Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Moving coming up...

For the two or three people who may actually notice, I will be between ISPs for a few days due to a home move. I am picking up the family and relocating us about 45 miles down the road, closer to the cultural pulse of Ohio (yes, there is one).

The whole ordeal is a story in itself, and something I wrote about before I started this blog. It was my first attempt at having a work enter the public domain. Regardless, time is short so I must wrap up before Time Warner rings my doorbell and takes my modem.

Hopefully I will be back to pissing away my time soon.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Great article in The Economist

Check out this article. It makes a good argument for choosing our battles, and also shows what kind of strength we could have if we were able to unify in our disassociation from religion and superstition.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Enjoy the fight...

As I was posting on vjack's site a few minutes ago, I realized something about what made me determine myself to be an atheist and what makes it all so fun to me. It is the fight... the thrill of the hunt.

In high school, I realized how much I did not think like everyone else. Some of it was upbringing, but I know a lot of it was genetics. Regardless of why, I enjoyed being witty, smart, funny, and weird. The first time I was caught drawing symbols of heavy metal bands on my Trapper Keeper by some female friends, their response was priceless. They were honestly concerned that I may have problems and that I may worship the devil. Needless to say, I let them run with that. It was too good to be true, they actually felt sorry for me!

Without going on and on, it basically took off from there. I would regularly engage people in conversation playing only devil's advocate, while taking comfort in my own spin on Christian belief. Over time, I read more and more about the foundations of religion and ancient religions. Then came my infatuation with the cosmos and quantum physics (among other basic space and sub-atomic physics).

That finally did it. God flew out the window quicker than the Tooth Fairy after giving a kid a nickel for a molar. Luckily for me, some of my friends came to this conclusion around the same time as I did. Our new past time was out loud public blasphemy. At first it was for shock value, to see how far we could push it. Then it was uncontrollable, like we could not help blurting out exactly what we had to say. Finally, it was irrelevant. It barely ever got a reaction any more. Were people afraid of saying anything? We certainly gave them every reason to.

Now, I hold my opinions like a sword inside of a cane. I don't stick out, but I instill doubt. I am a voice of skepticism and reason, playing devil's advocate and not believing in him. This is what makes it all fun. The game is afoot...

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Finally, my title has a relevant post.

Discovery magazine had an interesting edition that I read, in it's entirety on my flight from DFW to CMH. One of which was the 6 most important experiments of the year.

Xenon is a project being done by Rice University to actually discover dark matter.

As the article says far more eloquently than I could, this could prove just one more thing about the beautiful insignificance of humanity in the scheme of the cosmos... we are not even made of the stuff that composes most of the universe.

Really, that should tell us even more how improbable and incredible life as we know it is. Truly, that is much more inspirational than a giant wizard in the clouds controlling our destiny. I serve no master. I just spin on a tiny rock on the outside of a giant pinwheel of galactic dust, hurling through space at thousands of miles per second. Cool.