Are atheists unfit soldiers?

The US military seems to think so, at least from their Mandatory Soldier Fitness Tracker survey that measures a soldier’s competency in areas like Family, Emotional, Social, and Spiritual. Justin Griffith, an outspoken foxhole atheist, wasn’t shocked when he flunked the Spiritual section, but was appalled when he was referred to counseling because of it. Here’s a snippet from his results:

Spiritual fitness is an area of possible difficulty for you. You may lack a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. At times, it is hard for you to make sense of what is happening to you and others around you. You may not feel connected to something larger than yourself. You may question your beliefs, principles, and values. Nevertheless, who you are and what you do matter. There are things to do to provide more meaning and purpose in your life. Improving your spiritual fitness should be an important goal. Change is possible, and the relevant self-development training modules will be helpful. If you need further help, please do not hesitate to seek out help from the people you care about and trust – strong people always do. Be patient in your development as it will take time to improve in this area. Still, persistence is key and you will improve here if you make this area a priority.

Make sure you read Justin’s full piece describing the test, because it makes these results even more revolting. Apparently not believing in a higher power or considering yourself spiritual means your life lacks purpose and meaning. Who wrote this crap, and why is it being used by the United States government?

Kudos to Justin for being outspoken about this. It takes immense bravery to speak out as an atheist, especially in the military. Hopefully this will gain enough attention that something will be done about it.

PS: And in case his name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the one organizing Rock Beyond Belief, a secular concert/extravaganza in response to an overtly Christian concert held at his base earlier this year. I’ll be speaking there, along with awesome people like Eugenie Scott, Hemant Mehta, Margaret Downey, and great musical guests. Make sure to show him some love!

My PhD is going to be magical

Mom: She’s visiting from Seattle, where she’s getting her PhD.
Random Guy: Oh? What are you studying?
Me: Genome Sciences.
Guy: Oh yeah? The really small stuff, right?
Me: Well, I guess it’s really small…
Guy: Do they wear hats too?
Me: …genome, like genetics. Not gnomes.

Later:
Mom: So your program is officially called Genome Sciences? Why not Genetics?
Me: Well, genomics is more holistic… Sort of bigger picture.
Mom: I’ll remember that name by thinking of gnomes wearing G-strings!
Me: …sometimes I wonder what goes on in your brain.

Now you know where I get it from.

Atheist golfing

Me: *hits drive on 18th hole, pushes it a little to the right* Uh oh, I’m almost in someone’s yard.
Dad: You’ll like the sign in their yard.
Me: *drives up*
Sign: Jesus is the Reason for the Season
Me: Ha! Darn, I missed.

After my approach shot, I proceeded to shank my chip, and then because I was laughing so hard, I whiffed my mulligan chip. To put that in perspective, I haven’t whiffed since I was little, and ended up shooting an 87. Not bad for not playing in 4 months and using someone else’s clubs (which were too short and too light for me), but I think God was still punishing me for mocking his gaudy Christmas sign.

Oh well. Shot an 84 today, so God must not care too much.

Omg Harry Potter

Tomorrow morning I’m going to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando, FL.

…

OMFG I’M SO EXCITED AAAHHHHH!!!

Actually, I have nothing else to add. I just wanted to rub it in to my friends who aren’t here with me. That’s what friends are for, right? ;)

I’ll make sure to post geeky photos when I get back. And I’m sure I’ll have interesting stories to tell, especially if my dad keeps calling Dumbledore “Dingledorf.”

I need to fly more often

Don’t Ask Don’t tell has been voted to be repealed. Yay!

I’d say more or find a relevant news article to link to, but I’m currently sitting in the New Orleans airport and functioning on 4 hours of sleep. So you get shoddy blogging, sorry.

So, now that we think it’s okay for gays to be open about their sexuality when they’re getting shot at fighting for our rights, will we actually extend those rights to them and let them marry when they come home? Or is that too much to ask?

Oh well. Baby steps.

Overheard at the post office

It’s hard to convey tone through text, but keep in mind both of these guys were light hearted in this conversation:

Guy: I need some stamps, what kind do you have?
Employee: Well, we have the bells, the holiday ones, and then the godless ones.
Guy: Godless ones?
Employee: Yep! *shows him some holiday stamps with pine cones and other nature-y things on them*
Guy: I guess I’ll take two of the godless-
Employee: Two heathen stamps!
Guy: -and two of the overly religious ones.
Employee: Shhh, we’re not allowed to say that.

I giggled. Definitely a “No Jen, you’re not in Indiana anymore” moment.

That and the fact that a young woman wearing a cross necklace happily helped me stuff 21 copies of The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas into envelopes as I was frantically trying to get in before closing. Hooray for Seattle.

Google can now filter by “reading level”

This is a really neat advanced search feature just released by Google! You can now filter by “reading level,” including within posts for a certain site. How do they determine what’s considered Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced?

The feature is based primarily on statistical models we built with the help of teachers. We paid teachers to classify pages for different reading levels, and then took their classifications to build a statistical model. With this model, we can compare the words on any webpage with the words in the model to classify reading levels. We also use data from Google Scholar, since most of the articles in Scholar are advanced.

Okay, I’m sure that’s not a perfect method, but it’s still nifty. For example, nature.com comes up very advanced:
I wonder what my blog looks like?Oh…um… well, I’m sure that’s just a result of blogging in general, right? We’re all a bit more informal around here.
…Well, PZ does a lot more reviews of scientific articles than me, I’m sure that helps his score. Surely I must be better than something like
…

I’m going to interpret this as “I write in a way that’s easily accessible to the general public,” rather than “I write like a goddamn moron.”*

*I should note that my ex-boyfriend pointed all of this out to me, along with this. I think this is payback for my quip about engineers being bad in bed. Internet karma, indeed.

Google can now filter by "reading level"

This is a really neat advanced search feature just released by Google! You can now filter by “reading level,” including within posts for a certain site. How do they determine what’s considered Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced?

The feature is based primarily on statistical models we built with the help of teachers. We paid teachers to classify pages for different reading levels, and then took their classifications to build a statistical model. With this model, we can compare the words on any webpage with the words in the model to classify reading levels. We also use data from Google Scholar, since most of the articles in Scholar are advanced.

Okay, I’m sure that’s not a perfect method, but it’s still nifty. For example, nature.com comes up very advanced:

I wonder what my blog looks like?Oh…um… well, I’m sure that’s just a result of blogging in general, right? We’re all a bit more informal around here.
…Well, PZ does a lot more reviews of scientific articles than me, I’m sure that helps his score. Surely I must be better than something like
…

I’m going to interpret this as “I write in a way that’s easily accessible to the general public,” rather than “I write like a goddamn moron.”*

*I should note that my ex-boyfriend pointed all of this out to me, along with this. I think this is payback for my quip about engineers being bad in bed. Internet karma, indeed.

1,000th post!

And to celebrate, I’m going to go meta-blogging on you.

I can’t believe this is the thousandth post I’ve written at Blag Hag. If you estimate a half hour spent writing each post, that’s nearly 21 days of my life I’ll never get back.

Just kidding, of course. That’s time well spent. I started this blog mostly out of boredom, but now thanks to it I’m a published author, speaking to groups (even internationally!), and have people who actually call themselves fanboys and fangirls.

I’m still not quite used to it – the last bit especially – since it has happened so fast. I started blogging in March of 2009, and I still see myself as a random opinionated student with an internet connection. It’s bizarre that a year ago I was the one fangirling over bloggers like PZ, Hemant, and Greta, and now I consider them all friends and “colleagues” – as much as atheist bloggers can be colleagues.

But – forgive me for being cheesy – I couldn’t have done it without you guys, my readers. Thank you so much for reading, sharing, commenting, showing up to meetups, and supporting me through sweet emails (even though I don’t always have time to reply, I swear I read every one with a huge grin on my face). And thank you for hanging in there when I say something stupid – blogging is my way of thinking out loud and learning about myself, and already when reading older posts I can see how much I’ve progressed.

I’ve always had a passion for writing, but never felt like anyone would care about my work. You proved me wrong and are helping make my dreams come true.

And since this suddenly got too sappy, have a silly photo:I was playing Pictionary with my friends, and the word was “blogger” – so they drew me! (Yes, the name was written after the clue was guessed, rule freaks.) A perfect likeness, as you can see.

Anyway, feel free to celebrate in the comments. Or at the very least, if you’ve been lurking, say hello!

This needed to be said about rape allegations

And Furry Girl says it perfectly [Warning, NSFW link], in respect to the Julian Assange drama :

When lefties fanatically spearhead every rape/abuse allegation leveled by anyone, they are creating an environment that enables and even encourages false accusations from angry parties. While it’s a travesty that police and courts tend to not believe people claiming that they have been sexually assaulted, the solution is not to unquestioningly champion anyone who makes the claim. Never believing and always believing allegations are both wrong. Rape and assault are awful, fucked up things, but that doesn’t mean claims shouldn’t be subjected to any fact-checking or skepticism. Murder is awful, too, and even with our badly flawed judicial system, we still generally try and sort out the facts and give the accused their day in court and a chance to defend themselves.

Hysterics will no doubt claim that I’m defending rape or don’t take it seriously. On the contrary: I consider rape and sexual assault accusations to be so serious that they deserve extra consideration and yes, even questioning when it’s warranted. I think we’re obligated to turn a critical eye on potentially fraudulent allegations. As someone who recently sung the praises of vigilante justice, I’m clearly all in favor of exacting harsh physical and social revenge upon rapists, predators, and abusers – but if you’re going to do that to someone, you had better be sure.

What is the workable alternative to having some degree of caution about rape accusations? Is the argument that rape is so terrible that it’s morally justifiable to destroy innocent lives in the pursuit of ferreting out any potential rapists? (The word for that is collateral damage.)

Make sure to read the whole article, as it’s a great overview on what’s gone down in Assange’s case specifically.

The only thing I disagree with Furry Girl about is her labeling this as a problem of the “feminist left.” I’m part of the feminist left, but I’m first and foremost a skeptic. This is just one of the many reasons why I think it’s so important to get more women to be skeptical thinkers. Questioning does not make us a “tool of the patriarchy” – questioning is empowering.