Archive for June, 2009

I’m not exactly sure what such training entails, but anything that helps worthy candidates — as opposed to fanatical religious right ideologues — get elected to the Texas State Board of Education is all right by me. The “militant Darwinists,” to borrow Terri Leo’s immortal phrase, running the Texas Freedom Network will be doing said training at St. Edwards University here in Austin on July 22. Interested parties can go here for registration information, as well as here to remind yourselves that, just because Don “Stand Up to the Experts and Fail!” McLeroy is no longer SBOE chair, it doesn’t mean the work of those who support quality education free from extremist lunacy is done.

Dear readers, would somebody please figure out why there’s been a recent surge in emails about the movie Zeitgeist? We’ve had four in the past week. Is it going through some new PR effort right now? To be absolutely clear: everyone on the show thinks Zeitgeist is pretty much crap. You can read this unofficial position statement for more details. It’s bad history, bad skepticism, and especially bad movie making. A sampling of recent emails: Tim from the Netherlands, 6/15: I recently saw your videos on YouTube and I completely agree with you. I never considered myself an atheist in the past but i was never religious in the past. Although now that I think about I think I could be an atheist. Well the main point of the email is the tell you about “The Zeitgeist Movement”. You may have heard about it, you may not. I just want to bring more awareness. Claudio in Brazil, 6/18: I wish u guys talk about the movie Zeitgeist, is a great documentary about the world society. If you like it like me let me know when u gonna talk about it please Jake, 6/22: Anyways, I just finished watching the religious portion of Zeitgeist – The Movie and I think it is something everyone should see. I searched YouTube and I could not locate anything about the subject matter being discussed on AE. If I’m incorrect, please forgive me for conducting such a shoddy cursory check. However, if the material is something you haven’t covered in depth, will you address the Horus/Jesus connection, to the extent the movie does? As always, I’ll be watching! Cory in Illinois, 6/23: Have you heard of the movie Zeitgeist? It was created by a man named Peter Joseph, and is an amazing documentary about the institutions of this world and how they are designed and created simply for public control, the religious institution being one of them. You should really watch these. The main reason that I took to them so quickly is because he...
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We’ve now gotten literally dozens of emails saying, in effect, the same thing about the first of the summer shows recorded* at Matt’s: Loved the show (and everyone’s taken to using the “guerilla TV” appellation); the sound was better; the Skype calls sounded a million times better than the studio calls; keep using Skype forever! We couldn’t agree more on the audio quality. In fact, that is one of the things that floored me especially about last Sunday’s show. However, please note that the reason Matt and I sounded as good as we did was that we were using the Non-Prophets mikes, and holding them right to our chins. That invariably leads to very good voice pickup, but constantly holding your mike isn’t the easiest way to do a 90-minute TV show, and besides, I felt like any moment we’d be expected to burst into freestyle rap, and neither of us had ballcaps to wear backwards. Regarding Skype: indeed, the sound quality there was marvelous, but there are advantages and disadvantages there as well. For one thing, there’s no way (at least, not one we were able to employ last Sunday) to screen and queue multiple calls at once, like we do in the studio. This was what necessitated the procedure of requiring viewers to IM us first, so we could call them back instead. Again, worked okay for one show, but I’m not sure it’d be the sort of setup we’d like to have each week. Remember that the Access studios are undergoing a million dollars worth of renovation all summer. Hopefully, one of the things that gets a massive tech upgrade will be the phone system, allowing greater clarity in the studio. In other words, we need to do a wait-and-see before committing one way or the other to the permanent use of Skype. Now, let’s see how well things go with the show tomorrow, and what other areas of techie improvement we can undertake. I really think it’s incredible we can do a global, live...
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Someone contacted the list with the following claims: Assertion 1: An agnostic is someone who is neither a theist (someone who believes a god exists) nor an atheist (someone who does not believe a god exists OR someone who denies a god exists). While I agree with this, I soon found out I have different reasons for doing so. I go by the theologically classical definition of agnostic as someone who addresses knowledge regarding god, and finds it lacking, versus the Gnostic, who believes that knowledge about god is accessible and perhaps even that he has such knowledge. The person making claim 1 above, however, asserts that an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves that a god exists. They wished to use that definition alone because it is what their friends agreed was right, and it was listed as a “colloquially” acceptable definition in his dictionary, some version of Merriam-Webster. I already knew the dilemma this person was creating for himself. To define the agnostic off the bat as not being a person who believes a god exists leaves little room for then trying to defend that the agnostic is someone who does not believe a god exists. I think most people would see the problem with the position even before it unfolds: If a “senior” is defined as one who is at or over 65 years old, and you assert that I am “not a senior,” there is no escaping that you have just indicated I am not at or over 65. And the writer does agree that a theist is a person who does believe a god exists. Thankfully he understands at least one significant definition in theological terminology. I knew he was going to encounter difficulty, then, in defending his claim that this agnostic is no atheist. Literally, anyone who is not a theist (someone who does believe a god exists) is an atheist (someone who does not believe a god exists). And this person who contacted us, let’s call him “J,” for brevity, agreed that the...
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The latest hilarious story of a politician with a roving willy is that of Nevada Republican senator John Ensign, who has shamefacedly confessed to an extramarital affair. Like the disgraced Democratic New York governor Eliot Spitzer, Ensign is your garden variety moral hypocrite, with an extra special twist that makes the schadenfreude at his downfall especially delightful. Because, being a Republican, Ensign’s big bugaboo was the “threat” of gay marriage, and how it threatened to “weaken” traditional marriages like the one he was betraying. Among other things, Ensign was very vocal in his calling for Larry “Wide Stance” Craig to resign. Here’s Ensign on marriage catching teh gay. “The effort to pass a constitutional amendment reaffirming marriage as being between a man and a woman only is being undertaken strictly as a defense of marriage against the attempt to redefine it and, in the process, weaken it,” Ensign said. “Marriage is an extremely important institution in this country and protecting it is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution.” Read more
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