Sep. 2nd, 2012

jack: (Default)
When I read this headline, I totally expected it to be about retracting a large lie, or an extended lie. But it turns out, it was an apparent lie about how fast he ran a marathon...

Which is really not very important, although it's kind of a dumb mistake to tell people how fast you ran a marathon if you can't remember typical times well enough to make up something roughly plausible.
jack: (Default)
Gone for a short cycle ride ✓

I originally planned to do more than this this weekend, but even for an hour along the guided busway it was still nice. I'm sure for what they spent, if they didn't have the buses, we could have had a cycleway hundreds of times nicer, but it's still one of the nicest cycleways in Cambridge.

However, I temporarily can't find my bike pump. It's two foot tall, where on earth could anyone have put it it's not obvious?

Ordered a lot of books on Amazon ✓

There were a few series (Anthony Price, Stephen Brust) that I'm reading my way through steadily, but if I didn't order the next one as soon as I read the previous, it slipped off my "to buy" pile. And several sequels, random recs, and randomly interesting books off the top of my "see if I want to buy this book later".

I hadn't realised, but buying almost all books on amazon or in e-book form has the advantage that most of the time I can search my email notifications as a quick way to check which books in a series I've read or not.

I'm slightly embarrassed to get a steady stream of small parcels to work, but it seems better than gambling they'll fit through the letter box.

Atheism+

Sep. 2nd, 2012 10:25 pm
jack: (Default)
Several blogs have been talking about the recent coinage Atheism+.
Atheism+ is safe space for people to discuss how religion affects everyone and to apply skepticism and critical thinking to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, GLBT issues, politics, poverty, and crime.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/08/20/is-atheism-plus-just-secular-humanism/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/08/27/atheism-plus-the-site-is-here/

Obviously you can't say whether it's useful or successful at this point, but I appreciate the effort of having a banner for the wing of atheism that is explicitly skeptic, but explicitly inclusive, even if you don't have the "extremely analytical emotions-don't-exist" geek language down pat.
jack: (Default)
Hm. As a plot, Angels and Demons is fairly good. Particle accelerator scientists at CERN discover a new source of energy. Scientists with religious backgrounds read theological implications into apparently "free" energy. Illuminati-infatuated terrorists steal a test device and secrete it in the Vatican on the eve of a Papal election. Academic historian with expertise on the Illuminati is called in to predict the movements of the terrorists. A small romance subplot. Lots of science vs theology discussion.

In general, it's all stuff I really like. It portrays both science and religion sympathetically (although it does keep having Catholics as antagonists).

He avoids the mistake of Da Vinci Code in publicly claiming that all the conspiracy theory crap he made up or stole from somewhere was actually true.

However, I still find it difficult to read, because about three times a page, there's a Big Revelation where he spells out something many ten year olds would find obvious. Which is very unfair of me, because if you're NOT very academic, you may well NOT know all of this (I don't know any of the Vatican history stuff, for instance). But it does make it hard for me to read.

I don't have time to list ALL of the things I found annoying. But a random selection of the first few dozen:

Read more... )

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