The Church of the non-believer

Members of an atheist congregation at Harvard listen to music during a recent gathering. Image courtesy CNN

Members of an atheist congregation at Harvard listen to music during a recent gathering. Image courtesy CNN

What it means to be human can be surprisingly difficult to define. But many aspects of being human are easy to spot. One of those is we like singing familiar songs, hearing traditional stories, maybe some special, secret ritual stuff thrown in, feasting or sacrificing, while celebrating our individual and collective successes and comforting those in pain, and we like to do this as a group, a tribe. It’s part of who we are.

Anthropologists theorize with good reason that this informal dynamic has been at work stretching back at least to the domestication of fire, or even the divvying up of the meal, or more accurately, the social circles we formed around those activities. Some think religion has a lock on it today, but one former pentecostal pastor disagrees in a big way, he now holds services for the godless: [Read more…]

Honchos and worker bees

QueenBee

Watching the reaction to Edward Snowden’s revelations has been entertaining to say the least. Almost every media personality I’ve observed speak on it either talks about how they don’t trust him, or prefaces their concerns over the message with an obligatory swipe at the messenger. The latter often includes a shot not just at Snowden but at Glenn Greenwald, the UK Guardian journalist who brought the material to light.

It seems a bit over the top. Snowden and Greenwald appear subject to a standard of accuracy and at times vitriol quite different than the one facing high ranking NSA and contractor personnel. There is reason to be skeptical of spies in general, but why the high ranking spooks who have been caught splitting semantic hairs, evading, and glossing over key details are not much part of the story, while every last thing Snowden says is scrutinized for the slightest inconsistency, is puzzling. Perhaps what we’re seeing is a secret version of something many reading this would identify with: the difference in the treatment, perception and motive for corporate bigwigs vs the observations of rank and file worker. [Read more…]

Learn how to survive the zombie invasion

Zombies_NightoftheLivingDead

Zombie invasion: one of many possible contingencies being planned for in Kansas shelter/theme park.

Preppers rejoice, the end times may be nigh. At least according to a colorful, eccentric survivalist-themed park owner deep in the heart of Kansas. Doesn’t matter how the end comes mind you, until that mystery resolves, he’s definitely on a spiritual mission: which includes translating the cash of the paranoid and curious into his own: [Read more…]

Hubble eyes close encounter of the galactic kind

Hubble image of Arp 142

 

If the face of Mars indicates alien interest in human beings long before we evolved, Penguins must rule intergalactic space. Or possibly dolphins, I always suspected the dolphins, acting so cute and playful and all! Or maybe both are just a product of chance and the penchant of our little bulging primate brains to arrange random images into familiar patterns. I’m going for the latter: [Read more…]

NSA may have tapped key politicians, possibly President

We have no way to know if this is true — that’s the whole problem in a nutshell when it comes to double-super-secret spying. It’s just too easy to turn that apparatus against anyone. Back in 2004 a big story hit that the NSA was tapping US citizens without even using the secretive and allegedly flimsy FISA court warrent process. Russ Tice, the same whistle blower who helped bring warrantless wiretapping to light, now says then Senator Obama may have been one of the targets: [Read more…]

Pastor Dan speaks on food stamps cuts

I have a friend named Pastor Dan who does progressive things, he’s sorta the unofficial pastor of the Netroots. Or he was back when there were a dozen of us. Dan once started off a sermon reading something I wrote as an atheist about the wonder and pageantry of the universe. Which was a little weird for me, made more confusing because I liked it.

The religious right helped turn me off to religion before I got into high school. One of the things that distracted me then and still does is how utterly, blatantly, happily, they use the unambiguous words and adventures of socialist hippy Jesus to justify, at one time or another, virtually every species of greed and corruption. The religious left doesn’t get the kinda big bucks righties do, but they’re there and he’s one of them. A lot of pastors are, it’s part of their job: [Read more…]

Obama hates Catholic children!

Group photo of right-wingnuttosphere

Group photo of right-wingnuttosphere

President Obama unveiled his latest attack on religion, children, and apple pie this morning. And he had the nerve to do it in Belfast, Ireland! But you have to read between the lines, or better yet not read it at all. Obama said in part, “If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs—if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.” Simply run that through the zombie lie translator to learn what it really means: [Read more…]

James Gandolfini & me

The recent unexpected death of James Gandolfini from what could be a heart attack really hit home. He was marvelous as Tony Soprano. Gandolfini pulled off a near miracle: playing a compassionate family man sociopath so brilliantly we found ourselves cheering on the modern day don. It’s common to hear what a swell person someone was after they die, but by all accounts Gandolfini really was a great guy. What caught my attention is he was only 51 years-old, same as me. I’m not sure when his last cardio check up was or if that’s even the cause of death. But a simple cath, maybe even a stress test, might have saved his life.

I survived my massive heart attack with little or no damage. How or why some do and some don’t is a good question. I also suffered complications after a stent was put in, specifically, what looked like a hole opened up between the two chambers causing a panoply of weird, terrifying symptoms. It was about a centimeter in width, that’s a good sized PFO and it would have to be fixed surgically. It’s not official yet, but there’s good news there, that hole appears to be healing on its own. The bad news is the good news will probably make it harder to qualify for disability — not Big Gubmint disability, it’s between me and CIGNA that both I and my employer paid for out of pocket. It’s not much, it works out to about $200/week, this is not a big score. But it’s critical to me: if it doesn’t come through I’ll end up dead broke at the end of this month and possibly fired for taking time off to look into it. Which could leave me homeless with no employer sponsored health insurance while recovering from a major heart condition that requires expensive drugs to be taken everyday for many more months. All at a time when I’m supposed to avoid stress. Only in America huh?