Iceland, you have disappointed Ken Ham

Good work, keep it up.

According to a new poll, less than half of Icelanders identify as religious. The other half, obviously, are religious—as everyone has a religion (atheism, for instance, is a religion. When people say they are not religious, it usually means they don’t identify with a church denomination). And the younger generation in Iceland is the least likely to identify as religious, with more than 40% of young people claiming to be atheists (which means they adhere to the religion of naturalism—atheism). And 93.9% of those under 25 believe the big bang created the universe and 0.0% believe it was created by God. Zero percent! Not a single young person they asked said that God created the universe—not a single one.

Well, that was incoherent. I guess that happens when you try to type through your tears.

I find the common accusation that atheism is a religion ludicrous. It’s simply a denial of a negation: not-X is a kind of X! Ham is basically rejecting the idea of a religion at all, since in his simple little brain, everything is a religion. If that’s the case, then I’m going to join the church of Deadwood, hooplehead.

How can you protect a brain by destroying it?

frozenbrains

Last week, Simon Davis wrote to me with questions about this cryonic brain preservation technique, which has now been published as How to Freeze Your Brain and Live Forever (Maybe). Unfortunately, my comments did not make it into the story, because, Simon politely explained, there are length restrictions and perhaps, I assume, also because my extended dismissive scorn does not translate well to polite journalism. And that’s OK! Because I have a blog, and I can rant here!

The Brain Preservation Society has a goal: to preserve dead brains today, so they can be reanimated at some distant time in the future. At least, that’s what they say — I’m more inclined to believe their goal is to pocket lots of money exploiting people’s fear of death. Their immediate plan, though, is to develop more thorough mechanisms of locking down the fine structure of brains.

[Read more…]

Sometimes, the truth is murkier than you’d like

The FBI has released video of the Finicum shooting in Oregon. We’ve been hearing competing stories about it: some have said that he was kneeling in surrender, his arms raised above his head, when the FBI gunned him down in cold blood. Others have said he was charging the police like Rooster Cogburn at the end of True Grit, demanding a hero’s death.

The video shows why both stories are going around. Finicum’s car crashes into the snow at a roadblock. He jumps out, arms held up, and runs away from the road, as if he thinks he can escape. But he’s surrounded. There are agents all around. He stops. He turns around. He lowers his arms and fumbles at his belt. Someone shoots, and he falls to the ground. The camera pans around (it’s on a helicopter or drone, and there is no sound), and you see a few brief flashes of gunfire and smoke — I can’t tell whether the occupants of the car are firing or being shot at. Then there is a few minutes of agents standing around, not ducking for cover, before the occupants begin to emerge with their hands up. Finicum’s body is lying in the snow, not moving.

So it’s a little of all of the stories. I think Finicum was in the heat of anger, ran out with the idea of escaping somehow, saw it was hopeless, and fumbled for a gun. I’d rather the law exercised more restraint — I could imagine that if he did pull a gun, he’d have waved it around in futile bravado before dropping it as the hopelessness of his situation sunk in — but I wasn’t there, and I can sympathize with the officers not wanting to risk getting shot at.

What a waste.

Why didn’t you tell me what it was about?

Shocking news: I went out to watch a movie tonight…and I liked it.

The movie was Spotlight, and I had absolutely no idea what it was about, going into the theater. I only went out because my wife was watching the Republican debate, and when Cruz started whining like a 5 year old that everyone was picking on him, I had to flee before I ripped the television off the wall. So the Morris Theatre Cooperative got my money. If the debate had been on a few hours earlier I would have been watching Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Trip, and I would have liked that better than the Republicans, too.

Spotlight had excellent acting and a strong story, but I have to say that one of the most appealing things about it was the anti-clerical theme. It’s all about the pedophile priest scandals in Boston, and how a team of reporters at the Boston Globe cracked the story. It’s a movie to bring a grim smile to the face of any atheist — grim because there were so many victims of the ratfucking Catholic Church, but a smile through the pain because at least a few high-ranking nasties got exposed. And then got promoted straight up through the Catholic hierarchy.

OK, there really wasn’t much to smile about.

But still, a phenomenally good movie. Go watch it.

Next dilemma, though: who to cheer for at the Academy Awards this year? I was solidly for Mad Max: Fury Road, but now I wouldn’t mind seeing the anti-Catholic movie get the nod.

And then there were four

It looks like the Malheur occupation is ending with a whimper. Ammon Bundy has asked everyone to surrender and only 5 4 people are left in the refuge (on additional left since that last link). They’re sitting around, drinking beer. One person has died, and there’s apparently video on the way to show whether it was suicide-by-cop or an execution — given the police record on this kind of thing, I’m not even guessing whether it was one way or the other.

So…four frustrated, angry people sitting around, complaining bitterly about the evil big guvmint. It could still get bloody. They have lots of guns, and they’re stupid enough to use them.

Maybe what we need to do is just wait for the beer to run out.