Religion affects survivability

In a post about the WestJet pilot who was dissed for being a woman, PZ said an interesting thing:

"...[U]nfortunately we live in a culture where religion is a vehicle for promoting inflexibility, in an era where we need to adapt."

Ain't that the truth. Change the verbs to past tense and you've got humanity's epitaph:

Humans lived in a culture where religion was a vehicle for promoting inflexibility, in an era when they needed to adapt.

AP notices

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is coming under increasing criticism that he simply doesn't get it on sex abuse.

G'wan, go read it.

HuffPo gets it all wrong

The headline on HuffPo's main page screams "Pope Francis takes huge step forward on gay rights". I'm surprised they didn't add three exclamation points.

When you click on the link, you arrive at a more subdued headline: "Pope Francis suggests gay civil unions may be tolerable by church". Now, isn't that just marvelous? Gay civil unions may be tolerable. The gratitude is swelling inside my heart. The Vatican could find my relationship tolerable. Praise jesus!

First of all, "giving" gay people civil unions is like the bus driver saying you can get on the bus, but you have to sit in the back. No thanks. In fact, you can stick those civil unions up your ass. We will not be tolerated -- we will be equal. And there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do to stop us.

The Catholic church is an evil joke that harms people throughout the world. It blinds them to their real lives, fills them with fear and guilt, and spends most of its mental energy wondering what penises and vaginas are doing. That's not a church, it's an illness.

We're gettin' married. Everywhere. And no one will be able to stop the gay tsunami of equality, including the two popes at the head of the Roman Catholic church. (Gives raspberry; exits stage-left.)

PS: Francis is really out of it on many issues, not just the gay stuff. Here's an outtake from the article:

"The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No-one else has done more," Francis said of sex abuse. "Yet the Church is the only one to have been attacked."

Are you laughing? Crying? Oy, the blindness. It hurts.

Fun article at SF Gate

The article is called How To Sucker a Billion Christians. Here's a bit (okay, a large bit):

You do not mess with blind faith.

Just a humble reminder. You do not question the dully codified stories of Christianity, or challenge them, or offer even remotely refreshing, alternative storylines with anything resembling intelligence, or humor, or deep intellectual curiosity.

What are you, a masochist? To do so would imply there is something to be gained, some sort of cultural progress to be made in the realms of the exhausted – but still deeply paranoid and very simpleminded – Christian faith, when there most certainly is not. Besides, you want to make lots of money, right? Of course you do.

Do you know who understands this overarching rule perfectly? Mark Burnett, the goliath TV producer who single-handedly destroyed the modern world by popularizing reality TV. Burnett and his wife, “Touched by an Angel” actress Roma Downey, know exactly how sucker-able are the vast majority of the world’s Christians. Because they’re evil that way. Smart. I mean smart.

So smart are the Burnetts that they recently hacked together a terrifically lousy movie about the life and times of Jesus, called Son of God. They made it by cobbling new footage with bits of last year’s 10-hour History Channel miniseries on the Bible that was already quite perfectly lousy but still really popular because, you know, Jesus.

But of course, they didn’t stop there. The Burnetts recently travelled the country, shilling this new hunk of spiritual Valium to pastors, churches and shopping malls in hopes of pre-selling millions of tickets, safe in the the knowledge that devout Christians will see just about anything that reassures (but never, ever challenges or advances) their faith, no matter how poorly made, intellectually insulting or terminally boring it might be.

SF Gate is a good, interesting newspaper. I think it's the nearness of all those gay people out there. It ups the quality.

Captioning for movies

Closed captioning is a mashup of two cultures: the deaf and those who can hear. The "mash" part sometimes rears its head in the form of odd captions for movies. I find this fascinating. Captions are essentially a translation sent from the hearing world to the deaf world -- but this translation is not always clear-cut. (BTW, my hearing is fine but I sometimes turn captions on because I find them interesting.)

Here are some examples from my recent viewing:

• The caption said "stay there" as an actress sort of mimed the command. But she never actually said anything. I wondered about this. But then I realized that she had mouthed the words in addition to miming the meaning with her body (shush face, palms-down gesture). Perhaps the caption was included because deaf viewers might otherwise wonder what why "stay there" wasn't captioned. Mind you, deaf viewers would have already grasped her meaning because she said it so clearly with her gestures. Interesting!
• When music plays, the caption often tries to define its mood. I get a kick out of their choices. "Ominous music" is a fun one. I also like the occasionally meaningless captions, such as "inaudible chanting". Indeed. (And I never heard any chanting, making this kinda weird. Maybe there really was inaudible chanting! Funny.)
• In one movie, as a couple engaged in a sloppy kiss, the captioning said "Muah!" Gotta love that.

Of course, captioning can be helpful even to those who can hear. For instance, when I watched a movie that was set in New Orleans, I couldn't understand the heavy patios of one of the actors -- and I'm pretty good with accents. So I turned on captioning. It listed his sentences in clear, proper English, as if he had no accent. Very nice.

Have you had any adventures with captioning? I'd love to read comments from deaf readers. Are you satisfied with the captioning system? What needs to be improved?

I think it's great that captioning exists for any broadcast, though live shows are still problematic. There are lots of misspelled words and garbled phrases. Sometimes I wonder if they have two people typing the text, to keep up with the pace of the speakers. I say this because sometimes there will be one sentence haltingly typed on the screen, and then a full sentence or two will instantly appear after it. I'd love to know how they handle these live broadcasts. It would be interesting to be present as the typists create the captions. 

I'm gonna go put that on my bucket list.

Echoing Lily

Lily Tomlin famously wondered what it means to be successful in a mediocre world. I think about that all the time because I wonder what it means to blog in a senseless world.

The news beats me down on a daily basis. It's one awful thing after another. I've begun to think we need a new word for news: spews. The spews media. Sounds right, no?

When I think of blogging about stuff in the daily spews, I bump into the next problem: how to pick one thing out of this maelstrom of trash so I can blog about it. I mean, that only makes sense when society is acting rationally and a rarely seen problem pops up. "Oh, hey, I'll blog about that." But when it's all trash and none of it makes sense, really, what point is there in blogging about it? Even if you manage to change a few minds, everything else is still in the toilet. It's a Sisyphus kind of thing.

That's why I'm glad to be writing again. The book is coming along nicely. Hoo, hoo, I'm back in the saddle again! Thank dog I have this private refuge. It's an island of sanity in a world of spews.

Catholicism and the transgendered

There's an uplifting article at Al Jazeera about transgender issues and the Catholic church. It's a long piece focused around the efforts of a Catholic nun who ministers to the transgender community. I thought it was wonderful (even though religion is a crock).

If the issue interests you, grab a cup of coffee and click here.

A very good idea

Since the world is divided into people who want to be free, and those who would force others to live according to their authoritarian notions, the free flow of information is crucial. So this is refreshing news.

A small team of workers at a New York based non-profit organization called Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) has announced its intention to build an "Outernet"—a global network of cube satellites broadcasting Internet data to virtually any person on the planet—for free. The idea, the MDIF website says, is to offer free Internet access to all people, regardless of location, bypassing filtering or other means of censorship.

Nice!

Scully a whiz at 86

Vin Scully, Dodgers broadcaster.

Yay, baseball is back! Well, spring training, anyway. The other day, I had the pleasure of hearing Vin Scully call a Dodgers game. This guy is amazing. At the age of 86 (he'll turn 87 this year), he has the nimble brain of a perceptive 23-year-old. It's as if he's completely immune to the fallout caused by aging.

He's also the only "lone" announcer I can think of. Other baseball teams use two and even three announcers so the load doesn't fall on one guy. Not the Dodgers, though. They have Vin Scully, and that's all you need.

Just listen to a few of the things he said during the game I watched last week:

"And adding to the fun, there are two Marte's in the game, Alfredo and Andy!"

"Tuiososoppo strikes out and takes himself and all his syllables back to the dugout."

(While watching an outfielder run around the park and dive dramatically to make each catch): "He's covering the field, both literally and figuratively."

(And when a veteran hitter faced a rookie pitcher with an unusual name, he said:) "[After all those decades of fine work], here he is, being tested by a young pitcher named Stripling."

The man doesn't miss a trick. Consider how functional you'll be when you're 86. Uh-huh. You'll be lucky if you can stand. Scully is the most together old guy I've ever encountered.

I'm just happy to see him back for another year. May he continue to do this past the age of 100. Watta guy!

Kindle stuff

Two things:

1. I increased the price of Xmas Carol to $5.99. Lots of people urged me to do this (even Annie and my dentist, fer god's sake). I tried to fight them off but in the end, I succumbed. Let's see how the book does at the new price.

2. I always wondered about the option to "lend" a purchased Kindle title. I knew you could do it but didn't know the specifics. Here's how it works: you can lend the book to someone for 14 days. (I assume it disappears in puff of smoke after two weeks.) And then you can lend it to others. This is apparently an effort to duplicate the ease with which we can lend physical books. To lend your copy, just go to the Xmas Carol page and you'll find a link asking if you'd like to lend the book. I think this is a great idea. If you've read Xmas Carol, lend it to someone. They'll thank you.

Okay, back to the polar vortex. We're expecting another foot of snow on Sunday. Jeebus.