journalism


Pri and I are getting ready for our vacation (very exciting). Yesterday we went to Campmor.com to do see if there was any camping equipment we should get before we go. There was. But one thing I thought of was a new filter for my water filtration system. (The language is confusing… both the high-tech piece of paper and the thing you insert it into are commonly called “filter”. I’ll call the paper “the filter” and the rest of it “the system”.)

Well, from everything I can tell, they no longer manufacture filters that go into my system. Rendering it essentially useless. This is distressing, since I guess I’ll now just throw away this perfectly functional product. At first, though, I thought that it was also unfortunate that I’d need to buy a new system, rather than just the inexpensive filters.

Well, apparently they also no longer make inexpensive filters. Looking at water filters and systems at REI and at Campmor it seems that the systems now cost only slightly more than their filters. For instance, I ended up ordering the Katadyn Hiker for $50. It’s filter is apparently good for about 200 gallons. If I’m worried that that won’t be enough, I can buy a replacement “cartridge” for it for about $40.

It seems, then, that the same thing has happened to these backwoods products as what happened to InkJet printers: the price of the systems has come down, with the manufacturers hoping to make their money on selling the filters. My joke about printers is: “Don’t think of it as buying a printer, think of it as buying an inkjet cartidge subscription”. For me, in the case of the filters, I can’t imagine paying $40 for the filter when I could pay $50 for a whole new unit. But, whatever the case, it seems lame to me. Maybe I don’t understand the economics of it… it’s perfectly possible that the 0.2 micron filters are more expensive to manufacture than the totally macro plastic casing pumps. So, maybe it makes sense. But, I’m more inclined to go with the other idea. If so, they might be pushing it too far. My brand loyalty is not going to be very strong if I can switch to another system for only $10 more than staying with the one I’m buying.

Would love to hear more about this if anyone out there knows anything…

In another obvious example of people stealing ideas from my blog, the US Supreme Court today released a decision which says, in short, “a lot of patents these days are STUPID“. I heard it on NPR’s headlines at 6pm ET, but nothing more about it all evening (including on Marketplace, which I am taking as a signal that the opinion must have been released late in the day). Hopefully it’ll get more coverage tomorrow.
Many of the articles I found about it were pretty lame, but I liked this one at Forbes and this one at the LA Times. I even indulged and went to the actual Court opinion which was actually pretty readable and contained a remarkable amount of information about the history of gas pedals.

Yes, gas pedals. The basic issue here was a gas pedal that can be positioned to suit the driver’s preference. But that’s not the patent. The pedal does not pull a cable that opens the throttle mechanically, but rather an electonic signal was sent to open the throttle. But that’s not the patent either. The patent concerned the placement of the sensor. Specifically, moving it from the footpad (as was already presented in a 1995 patent) to the arm of the pedal. One is tempted to think that I must just be misunderstanding, because surely a patent would not be issued for moving a sensor from one part of the pedal arm to another. But, this comment from Justice Stephen Breyer in November (during the arguments of the case) really makes me think I’ve got it correct:

Is the Teleflex invention like moving a garage door sensor from the lower hinge to an upper hinge?

Well, the court voted unanimously that this patent should be considered invalid. In fact, they ruled that the entire basis by which it was awarded was flawed. The opinion part of The Opinion begins as follows: “We begin by rejecting the rigid approach of the Court of Appeals.” The Court ruled that a test known as the “TSM test” was incorrectly being used as the One True Test of an invention’s obviousness. The Court’s ruling today saying that while the TSM test can be helpful, “[h]elpful insights […] need not become rigid and mandatory formulas.” The opinion is being read, then, as to call into question any patent that was awarded on a similar application of this test. The NPR snippet I heard claimed that the number of affected patents would be in the hundreds of thousands. I jumped up and down with glee when I heard that.

A few more choice quotes from the Opinion:

The question is not whether the combination was obvious to the patentee but whether the combination was obvious to a person with ordinary skill in the art. … [F]amiliar items may have obvious uses beyond their primary purposes, and in many cases a person of ordinary skill will be able to fit the teachings of multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle. … A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton.

And finally, this summary

[T]he results of ordinary innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws. Were it otherwise patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful arts.

After that statement, The Opinion goes on to cite the exact same section of the US constitution that I cited in my last post on this blog! Those damn pirates on the Supreme Court have plagerized my intellectual property!!

Ok, to close more seriously: a saw a woman today wearing a T-shirt that said something like “The first thing we’d do is kill all of the lawyers.” Lawyers get blamed for much. Rich capitalists get blamed for much too. It’s obviously not the case that all lawyers and all rich people are pure good, and I’m not going to claim anything like that. But I think lawyers and rich people get blamed for lots of things that are really the problems of our laws. If we have laws that allow governmentally enforced monopolies to be granted for matters as simple as where on a pedal arm a sensor is placed, then the capitalists are going to try to get the monopolies and the lawyers are going to try to keep them safe. Now, other lawyers working for other capitalists will sometimes challenge those monopolies, and I’m thrilled with today’s news about such a case. But I can’t blame the lawyers or the capitalists for the fight. They are just doing what is natural in the face of bad intellectual property law. If the government didn’t issue these stupid patents in the first place, the capitalists and their lawyers wouldn’t look so stupid trying to uphold them. But of course, it’s much more fun to blame lawyers and rich people for our problems than to talk about copyright and patent law. Whatever the case, hopefully today’s ruling will knock some sense into the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or at least bolster the courage of private parties to refuse to pay royalties to holders of dumb patents.

We all have our issues that we care about, I suppose. But I don’t know why more people aren’t up in arms with me about the United States’ ludicrous intellectual property laws. Well, Marketplace tonight slapped this thorn in my side with this story about patents that have been awarded for innovative ways to save on taxes. People who study the tax laws carefully enough to find loopholes to help their clients to pay less into the Federal Government’s coffers are then protected by that same Government by anyone who wants to do the same thing without paying the first person to do it. Or, the first person to successfully register a patent claim on it. Disgusting.

The Federal Government’s claim to legitimacy in protecting intellectual property is rooted in this clause from Article 1, section 8 of the constitution: “The Congress shall have power … [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” I’d be willing to bet that throughout the history of our nation, no one has ever referred to tax experts as “authors” or “inventors” in natural conversation. More importantly, deciphering tax law is neither science nor useful art. I could go on and on. It’s just bad.

Really, I’m pretty much opposed to all business process patents. And all software patents. I’m skeptical of traditional patents for inventions of hardware, but they sure don’t offend me the same way. This is bad. There’s apparently some legislative effort to stop issuing such patents. I realize it may not be a matter of life and death for anyone, but when many people are offended by the mere fact of someone being rich, I think more attention is due to ways in which people get rich, especially when they rely on help from governments and curtail the freedom of others.

ugh

(Note: If you haven’t already read Episode 1, you should read that first)

Before I left the dealership, I talked for quite a while with Maggie, who does all of their financial stuff. She’s also the daughter of the owner. I would guess that this place has only 6 full time employees. But I digress. Maggie was very helpful. I haven’t bought cars all that often in my life, so I was unsure about lots of things like whether I get the insurance first or the plates first, etc. She was very helpful, both giving official rules and friendly advice. This was nice.

It was curious, though, how we dealt with the deposit. I asked “How much should I leave for the deposit?” “Well, we really like at least $300, but we could go lower if you need. What’s comfortable for you?” Mercy. I explained that I just didn’t have $9000 sitting in my checking account, but that I could easily offer $1000, and wouldn’t that be a nice easy number? Needless to say, they were fine with that, and we ran $1000 on my debit card.

But in the spirit of asking questions, I also said “now, for the final payment, I should bring… what? a cashier’s check?” That was acceptable, she explained, but posed its own problems. If nothing else, they wouldn’t hand over the title to the vehicle until the cash was in their bank, so I’d either have to come back to pick it up, or they could mail it. “But the mail is not always as reliable as you’d like it to be.” She made it pretty clear that her preference would be for cash. But she certainly wasn’t insisting. But it did make sense to me to have the title and be done with the whole process. So, I figured I’d try to bring cash.

Now, it turns out that only a month or two before this, I actually did have over $9000 in my checking account. After a fair amount of deliberation and consultation with friends, I’d moved just a bit more than that from my checking account to a savings account with ING (4.5% on a plain savings account… I definitely recommend it). Of course, when I did that, I wasn’t thinking that I was about to buy a car. So, now I had to move it back. This is a simple enough process, but it does take a couple of business days. So, that was the real cause of the delay.

I paid the deposit on Monday. I arranged to pick up the car on Friday (Priscilla agreed to drive my old car back for me. Thanks, Pri!). But, I was getting closer and closer to having to face the prospect of dealing with that much cash.

I’m sure this is normal for some people. Even some people who aren’t gangsters. But it’s definitely not normal for me I learned. I was very anxious about it. I mean, I enjoyed it as an experiment. But the results of the experiment were definitely that I was anxious. I decided on Friday morning I should call the bank and make sure there were no special requirements to withdraw that much cash. The person who took my call did have to put me on hold and ask someone, but confirmed that yes, I could just go up to a teller, present them with a check made out to “Cash”, and they could give me the cash.

Ok. Naturally I wanted to do this right before we left. I didn’t want to have all that cash any longer than necessary. I walked through the process several times. I had a list in my brain of exactly what I would do. So, it was easy enough to do the mechanics of it, which allowed my brain to spin on things such as whether any hoodloms were taking note of what I was doing, ready to jump me between here and my car.

I entered the bank. I was glad it was cold, because I wore my winter coat that has a nice inside breast pocket. I walked up to the little work area with the plastic date-on-display and the pens-on-leashes. I took out my checkbook and wrote out the check for $8487.00. Eight Thousand Four Hundred Eighty Seven — DOLLARS. IN the memo field I wrote “I’m buying a car” in hopes that the teller and I wouldn’t have to talk very loudly about the amount.

I waited in line, thinking that at this point, I was still safe. Not only did I not have the cash yet, but someone would have had to have been snooping on me really closely to know that this wasn’t an every-day transaction. Then it was my turn. The tellers at my bank are invariably friendly, and so I wasn’t at all surprised by the warm greeting mine offered. “A rather special withdrawal today” I said as I cooly handed her the check. “OH! You’re buying a car!! Oh that’s great! What kind of car!!” So much for that idea. We chatted a bit about the whole thing. And then she explained that she’d need to meet with a bank manager and go back to the vault to get the money. Makes sense, I’ll wait in the lobby.$8487

As I type I realize that I’m probably just outing my naievety to the world, because I’m sure many people go through this kind of thing more often than I do, but whatever. After sweating for a few minutes (not wanting to remove my coat that would soon be holding so much value), I saw my teller return from the vaults. I met her back at the counter, and she started her work:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9- One Thousand

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9- Two Thousand

The cash was wrapped in packages of $2000 each, so she counted out four of those (does it have to be so loud?), and then the remaining $487, which by that point seemed like pocket change. I had brought an empty plain brown envelope with me to carry this around in, so I put it all in there, and cautiously left the building.

My reasoning was that the walk from the teller to the car was the time to be most cautious. Once I’d driven away, someone would have to be following me to know what was going on. But here, anyone might have been able to overhear.

Well, naturally, nothing bad happened, I drove to the practice rooms at the School of Music to pick up Priscilla. I listened to her play through something on the harpsichord, sweating the whole time (not wanting to take off my coat).Me in the car

But, all that anxiety was either unnecessary or did its job, because nothing else unusual happened. Maggie at the car dealership was very comfortable dealing with all that cash, and of course, once they had it, I was just a few signatures away from driving away in my new car!!

And so I did. It was a nice day for a nice drive, and I greatly enjoyed cruise control and an open sun roof, both firsts for me on a car that I own. Woohoo!

So, is this the end? No! I now have three motor vehicles! I gotta deal with that fact and several other things. You will be able to read about it all in part three of Car: The Mini-series.

In 1998, half way through what should have been a nine hour drive to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, the engine of my Pontiac LeMans siezed. After renting a car to get home, I ended up purchasing a 1994 Saturn Sedan.

A couple months ago, I got to thinking… This car is 13 years old. It’s still running great, but it has some cosmetic issues:

* the drivers side window doesn’t close all the way, unless you assist it
* some of the trim is coming unattached, which makes it rattle, which
drives me a bit crazy
* the odometer is frozen at 124,477
* it’s got some small body blemishes
* it’s got some interior blemishes
* the ceiling panel stuff is falling down

So I says to myself, I says: you know, you don’t HAVE to drive this car until it dies. You can afford a newer model. Think about it.

I did think about it. I went so far as to set up an RSS read for cars being sold nearby on Craigs List so that I could look for cars that might interest me. I’m not that picky. I was pretty sure I wanted another Saturn, used, and I just sort of watched what little passed by.

Well, while talking with Sue and Michael about their new car, Sue mentioned autotrader.com, and I figured I should check it out. Well! Different scene from Craigslist.

Let me say: I hadn’t realized that the world of used car dealerships was such a prominent item in the long list of things revolutionized by the Internet. But, wow, yeah, totally. When I was shopping for a car back in 1998, I remember visiting a couple of lots, saying the kind of thing I was interested in, seeing what they had, going for a test drive, wondering if I should put up with it even if I am not taken by it. You get the picture.

My point of view now is that the Internet shifts the balance of power hugely in favor of the shopper. Why? Well, the popularity of the Internet means that the dealerships feel compelled to list their cars on sites like autotrader.com. So they do. Then these sites allow one to do things like “show me all of the used, 4 door Saturns for sale within a 50 mile radius between $4000 and $10,000” (with all of those bold entries being up to the shopper). Turns out I had too many to choose from at that rate, so I added “with manual transmission”.

Do you see? Now instead of just asking a dealer what they happen to have, I’m specifying what I want and comparison shopping between essentially all of the dealers I’m likely to drive to. This would have been unthinkable pre-Internet. Obviously, this also puts pressure on them to list a low price, since they know I’m comparing them with other dealers.

As if that weren’t enough, the Internet also makes it easy to run checks like Carfax to see what the vehicle’s history has been like, and sites like Kelley Blue Book to see how the list price compares. Again, the intimidation typically associated with buying a car from a used car dealer is pretty-well squashed by the Information Age. I love it.

So, what do you know, I found a 2004 Four Door Saturn Ion with manual transmission and 38,000 miles listed at $8950, which was more than $3000 less than kbb.com’s suggested dealer price for that car (and still $1000 under the suggested private party price). Woah. Carfax.com told me that it was originally purchased from the Saturn dealership on the south side of Indianapolis, and had had only one owner. I furthermore visited the Saturn web site and priced what I’d likely pay if I were buying a similar Saturn brand new: just over $15,000. So, I reasoned, I’m getting a car three years older but $6000 cheaper. Going by my age-old per-year-price-of-owning-a-car perspective, the car “cost” over $2000 per year for those three years, without even knowing what maintenance it had. My goal is $1000/year, so I’d be lucky if I could do that well buying the car new.

So, I was pretty well convinced before I even left my couch (literally). Indeed, my brain started spinning on “there’s no reason not to buy that car is there? I mean, as long as it seems ok when you see it. You should see it. There’s no reason no to go look at it. You should call them tomorrow. Yes, call tomorrow.” so much that I had difficulty sleeping that night.

But, the next day did roll around and I called them up. “Hi, I’m interested in this particular Saturn. Is it still available?” “Yup” “Ok, I’ll see you later on this afternoon.” Again, the contrast in the experience of dealing with the used car dealer can barely be overstated. I drove up there and said “Yeah, I called about the 2004 Saturn” “ok, I’ll take you to it… there you are, let me know if you have any questions, of if you’d like to take it for a drive.” Sweet! I spent about 15 minutes alone with the car in the lot. Looked in the trunk, under the hood, sat in each of the seats, pressed all the buttons, etc. Everything checked out ok. Not that there weren’t minor issues, but nothing scary. The test drive was similarly reassuring.

So, ok. I actually felt a bit of awkwardness with the sales manager because it seemed to both of us like the process should be more difficult or something. He gave me a talk about the business, how long they’ve been around, how they want to encourage repeat customers and referrals and stuff. Mmhmm. That’s all nice. But eventually we just realized there wasn’t much else to discuss. So, I put a deposit on it, and said I’d be back later in the week to give the rest of the cash and to pick up the car. Done deal.

Did anything bad happen with the car? Were there problems at the bank? What else might have gone wrong? Or right? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Car: The Mini-series

Vectren Screen ShotI was please to see that my Natural Gas company, Vectren, has expanded their eBill service to include actual real DATA about consumption patterns. As one who thinks a lot about things like “what is the most efficient way to keep my house a comfortable temperature in the winter?” I love to see that they are drawing me this graph. I hope that in the future it will go back further in time. But I’m particularly pleased that they give the option of downloading the data as a spreadsheet. It’s pretty simplistic, just the dates and numbers in a chart, but… still, I love it! Thanks, Vectren! And I see that it really is using more gas for me to be working at home instead of being at work with the house turned down to 55 F.

Years ago I wrote an email to Kroger suggesting that they make the information that they make collection with their Kroger Plus Card (you know the type) available to the customer in question. I would love to see a history of my shopping. I would love to run queries such as “how much of my food budget am I spending on produce” (or, dare I question it, beer and wine?). They never replied. And they certainly aren’t offering this service. I think it’s a shame. I’m sure they are thinking “we don’t want to give consumers that kind of power, they might change their buying habits. Perhaps. But I suspect most people would never use it. And some of us would probably lean towards buying things at Kroger so that they could include it in their data analysis. So, I present it now publicly as a challenge to all you big SuperMarket companies… the programming should be trivial, simple queries of your huge database. Some of us would really love it. Thanks.

Meanwhile, thanks Vectren.

A while back, my friends at the Indy Contra dance asked if I’d be interested in calling a dance before a performance of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. What?? Apparently the ISO was doing an outreach program and was in to having other arts organizations give performances before their concerts. Hey, ok.
I’m not sure it’s a good idea for them, but I certainly don’t mind calling, and it’d be fun to get a free admission to an ISO concert, I’ve never seen them live.

So, last night was the night! And, I gotta say, I think it was a good idea on their part. While we certainly aren’t polished for presentation (contradancing is for dancing, not for watching) people definitely seemed interested and we had quite a crowd gathered around us (including from the balcony that encircled the space we were dancing in). I didn’t have my camera :( but Beth did so I’m hoping to get some pictures from her. Tom and Fred played a great selection of music for this event, and Priscilla and John (who both drove up with me from Bloomington) and all the other dancers did great.

The concert was also very nice. This Boris Giltburg fellow is really good, and it had been a while since I wrapped myself up in the world of professional orchestra performers like that. This turned out to be highly intensified by having John along, because he’s studying to be one (a trumpeter, no less) and had plenty of opinions and gossip to share about this unusual professional culture. Anyway, good concert, I especially liked the Shostakovich.

And… it was fun to be in Indy right before their long-awaited first appearance in the Superbowl. The city is really excited. Actually, I didn’t see a lot of riotous behavior or anything, people in Indianapolis are pretty mild mannered. But what was so striking is that EVERYWHERE had some “Go Colts” type stuff up. Seriously, as we walked the two blocks from the car to the concert hall, I’m not sure there was a single store front that didn’t have something Colts related in the window. Certainly there was no view of anything downtown without several Colts logos in them. And it was topped off by the orchestra projecting a Colts logo on the wall behind them during the warmup periods and the intermission (they turned it off while they were performing). Classy!

And, well, I’m with them! I don’t think I’ve ever cared as much who won the SuperBowl as I do this year. The Colts are a great team… highly skilled, smart, and nice! And, of course, the regional allegiance plays high. So, looking forward to the game tonight! Go Horse!! :)

Cassaundra has been sending me occasional emails updating me on the status of the deliberations of a pack of angry atheists. Led by such notables as Richard Dawkins, these folks are “sick and tired” of being tolerant of religious people and are out there daring to call Believers stupid, and far worse, in public appearances and in their books, which I gather are climbing the Best Sellers Lists.

This has been fanning the flames of my own personal brooding about this issue of being an atheist in a society where the main-stream is religious. The thing is, I hate proselytizing. I don’t care what the sect, whether I think you’re right or wrong, I hate it all. And when atheists start proselytizing, they are at least as obnoxious about it as any other religious group (or maybe I’m just more sensitive to it, since I would like to associate them… whatever, it’s bad).

Well, while driving to Urbana, I heard a piece on NPR’s All Things Considered about this band of (as NPR called them) “New Atheists” and their fundamentalist rants. I feel like the issue is going main-stream, I feel some compunction to … define my position a bit more, to ally myself but also distance myself from these “New Atheists”. So, the blog, of course, is as public as I easily get, and here goes.

A couple of years ago, when NPR started its version of This I Believe, I thought a lot about submitting something to them and even drafted something. It was an interesting process. I wrote a bit about what I consider to be my religious beliefs (which I refer to (endearingly, and mostly to myself) as Post-modern Mathematical Atheism), but I knew I wouldn’t get into much of the details of my religion. I mean, how can you sum something like that in 350-500 words? Plus, they (wisely) don’t want religious rants on that program. So, I just wrote about a sense of the main themes. But, what I quickly found myself veering towards was the fact that, more than the beliefs themselves, what was really compelling to me was that I have the freedom to believe what I want to, to think about the ideas, to discuss them with others as I see appropriate and helpful to my “spiritual journey”, and to challenge my own ideas and reevaluate them as I see fit. In short, my freedom to determine my own religious beliefs feels more dear to me than the beliefs themselves, even though the beliefs were what I felt more interested in writing about when I started the exercise.

Now, I do not believe that one actually comes to such beliefs by onesself. If I’m remembering correctly, I even typed into the draft, “there may not be a single original idea in what I believe”. I hear ideas from all sorts of beliefs from all sorts of people, and I don’t for a moment think that if I lived in another place/time or had different experiences that I would believe exactly what I do. But, nonetheless, I get to take all of that input and my own thoughts and come to the conclusions that seem correct to me. And anyone who tries to muscle their way into my head is bound to offend me, even if I agree with some or all of what they are saying.

So, my preferred style of religious debate is for people to speak and/or write about their beliefs, without being accusing or intrusive, and to allow others to listen or ignore them as they see fit. And thusly, I think, have most atheists presented their beliefs (take Bertrand Russell, for instance… or even Daniel Dennett for a more contemporary example).

Well, I think this is what people like Dawkins are sick and tired of. Or, more accurately, they are sick and tired of atheists feeling like this is the only appropriate approach. Because there is a small but (alas) unavoidable percentage of Believers actively engage in rhetoric and activities specifically designed to convert people, they think that atheists need to fight back. It’s basically the same thing as negative campaigning in political elections… People don’t like it, but if one side is doing it, the other side almost has to or they will surely get trounced.

And, of course, atheists have been getting trounced for a long time. The NPR story reported that only 1% of Americans identify themselves as atheists. That seems low to me based on other figures I’ve heard, but whatever the case, Evengelical Christians are huge in comparison, growing fast in number, and (at least many of their most vocal members) have no compunction about saying nasty things about atheists.

So why shouldn’t atheists say nasty things about evangelicals? They’re certainly justified in doing so. But, I still don’t like it. But this is what I can’t come to terms with. I don’t feel like I should have to be quiet at let the Christians control the debate. But I don’t feel like getting into a mudslinging contest with them either. So, what do people like me do?

Do we stand on street corners and start preaching about materialism? I don’t think this would help, everyone I’ve ever seen do anything like that was a wacko.

Do we organize a bit and start going door-to-door with smiles on our faces and nice clothes on our bodies, and hand out brochures about joyful and ethical living without gods? Although I think it could be fun, doesn’t everyone hate those people’s intrusions? I guess not, because it must work with some of them. I don’t know. I know the best thing I’ve ever said about such an uninvited visitor is that they left quickly and politely.
Do we raise a little money and start putting up billboards that go just a bit beyond the secular humanist messages that we already see? Something like “Live Ethically and Enjoy Life… you don’t need any god to do that.” I can only imagine the uproar such messages would cause among the Faithful, and it’s kind of fun to think about. But billboards are also pretty annoying, even if far less intrusive that people going door-to-door.

Of course, something that should be done if Atheism wants to get more credit as a religion is to congregate. There are efforts in this regard. The wonderfully named Center For Inquiry has an Indiana “Community” which gets together regularly for debunking sessions. And as many Unitarian Universalist friends have told me, atheists are welcome to their services, and many happily attend. The biggest problem with this is that people like me don’t really want to congregate like this. I’d rather spend my time elsewhere, in general… although I probably would go to the CFI sessions more often if they weren’t so far away from my home.

But I think the first step might be to redefine the mission a bit. There’s a problem with “atheism” as a term, because it defines itself as a negation of something else. I think this matters. I think Believers naturally and immediately take assertions of atheistic beliefs as an afront, because rather than sounding like “I believe in *this*” it sounds like “I don’t believe in *that*, or anything like it!” So, just professing the belief sounds like something of an attack. I think I should start using the term “materialist” more often, because it doesn’t suffer from this trait, even if to my ear it actually sounds *more* anti-religions (“not only do I not believe in your god or anyone else’s, I don’t believe in your soul or your spirit or any thing else that is supernatural”). And really, all of this focus on “belief” is probably misguided for me, too, because really it’s that I’m *disinclined* to believe in things, especially just because they seem like beautiful ideas or because someone else tells me that they are true. I believe in things that can be deomnstrated, the rest I just wonder about. This is why some people like me latch onto the word “skeptic”. It makes sense, but I don’t think it has religious legs, so to speak.

Whatever the case, the message that I would want to send to Evangelical Christians is not “we’re right and you’re not only wrong but also stupid” as seems to be coming from the New Atheists. Of course, again, since they are responding to a message from the Christians of “we’re right and you’re not only wrong but evil, and you should be put to death and start your eternal burn in Hell”, I can’t say I don’t understand the temptation to respond with such vigor. But, I didn’t like that kind of name calling on the elementary school playground, and I still don’t like it today. So, I’d rather send a message like “Look, you think I’m going to burn in Hell when I die. I think you’re consciousness is simply going to cease when you die. We each think the other is wrong. But we don’t have to agree, we can just live peacefully and talk about our beliefs civilly and let everyone else come to his or her own conclusions.” Of course many — probably the vast majority — of Christians in the United States already accept that message. But there’s obviously a vocal element that do not accept it, and I suppose that it’s natural and probably even good that some atheists are willing to get nasty in response to the nastiness. But, I myself have no interest in joining them. Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.

I woke up from an early evening nap on October 24 and turned on the radio right in the middle of Robert Siegel’s now infamous interview (at least, infamous among NPR listeners) with Republican political mastermind Karl Rove. I have deep respect for Karl Rove. I don’t like what he accomplishes, but you have to respect his knowledge and you have to respect his track record on getting people elected (that is, as long as there really is nothing illegal involved (yes, I am haunted by that Rolling Stone article by Bobby Kennedy)).

So, when he was predicting victory in this interview, I took it very seriously… much more seriously than I’d take the same kind of talk from just about any political analyst. And, his rationale was very believable for why the polls, which showed Democrats taking the house and maybe just maybe the Senate, were wrong. In response to Siegel saying “I’m looking at the same numbers you are,” Rove retorted:

No you’re not, I’m looking at 68 polls a week you may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not impact the outcomes of individual races… I’m looking at all these, Robert, and adding them up, and I add up to a Rebuplican Senate and a Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you’re entitled to your math, I’m entitled to THE math.

This left Siegel momentarily speechless, very understandably to me. Could it really be that the polling numbers that NPR and every other media outlet were reporting were too general to really catch the tide of the election? Certainly for as much as I knew it could have been, but it was hard for me to believe that all of those polling experts were just being sloppy. But, who can tell?

Well, this is one case where we can tell. Mr. Rove, what you called “THE math” was clearly wrong. Sure, the Senate is still too close to call, and I won’t be a bit surprised if the Republicans maintain a majority there (which, by the way, might be a 50-50 “majority”, keeping control only because the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote. But, I bring this up only as a curiosity, not because I question its validity… this is the way the Senate has always worked, and 50-50 really would be a legitimate majority in this case). But come on… the House was not even close. The Democrats needed to pick up 15 seats to control the House, and CNN is presently reporting that they picked up 28, with 13 still too close to call. If those “too close” elections split 50/50, that would be a gain of 34 seats for the Dems, more the double what was required!

So, was “THE math” just that wrong? Or was Rove being deliberately over-optimistic in a calculated campaign move? I don’t know, but the end result is that I lost some of my respect for the man. I suspect he knew that what he called “THE math” was wrong, but next time I’ll have to remind myself that preserving his image is not his motivation, he’s motivated by winning elections, and who knows what he’ll say to do it.

In any event, I’m glad he was wrong. :)

By the way, there are several election-related things I’d like to write about.  Hopefully I will find the time soon, but right now I have to get to work…

I’ve been out of my normal NPR listening routine recently, but this morning I woke up unexpectedly early and turned on Morning Edition. I was glad that the latest war in the middle east had simmered down enough that it was no longer dominating the news, since it seemed to be the only thing I heard about in the snippets of national/international news that I’d been catching since mid-July. So, there was time to hear about what the House of Representatives did yesterday, which was to pass (263 votes to 146) H.R. 503: the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. Apparently there are three slaughter houses in the US that focus on horse slaughter, and together they slaughter some 90,000 horses a year.

The Washington Post has an excellent editorial about this being a poor use of Congress’s time, even if we “stipulate […] that horses should not be slaughtered for human consumption.” I, however, want to take issue with that stipulation.

I’ve been a vegetarian for over 15 years now, if people don’t want to eat horses, I wholeheartedly support them. But, that’s not what the law is about, it’s about making sure that no one else eats horses. Apparently, no one in the US does anyway, the taboo is too strong. But the slaughterhouses ship the meat to Europe and Asia. And apparently Bo Derek led a pack of horselovers to move to ban this practice.

What drives me nuts about this is the make-believe attitude about meat, that is, that it’s just meat, and not an animal, and certainly not one that anyone might have ever thought might have been cute, smart, or helpful to humans. I’ve never worked on a farm, but I’d like to think that traditional farmers have a less make-believe attitude about this. They care for animals, name them, get to know them, and eventually slaughter them and eat them. However they get there, somehow they have a sense of peace about this. After all, that’s why they raise the animals.

Most city-folks, though, just buy their meat in packages. They know that they were once animals, but they probably prefer not to think about that. And apparently there’s a really strong sense that if they might feel something for an animal, they not only don’t want to eat it, but they don’t want anyone else to eat it either.

And so (to take just one of countless examples of arguably inhumane practices in the meat industry), it’s apparently ok that chickens continue to get their beaks burnt off by hot irons so that they can’t peck at anything while they’re being raised in cages so that we can get eggs cheaper. But the House has voted that it’s inhumane to take horses, including many who led long happy (even pampered) lives, and let them be slaughtered for meat. And this is a House controlled by the party who claims to represent freedom and free markets. Embarrassing. Everyone I’ve ever talked with who worked on a farm says that pigs are the smartest animal in the barnyard, but needless to say, no similar bill about pigs would ever get a hearing in congress, much less pass the House. And, I don’t think it should. If no one wants to eat horse meat, then no one will slaughter horses. There’s no rational reason that horses should be granted this exemption. It’s just the “cute factor.” And it’s embarrassing…

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