Insomnia.. ?

I'm having one of those nights.

I don't have them a lot.

They're common in my family though. My whole life my mom has had problems sleeping. She used to come in my room and wake me up at some ungodly hour to tell me stupid things like "Don't wear baggy T-Shirts to school anymore, they make you look trashy." Her mind races about ridiculous things and eventually she just gets up and plays on the computer or watches TV. I still get e-mails from her at like 4:30 in the morning sometimes. I've learned my brother has become the same way. He has to have earplugs, complete darkness, and get an early start to make sure he gets some sleep.

I feel lucky that usually I fall right asleep- No matter what. I can conk out at 2 in the afternoon even if I only woke up at 12. I heart sleeping. However, tonight I can't sleep. I realize its only 1am, but its been a very long day. I had to be up at 8:30 this morning, and I worked ALL day (10-8). I'm exhausted, but when I lay down this is what I think:

1. I have to keep my grades up. My GPA depresses me. I imagine I'll keep letting it fall, until I end up with exactly a 3.0 because thats all I have to have to get $20,000 of my loans forgiven. So sad. So sad.

2. My dog chewed my passport up. I'm going to Germany at the end of May. I need to get a new one, pronto.

3. I have zero coin.

4. I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. I know that I care about books, knowledge, writing, truth, religion, freedom, equality, education, and breaking taboos... but I don't know what I can do with any of those things that will make me any money.

5. I REALLY need to wash clothes... and dishes... and clean my room.

6. I need to buy new pillows.. mine kinda suck- hardcore.

7. Thinspo (I just learned about this earlier today)

8. I'm not that great of a writer...



I hope this not being able to sleep thing doesn't become a habit. It's silly. I'm far too laid back to be worrying my little head about things all night long. ;)

Shouldn't a girl be entitled to her beauty rest?!


I'm going to put King of the World on and try again......

(I've gotten up 4 times and changed this post... and I've restarted King of the World 3... This is getting silly.)

xkcd - Munroe

Good xkcd today.


"I didn't even know I *had* the Monty Python 'Lumberjack' song."



I also friended Mr. Munroe on Facebook today... we'll see if he accepts. If he doesn't, I think I'll just be that crazy person that friends him a million times until he finally does. :)

(I love how "friend" is now used as a verb)

Religion and Obama's "More Perfect Union"

I watched Obama's speech the other day (I know this is fairly late) and I really loved it. I'm not going to go too far into the dynamics of the race arguments, because even though they were great, thats not what I really want to write about. Yes Obama's speeches are great, and yes you can call him a "televangelist" or argue that he's just a great orator with words that sound pretty, but I would argue (and Parker would agree) that if you read that speech on paper it would be just as moving and just as good.

Here's the speech, in case you missed it:


But, I digress. The issue that I want to talk about is not race or candidate preference, but religion (duh.. you know me). When I watched the speech I paused at a particular point where Obama mentioned all the worlds great religions. He said, "In the end then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the worlds great religions demand, that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us." I turned to the person beside me and began a rant on the ability of "No Religion-ers" to have morals too, arguing that it was ironic that while Obama was giving a speech on the divisive power of race he was still ignoring the divisive power of religion.

I understand that Obama cannot make an appeal to people with no religion. I know that this would be political suicide for him. However, it pains me to see any group of people treated as lesser citizens and I yearn for the day when Americans can accept atheists and agnostics as people too, and a politician can speak out against religion.

The person next to me did not agree and told me that hope in an America that accepted non-religious people was futile and naive. Hm... sort of like hoping for a country where races are treated equally, where women don't suffer from discrimination, and where gays and lesbians aren't treated as second class citizens?

I believe the fight against the religious monopoly goes hand in hand with Obama's fight against racial divisions... and I'm not alone. Sam Harris wrote a great article on the issue.

He says:

"Like every candidate, Obama must appeal to millions of voters who believe that without religion, most of us would spend our days raping and killing our neighbors and stealing their pornography. Examples of well-behaved and comparatively atheistic societies like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark—which surpass us in terrestrial virtues like education, health, public generosity, per capita aid to the developing world, and low rates of violent crime and infant mortality—are of no interest to our electorate whatsoever."

and

"Obama did not say that religion’s effect on our society, and on the black community especially, has been destructive—and where it has seemed constructive it has generally taken the place of better things. Religion unites, motivates, and consoles beleaguered people not with knowledge, but with superstition and false promises. Surely there is a better way to bring people together in the 21st century."

and my favorite,

"But Obama’s candidacy is also depressing, for it demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the audacity of reason?"


Will we ever be ready? I hope so.

Richard Dawkins

Evolutionary Biologist, Atheist, and Author, Richard Dawkins came to the University of Texas and spoke on his book The God Delusion Wednesday evening. The event didn't start until 7pm, but when I got in line at 5:20, there were probably already 700 people in front of me. Luckily though, I happened to be on the side of the building that Dawkins came in on. Look how close I was:



Anyway, the lecture was amazing. I wish I could have videoed the whole thing, but they asked us not to video at all, and I looked very funny holding my camera up for like 50 seconds anyway. Here's a clip of an answer to a question about why Atheism is important:



His voice is so cute. ;)


He also used a clip from comedian Marcus Brigstocke in his lecture. I found it on YouTube. This video is over 7 minutes long, but Dawkins only used the first 3:15. Its really pretty funny.




Dawkins has also started the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and has included a great list of goals and priorities for the foundation. These include fighting the epidemic in the science classroom, research on things like why people are more interested in astrology than astronomy, and at what age a child is most impressionable, maintaining a database of available lecturers and thereby supporting the next generation of freethinkers, publishing books in America or Britian that may only be published in one country, supporting The Out Campaign, and raising consciousness about the religious label imposed on young children who no more identify with Christianity or Islam than they do with Marxism. These aren't all, but these are my favorites. :)


The Out Campaign is pretty cool... they sale Scarlet Letter T-Shirts w/ a big Atheist A on the front... How cute is that?


Also, through links from Dawkins's Site, I found a fund to help finance security for Ayaan Hirsi who was born into the Islamic faith, and now speaks out and condemns it for many different reasons, including its treatment of women. The death threats may not come in such a large number if Ayaan Hirsi was simply a dissenter who spoke out every once in a while. However, she happens to be a fierce politician, an author, and one of the mind's behind Theo van Gogh's 11 minute film titled "Submission Part 1." van Gogh was murdered because of his views, and his killer left a 5 page letter to Ayaan Hirsi impaled on the corpse. In any case, she is a freethinker whose free speech is coming with a large price. How can she marry? How can she raise a family? She has to be surrounded by security and practically running from one place to the next. This story disgusts me. If you'd like to help her out donate Here. If you'd just like to read a pretty good Time's article on her, then go Here.


Anyway, Dawkins is great, so is Sam Harris, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens and all the other emerging freethinkers... Go watch some videos of them, you'll enjoy it. :)

I'll leave you with a Dawkins quote:

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."

Pseudo-Science

Can someone please tell me why the history channel and the discovery channel continue to pollute the world with pseudo-scientific claims and programs?

Currently, the History Channel is "investigating" UFOs and USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects). Their "evidence" is nothing but "eye-witness" accounts. Any moron in the world who wants to be on TV can claim they saw something "they'd never seen before." Are you kidding?! These people say they saw a light in the sky. Later 2 college students said they were experimenting with weather balloons and thats what people had seen. However, all these eye-witnesses refuse to accept that as an answer.. for some reason, in their minds, its more probable that these lights were from extraterrestrials, than weather balloons... Seriously?

Not too long ago the Discovery Channel did a whole program on Mayan Prophesies about the end of the world. A whole fucking program on how the world will end in 2012.

This isn't science. I'm disgusted with the lack of science and math education in our schools today, the lack of science and math knowledge present in our adult culture, and with the surplus of pseudo-science in popular culture.

Tattoo!

Wham, Bam, Thank you Tom Robbins :)

Politics, Religion, and Tattoos.

cute story: Here

Disturbing story: Here
1 in 4 teenagers have an STD yet the church just distributed a list of 7 Social Sins including "Bioethical Violations" such as birth control, and the religious right still pushes against HPV Vaccinations on moral grounds. Disgusting.



I voted in the primaries this year :)
I also caucused... which was.... uh.. interesting. You would think that with all the talk and hype they would have been prepared for a record caucus turnout.. but no.. they weren't. Some creepy guy with a mic got up and said "okay, uh, we need everyone to sign this paper." And everyone got up and tried to run and push to the front of the sanctuary. Yes. I said sanctuary. You see, even though we have the false assumption of Separation of Church and State, my caucus was held in the sanctuary of a Lutheran Church. I was sufficiently creeped out while I waited in a wooden pew for teh festivities to begin. All I had to look at were visitors cards and hymnals... ew.



















I was standing in the middle of the sanctuary here... it was mass chaos. Very representative of the way our government works, actually..



I also got a letter back from Tom Robbins!!!! It was awesome. I'm the happiest girl alive :)
He said he likes the symbol from Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. It was developed 5,000 years ago to memorialize a visit to them by extraterrestrials from the star system Sirius. hehe. Anyway I had Josh draw it on me so we could see how it looked:

Cool huh? :)


Catch ya l8er.