| Militant Atheism on Reddit |
[09 Sep 2009|10:57pm] |
I have been following the goings-on and happenings of a thriving community of atheists on reddit.com (one of the less disreputable social news websites). It is really comical to see this aggregate of supposedly free thinkers evolve along the lines of a gathering cult. They strike me as extremely arrogant, unpleasant with anyone who does not follow strictly their (at the moment confusingly) evolving dogmas, and full of so many contradictions it would take me too much time to list. I have my own little theory of why such atheist communities seem to evolve so much along the lines of an organized religion; trying to convince others of their own righteousness; intolerant of any opposition; based around cliques of like minded people; developing their own myths and lines of argument; encouraging and supporting each other in their (non)-faith, etc. It seems indeed that quite many of those atheists are ex-believers who have grown very disenchanted with their experience of religion, religions they often have encountered only in their most fundamentalist forms. However, this disenchantment does not come with proper understanding of its sources, and without proper understanding of how religion has ingrained into them habits of minds and attitudes that are intolerant, inflexible and disrespectful of others' integrity. So basically, my thesis is that atheists are the rejects of the most extreme forms of religion in the US. Not surprisingly, they find it difficult to digest their experience of rejection, which translates in bitterness and barely controlled anger towards religious people. For example, there seems to be a gathering trend towards a more militant type of atheism, apparently prompted by the belief that atheism is under attack or that religious people have dominated for too long. I saw them recently praising the actions of an atheist who aggressively preached to and harassed two clueless Jehovah's Witnesses ( http://www.reddit.com/tb/9i3bi). Other atheists in the UK for example have been circulating adverts claiming the inexistence of god(s) ( http://www.atheistbus.org.uk/faq/) . I am afraid I do not quite understand the sources of this militant atheism, and have little affinity with their special types of arguments and with the intricacies of the conflicts between their different churches. It seems like Dawkins et alii have unwittingly attracted a number of rather second rate intellects to their cause. The demographics of current adherents of the atheistic faith seems to consist mainly of disgruntled middle-class white men intent on using their new set of belief to humiliate and dominate other semi-educated individuals. Goes to show how beliefs, any kind of belief and knowledge can always be misused when it falls into the hands of the essentially inferior, testosterone-fuelled half of humanity (half, that is, when using the term "humanity" in its broadest sense). Related articles by Zemanta:
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| The King and I and I |
[07 Sep 2009|12:50am] |
I watched the movie "The King and I", which purports to relate the experience of an English governess who was invited to educate the kids and wives of the King of Siam in the 1860s.
This movie generated a lot of controversy in Thailand and was banned by the current King Bhumibol because of the disrespectful way in which it portrays King Mongkut, one of his ancestors.
The movie is indeed quite offensive, portraying the king as a little bit of a simpleton with very basic English and comical scientific pretensions. The governess on the other hand is supposed to be a well minded reformer who chastises him for his treatment of women and of "slaves". She treats him indulgently like he is a “bon sauvage” to whom "proper" English manners have to be taught.
I think the main issue is with Margaret Landon, a missionary to Thailand who distorted and amplified the original account by Anna Leonowens. I also don’t like the way Yul Brynner plays the king as some sort of hyperactive swaggerer with an authoritarian streak. Not to mention Brynner does not look one ounce like a Thai.
Still, some essential qualities of this king shine through, like his good heart (he used to be a monk), his curiosity and passion for science, his energy, and his very real preoccupations of the time.
There are also a few other grains of truth in the movie. For example, I was surprised to learn the king did indeed have a harem and hundreds of kids. I was amused when Anna is shocked to see the king and his officials not wearing shirts. I had noticed that in portraits made at the time, and it is something the Thai are a bit uncomfortable with. There are some evocations of the tense relations with Burma, of the king’s preoccupation with introducing scientific education in his country, with colonialism, and the way France seized part of his country. Finally, it is true his subjects had to bow deeply before him, and that his son abolished the practice as well as that of slavery.
Also, this English governess, Leonowens, was indeed quite a remarkable woman, who went on to have quite a bit of influence in the feminist movement. She may indeed have had some influence on King Chulalongkorn, who expressed public gratitude to her.
Overall, the movie feels very dated, the singing pieces are not very good, the king does not look Thai at all, there is a lot of Chiniaiseries (naive confusion between Chinese culture and customs and those of the Thai), and the overall impression is that of a movie inspired by an ignorant colonialist mindset which applies its own preoccupation (with slavery, with the role of women, with democracy and enlightenment, etc) to a culture for which it has little respect and of which it has little knowledge.
Whether this movie warrants a ban in Thailand for "lèse majesté" I doubt somewhat; most Thai would probably see it for what it is: a silly but somewhat entertaining if disrespectful portrayal of the court of one of their kings. Since this movie is often the first some foreigners still hear about Thailand, it can be good to have seen it if only to be able to dismiss it more incisively.
PS: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a Siamese ballet is actually quite inspired and one of the rare scene I enjoyed in the movie.
Related articles by Zemanta: |
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| The Facts About Vampires |
[27 May 2009|01:11pm] |
Facts about vampires (from "Let the right one in", http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797):
- very photo-sensitive; would burn if exposed to light.
- have to sustain themselves by drinking fresh blood.
- cannot ingest anything else, or would puke and be very sick.
- become vampires when infected by another vampire, through a non-fatal bite. Other modes of transmission may also reasonably be held to exist. There may be difference between vampires depending on the mode of infection.
- are hated by cats, who will attack and bite them if in sufficient number.
- cannot come in a house without being invited.
- if enter house without being invited, will start spilling blood from every one of their skin pores and orifices (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc...)
- stay the same physical appearance than when first became vampires.
- cannot resist the urge to drink blood when blood is available. Will lap it up if spilt on floor.
- will seduce partners to help them in dealing with the necessities of their peculiar life (e.g. helping to travel around, ensuring safety when recluse and sleeping during day, in some cases, even providing fresh blood).
- have a rather unpleasant (to unused noses) smell, though this is apparent only from perplexed wondering of new guests to a vampire's home.
- become very weak and sickly when not provided with their ration of blood.
- once satiated, feel much better very quick, smell better and are in much better mood.
- would very much like to be liberated from the burden of being a vampire.
- progressively lose the memory of their past human life, as it becomes further and further in time, to the point where they forget their own birthday, or the sensations of being human.
- while stay young, their family, and then partners, get old and die, leaving them alone if they cannot find new partners.
- inspire deep levels of loyalty, love, respect and devotion, but also fear and guilt, from their partners.
- age mentally even though not physically, but somehow still keep their own initial age's yearnings.
- are not sensitive to cold.
- can fly, and scale trees and buildings.
- are very light, "don't weigh a thing".
- can materialize out of nowhere in times of need, for their allies or partners.
- bite their victims in the neck, and will drain them of their blood mightily quick.
- sometime, especially when drinking blood, or subject to others' of their urges, their "real" (length of time living) age will show on their face.
- can be very wealthy, from gifts received from their admirers? or from accumulating wealth over so many years? Or maybe from stealing? This is not clear.
- prefer to live close to the poles, probably because nights are longer there?
- are ambiguously sexed. Do not consider themselves as human.
- do not care much for cleanliness, of clothes, body or living environment.
- have got the most mesmerizing eyes, and very cute smile.
- find it mightily difficult (if not impossible) to resist their urges (usually for drinking bloods), but will then warn the people they care about to stay away.
- if subject to a strong urge, this will be signaled by strange internal noise, like of a stomach growling with hunger.
- can be very inventive, sly and cunning in getting their preys to trust them enough to let them close.
- are very vulnerable because of all the difficult requirements for them to keep on living.
- have to change places constantly because of how the death of their victims will attract attention, suspicion and revenge.
- are really quite good with three dimensional puzzles (maybe because lots of time to think about it at night?)
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| Finally Safari |
[26 Mar 2009|03:52pm] |
Ah, finally, Safari gives the option not to download images from websites... good bye clutter, hello expression. Now, they only have to integrate the search bar with the address bar, and maybe I won't switch to Chrome as soon at it releases for the Mac... hear me Stevie?... Oh, yeah, and please include a menu item so I can download and display pics I do want to see. Still need stupid buggy crash-prone Firefox sometime, for compatibility issues ironically.
Other software I like: The Bean wordprocessor, soooo fast, not like overwrought slow starting Open Office, or gimmicky What-You-See-Is-What-You-See M$ Word. Still need those though for compatibility issues and "complex" documents.
Speaking of which, very enjoyable is LyX, finally up to task, along with JabRef, for any serious word processing and referencing. I love having full total control on what I write, while the SW takes care of proper typesetting.
As ever, LaTeX processed pdf files are a joy to watch; my favorite fonts at the moment are Latin Modern Sans in the Sans Serif family, and New Century Schoolbook in the Roman family (rather than previous favorite Times Roman). Donald Knuth is part of my personal pantheon.
For pics, I like Picasa rather than horrible iPhoto which hijacks your computer, scrambles up all your files and takes your pictures hostage. For picture manipulation, SeaShore does the job OK (Gimp is really too slow on my MacBook).
Other than that, I am kind of happy with iTunes, though a Picassa for music would be rather welcome. And I am OK with Mail, though of course any serious emailing is done with (offline) Gmail. I have no major quibble with Excel of Powerpoint either; they do what they do quite well.
The dictionary standard on the Mac is kind of OK, no need for external application; I wish however more software did program short-cuts to it. ATM, only Apple software routinely do so. Speaking of which, really, please, do implement usual Mac shorcuts in your application, developer darlings. I am using Phoenix for blogging at the moment, but it won't even run to the end of a line when I do "Apple + -->". |
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| Dodge the shoes, but the bullet? |
[17 Dec 2008|09:00am] |
I think I could watch this video play and replay forever. Too bad the journalist could not smuggle a gun in there; I am quite sure that for all his superhuman reflexes, Bush would not have been able to dodge such amazingly well targeted projectiles.
Not such a lame ducking president, after all!
Oh well, another time?
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| Chrome Incognito |
[15 Dec 2008|09:57pm] |
For times when you want to browse in stealth mode, for example, to plan surprises such as gifts or birthdays, Google Chrome offers the incognito browsing mode.
Like this is not going to be primarily used by dirty people getting their dose of smut from the web without their partner knowing about it... "surprises such as gifts or birthdays", right...
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| Я не говорю по-русски |
[15 Sep 2008|05:05am] |
So, one LAST time:
I DON'T FUCKING SPEAK NO RUSSIAN! Ya ni gavaru pa Ruski. Я не говорю по-русски.
So if you are some booger-brained bear-shit stained Ruskie, stop FRIENDING my account and please go back to fucking the Georgies. |
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| Barack Obama, sore loser |
[21 Jan 2008|09:41am] |
Obama is such a sore loser. Booh, booh, Bill picked on me, call the racial police. Why don't you take your fight to Hillary, you fucking hanky panky pussy pansy. Or are you afraid of the mighty vagina? |
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| Puke you |
[09 Jan 2008|04:23pm] |
One apple, one lemon, and a clove of garlic, liquefy in a blender, add a spoon of olive oil, blend and drink. If you do not puke, then you did something wrong. Add a bit of ginger?
For good measure, try a spoon of salt in your coffee, I guarantee you will enjoy. |
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| Oriana Fallaci |
[19 Sep 2006|08:57am] |
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RIP Oriana Fallaci. You will be greatly missed. I think she would have loved the paradox of the current situation, with the Pope being forced to retract when he said that Islam brought only evil and destruction into the world by... a horde of Muslims baying for Christian blood.
( Read more... ) |
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| 9/11! 911! Morne plaine! |
[12 Sep 2006|09:50am] |
Amusing conflation of two recent posts, one by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) candid, referring to this:
All About America in 3 Days - Los Angeles Times: "'Po-LEESE! Po-LEESE!' the students recited in unison, practicing a 911 call.
Coming from a country without government or law, the idea that help is only a phone call away amazed Yussuf, whose parents were killed and who is traveling to the U.S. alone. 'So if anyone bothers me, I just call 911 and the police come and beat them?' she asked. 'Life must be very easy.'" The other post is by ana, referring to this recording of a woman who called 911 because Burger King did not fulfill her order fast enough. ''Oh my god, oh my god, I am so hungry, please, this is an emergency".
This is my delayed celebration of 9/11. I hope you had a nice 9/11 too. |
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| Comments |
[07 Sep 2006|07:39am] |
I absolutely hate commenting on other people's journal, I don't know how you people do it. I avoid it at all cost, it always sound silly or I don't have the context and will make a misstep.
I also avoid writing anything that could seem ingratiating, at the cost of not expressing my appreciation for a nice entry or understanding for a situation or commonality of views.
I just don't have the time for making comments and then worrying about them, I already spend so much time thinking how everything I do is interpreted by others. Most of the time, I just end up being misunderstood or ignored. |
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| Disgust |
[06 Sep 2006|04:24am] |
What a shame with all psychologists and all those who work in the mental health professions. I thought in my naivety they were supposed to side with those who do not fit in this degrading society, but they seem to prefer siding with the State, society, trying to get you to `fit'.
Freud defined a mental disease as the inability to function in society. I had thought he meant that in a liberal sense, that this meant no behavior could be properly labeled as a problem as long as one was comfortable with it and could still function properly. But now I realize how conservative and repressive his thinking was. He was to be interpreted literally, what he meant was that his role was to get people to adapt to society, that society set the standard, not the person.
He saw his work as that of putting people in `working order', for them to become docile cogs, no matter what society they were living in, no matter how unjust, repressive, intolerant, dysfunctional. Put him in Saudi Arabia with a woman patient, and he would see no relation between her ailment and the society that forces her to wear a veil or let her husband take a second or third wife. At best, he was inspired by the notion you can't change society so better fit in it. At worst, he was a willful lackey of the State. In any case, nothing like a revolutionary or a progressive.
I now see those shrinks are tools of the system, re-engineerers of the psyche, people who see the problem in the individual, not in its vicious environment. Oh of course, they will pretend otherwise, try to mollify you, but the proof of my assertion is that they won't let go of you until they think you are back in line.
They will go as far as pretending to `accept' you, letting you believe they have some genuine understanding, they will pretend to side with you, but all the while they won't accept they themselves are part of the system that is the problem.
They prefer betraying their vocation, forgetting why they took up those professions and blocking the way for those with genuine will and a genuine ability to help. Shame to them for misappropriating their science and putting it to use against those it was meant to help. Sellouts. Usurpers. Fakes with diplomas.
How many times did they try to convince me of their theories on my behalf, and when I held steadfast and refused to adopt their interpretation, used their same theory to `prove' me wrong. How can I even be wrong if I don't believe one word of what they say, or when I disproved them. And how beneficial to me can it be to have to defend myself constantly, asserting myself against some tool of patriarchy.
The worst thing in all this story is that I am convinced they know the extent of their treachery and they know they can't build anything on this perversion of their profession. When they ask me to partake in their little useless plays, they actually ask me to betray myself in a futile compassion for their impotence. As if I could ever make real the illusion they have that they can help. As if by some magic I could build anything based on a conscious lie.
Oh, what I hate most are their false promises, the utter waste of time they impose on me. That horrible mix of arrogance, power, greed, lack of means, impotence, and perpetual failure that seems to typify this whole sector in the medical establishment. And what I hate most is me for having to frequent those truly sick, despicable people. |
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| Bush assasinated |
[31 Aug 2006|12:45pm] |
From madamealexis, Bush 'assassinated' in TV drama.  I don't know if I would really call this a 'drama', it is more like my dream finally realized... if only in fiction. I looked for better pictures, or even a video, because I can't quite see his face as he is dying. I hope the actor that was selected looks sufficiently like him that people like me can actually entertain if only momentarily some fleeting illusion that this is for real.
Anyway, that does make for a very entertaining start to a documentary. They seem to be looking at what would happen if somebody actually gored the pig. I just wish somebody would check whether their fiction turns out to be accurate and well informed *hint, hint*. |
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| Football |
[31 Aug 2006|07:00am] |
I dislike football, just as I dislike any other team sport for that matter, especially spectator sports involving hairy men making fools of themselves, but I suspect that, were I in Iran, I would develop a sudden antagonistic fondness for that sport. I really wonder why. Maybe a bit of the same way so many Polish people went Catholic in the Communist era. |
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