Desperate space filler, Oscars edition

No, my work is not yet done, and my deadlines haven’t yet been met, but I’m confident that I’ll reach my goals by this afternoon. Bear with me with patience, please. Until this afternoon, when I slap these puppies and ship them off to their destinations, I’ll leave you with something to discuss among yourselves: the movies!

Last night was Oscar night, and I had the awards yammering in the background while I was pounding the keys. I have to get out more; I’ve seen virtually none of the nominated movies this year. There’s something called “Slumdog Millionaire” that’s getting a lot of buzz? Shows what I know. I hadn’t even heard of it until last night. My pop culture cred just took a nosedive.

As for the awards show, Hugh Jackman was pretty and congenial, which I guess is the role of the emcee. The format was grating: at each award, they’d have five past winners come out on the stage and slather flattery on each nominee, while the camera locked onto each one, simpering and squirming under the barrage of praise. This was not good; Hollywood already has a reputation of being the domain of the vain, and amplifying the effect with a prolonged demonstration of how happy these people are to be fawningly serviced in public had me cringing.

The high point, I thought, was Sean Penn’s acceptance speech for best actor in which he shamed the people who don’t want to see equal rights for everyone, gay or straight.

On a related note, Bill Maher was one of the presenters for best documentary, and what did he do? Plugged his movie, Religulous, while moaning over the fact that it was not nominated. Bad form, Bill, very bad form. Maybe it just wasn’t good enough.

I did finally see Religulous a few days ago, and I confess to being a bit disappointed. It consisted of a series of short interviews with, for instance, truckers at a truck stop chapel, Catholic priests, an “ex-gay” minister, a Muslim rapper, etc., and it was all capped with excellent and scathing monologue that strongly criticized religion. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, and there were some funny bits, but something nagged at me throughout, and only when I saw the conclusion did I realize what it was.

Maher cheated. He had a clear idea of what his opinion was, but he wasn’t sharing it with the people he was interviewing. They were left to flounder and make poor arguments in part because there are no good arguments for religion, but also because they were left in the dark about what they were arguing against. It may be funny, but it’s no fair; contrast that with the Dawkins’ documentaries on religion, which are less funny, but more honest, because the people on camera know (or should know) exactly what they are wrestling with.

A better Religulous would have recorded the closing monolog first, and sent that to each of the potential interviewees with a note saying, “Here’s my position. Are you willing to argue against it on camera?” That would have made for a much more interesting movie, and Maher would have had to break a sweat to address criticisms…and it would probably be less funny. There’s a reason Maher wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, and I think it’s because his documentary took no risks, and didn’t probe very deeply.

Aaaaargh

It’s been quiet here today for a good reason: I’m facing a bunch of deadlines, and I told myself I’d stay offline until I’d met them. I haven’t met them quite yet, but I hate leaving the blog dead for a day…so I’m just offering this note of explanation, and setting this up as an open thread.

Now I’m gone again, back to my labors.

Radio reminder

9am Central. Sunday morning. The evil atheists of the upper midwest will continue their nefarious plan to disseminate propaganda internationally by means of the radio waves, which will vibrate even within the walls of Minneapolis’s churches, synagogues, and temples, and also via the godless intertubes. This week, they will once again spread the infidel lie that atheists can “lead rich, ethical and fulfilling lives without appealing to gods or religious authority”, when every Christian knows deep in their heart that they want to murder, maim, rape, and steal, and only God’s holy extortion can keep them in line.

Go ahead, tune in if you want to lead hedonistic lives of ungodly self-indulgence. Click on that link if you want to make Jesus cry. Destroy all of Western civilization by letting the heathen weaken the shackles of your sacred servitude.

(Just don’t tune in before 9 or after 10, because Air America runs some awesomely stupid informercials before and after the hour of reason.)

Don’t vote on this poll

Just go and gape in awe at the obliviousness of our national media. This is a poll on US News & World Report, and it asks, “If you had a choice of four daycare centers run separately by Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi, which would you choose for your kids?” Incredible.

I believe that next week they’ll have a question about Barack Obama’s, Colin Powell’s, Al Sharpton’s, and Jesse Jackson’s hypothetical fried chicken stands.

Thunderf00t under attack again

We’ll have to see how long this video remains available. Thunderf00t, the well-known godless anti-creationist creator of fine youtube videos, is routinely targeted by Christian/creationist scriptbots to downgrade his videos and even get them banned, and he’s had enough — this clip takes the youtube management to task for kowtowing to the ignorant god-crowd. It was, of course, deleted by the youtube management, but not before it got copied to many other places.

It’s actually rather sad to see. There have been a lot of shenanigans like this recently, and I’ve gone from regarding youtube as merely poorly managed to suspecting that they are actively evil.

We consider ourselves atheists and scientists, of course

Have you ever gotten sucked into one of those endless “Teach the controversy!” or “You’re afraid to look at both sides” kinds of arguments? You know, the ones people backing the most ridiculous positions always make? I need to make a copy of this cartoon to carry with me. It’s a point I’ve often tried to make.

i-17dd094fb1c9c510ba03522f8a0dfc73-windmill1.jpeg

Unfortunately, the kinds of people who advance those arguments are exactly the kinds of people who won’t be able to get it.

I’m never going to get to go to parties anymore, am I?

Maybe we’d get better answers if we polled ghosts

It’s been a while since we had a pointless poll…so here’s a light snack to nibble on. We are asked, “The best evidence for an afterlife is from…“, and the answer so far is:

Mediums
3% (20 votes)
Near-death experiences
26% (147 votes)
Reincarnation memories
15% (86 votes)
Ghosts
5% (29 votes)
EVP and similar
3% (19 votes)
Crisis apparitions
2% (14 votes)
All equal
11% (64 votes)
Other
7% (41 votes)
There is no evidence
27% (156 votes)

I don’t get the popularity of the NDE “evidence”. I had a friend once who told me that he had the most awesome experience on ‘shrooms — he’d melted into a purple puddle that soaked into the earth, and he had spiritual sex with tree roots. I’m pretty sure that didn’t actually happen, and I wouldn’t use it to argue that human beings were capable of phase changes into a fluid state or that intimate congress with plants was fun and rewarding, but people use the same logic all the time in arguing that while they were in a brain-damaged state, befuddled by anoxia, their perception of the hallucinatory state afterwards is evidence that there is a heaven.

I have no idea what “crisis apparitions” are. I don’t care to know either.

I have heard of EVPs — they’re all the rage right now thanks to all those horrible ‘ghosthunter’ shows on TV. Leave a tape recorder running in an empty room, then play it back with lots of amplification of the background hiss and crackle of noise. If you are gullible and really want to believe, you will hear random splutters that you can imagine are sort of voices. And the really cool thing is that if you tell someone that this scrap of noise says something like, “Paul is dead”, then their pattern-forming circuits in their brain will impose your interpretation on the noise for you, and they’ll hear the same thing! Very convincing, I’m sure.

I voted for no evidence. If you vote otherwise, maybe you can come back here and explain your evidence to us. We need a good laugh on a Saturday morning.