't very good. I just don't understand the point of sitting in front of my TV playing fake money poker when I could move over to my computer and play for real. It was basically just the same as the play money tables online, and within 2 minutes of starting I just decided to play every hand to the river. What is the point of buying a video game for play money poker when you can do it online for free?

I guess it does a decent job of simulating what it is like to sit at a casino table, but that isn't really going to excite me. I like video games that simulate something I don't do every day in real life, so this game is like trying to sell a "CUBICLE" video game to office workers. Of course, all I've tried so far is cash games, so maybe if I gave the tournament mode a shot, I'd like that more. The one feature this game might have that I think would be pretty cool is if it can put you at a tournament final table against AI that plays somewhat like well-known pros. So I'll check out the tournament mode and see if that is an option.

I was looking forward to the STACKED feature where Daniel gives you advice on how to play a hand, but so far the only "pro tip" I've received was terrible - playing $20/40 limit hold'em, I was advised to check on a heads up flop where I had the button and flopped a flush draw. I'm guessing that Daniel meant for that advice to apply to no-limit but the game programming didn't distinguish. Hopefully I'll get some better advice when I try tournaments.

One good thing about STACKED is that my girlfriend wanted to play and seemed to enjoy it, at least for an hour. She doesn't play cards for money, so perhaps the novelty factor was still there for her. So if you have a girlfriend who likes video games but doesn't fully understand your poker fascination, maybe this is the game will help your relationship. Ha!

JJ Redick: Drunken Poet

Since a disturbing amount of my traffic comes from people searching for J.J. Redick's poetry, I feel I ought to mention that he was arrested last night for drunk driving. Here's his mugshot.


I won't pretend not to be a bit giddy about this news. After posting bail, J.J. slightly modified his classic poem to fit the occasion. Here is his new version:

My life story is read in poetic stages
I was once sober, now I'm wasted
The cause and effect of a party dudes
The mathematical breakdown of micro-brews
It's difficult to fathom the coming of the rapture
What if I awoke hungover in an empty pasture?
Suddenly every ounce of beer had been depleted
And all my determination had been defeated
The booze pours, my tears fall
The pain subsides, I stand in awe
A lightning bolt strikes, I feel a sudden energy
Thunder clouds approach, I can't run from destiny
A tornado of nausea tears me down, but I will puke again
My life is a keg of Bud Light, but I'll chug it to the end
Hey it could have been worse
At least I didn't rape a stripper

More reputable influencing to come!

I'll be reviewing these two movies next. I've never heard of either of them, but here's some hype from the press release:

CENTURY CITY, Calif. – Get twelve steps closer to superstardom as Fox Home Entertainment exposes Hollywood’s most shaming secrets when Valley Of The Dolls and Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls debut on DVD June 13, 2006. These two legends of camp – from the twisted minds of scandal-making sixties icon Jacqueline Susann, (actress, author, screenwriter and thinly veiled subject of Valley Of The Dolls), and midnight movie kingpin Russ Meyer (Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill!) respectively – horrified critics and enthralled audiences when they opened in theaters and have both remained cult classics ever since. Valley Of The Dolls stars Oscar® winner Patty Duke* (The Miracle Worker), Barbara Parkins (“Peyton Place”) and Sharon Tate (“The Beverly Hillbillies”) as three aspiring starlets who let Hollywood go to their heads. The Valley Of The Dolls DVD arrives loaded with pulpy bonus programming, including the famously sloppy screen test by Judy Garland, as well as original featurettes, “Pill Pop-Up Karaoke,” and much more. Penned by now-famous film critic Roger Ebert, the outrageously over-the-top Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls earned an X-rating on its quest to out-do the scandalous original with the story of a girl-band, The Carrie Nations, who arrive in Hollywood to find only sex, drugs and sleaze. Featuring doll-induced performances by non-actors from the rock and adult film communities, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls is a shameless classic that proves “all are available for a price.”

good sports

I might not be as much of a sports fan as I used to be, but I'm pretty excited about sports right now.

1.) This has been an awesome NBA playoffs, and the finals should be amazing. A year ago I got carried away and picked the Mavs to win it all. I'm rooting for them again this year, and they took the first game tonight.

2.) World Cup Soccer. SILLY!