Verbisaurus Blogicus

Thursday, 04 October 2012

This evening, I hosted yet another episode of Atheists Talk. For this episode, I interviewed three people about the Secular Parenting Group; the two founders and one other member.

Here’s a link to their Meet-up page.

We discussed why they formed their group, what they do, when they meet, and what they plan to do. For the last half of the 30-minute episode, I asked them to offer some of their suggested materials for non-religious parents and their children. Here are some of the resources they cited:

The Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children. A useful website.

Ruanaway Bunny. I’d never heard of this book before. It’s by the same author who wrote Goodnight Moon, but I’m not sure if this one is drug-inspired or not.

Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be, by Daniel Lexton.

The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau, by John Agee. I know this doesn’t sound like a book that addresses religion/science/doubt or anything like that…but if you read the book, you’ll see the connection.

Love Your Neighbor: Stories of Values and Virtues, by Arthur Dobrin.

Nurture Shock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. This one’s for the adults, obviously. I’ve never read this one. I’ll have to add it to my never-ending list of books to read.

 Friday, 05 October 2012

Recently, Representative Paul Broun said that evolution and the Big Bang theory were lies straight from the pit of hell. He said it while standing in front of a bunch of mounted deer heads, which completely affirms my preconceived notions of people who decorate with decapitated caracasses.

Anyway, this was posted on YouTube today:

Are you ready for more shocking news? This guy is a Republican and (brace yourself)… he’s from Georgia – a state that once tried to leave the United States but that Abraham Lincoln (for some bizarre reason) decided to force back into the Union. Thanks, Abe, I’m so glad we still have Georgia.

Oh – and Representative Broun serves on Congress’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. So don’t worry, our policies and educational systems are in good hands.

Representative Paul Broun: Saving Americans from the pits of hell since 2010.

This being an election year, he’s running for office again. It appears he’s running unopposed, too.

Saturday, 06 October 2012

This evening, Owen and I finished reading The Trumpet of the Swan together. You won’t find it listed over on my List of Books I’ve Read This Year because I already read this book once before, and that list is only for books I’ve read for the first time this year.

I read The Trumpet about five years ago. It had always been a gap in my reading, I feel. When I was in second grade, my teacher read Charlotte’s Web to the class, and I loved it so much, I made my parents buy me a copy. Then, a couple of years later, my aunt bought me Stuart Little, which I quickly realized was written by the same author – E. B. White. On the back of both books, it listed the children’s books by Mr. White. Two of them, I had read. The other one – The Trumpet of the Swan – I had not read. I determined to read it one day…but over 20 years elapsed before I made good on that commitment to myself.

When Owen and I finished the book this evening, I said: “So, what did you think?”

He said: “I liked it. I will read it to Isla one day.”

Me: “What did you think when you found out Louis had a problem and was different from his brothers and sisters. Were you worried about him?”

Owen: “No, I don’t think about those things. I just think ‘I wonder what’s gonna happen to them next.'”

So, there you have it. A stellar review from White’s target audience. Read the book and find out what’s gonna happen next.

Wednesday, 03 October 2012

 Quick! Guess where I took this picture:

A) Provo, Utah

B) Plano, Texas

C) Alabama

D) St. Paul

If you guessed “D,” you’re right. Or should I say, you’re correct.

On a related (though not strictly correlated) note, I drove 2.1 miles down St. Clair Avenue today: counted 26 signs that said “Vote No” on the upcoming no-marriage-for-gays ballot initiative. Well, on of them said “Another Catholic Voting No,” but I’m counting that, too. Actually, I think that one is pretty awesome, because it shows the Catholic chose to break ranks with Emperor Palpatine.

Above: Emperor Palpatine

I also counted one “Vote Yes” sign. The funny thing is that it’s on a duplex’s lawn and the other tenant of the duplex (I assume) put a “Vote No” sign in the yard.

Still, it’s sad to think that my unscientific sampling yields an asshole rate of about 3.7% in St. Paul. Man, that’s a lot. Gotta be waaay better than Big Lake, though. There were heaps of mullets in that town.

Tuesday, 02 October 2012

For class, I’ve been reading the soporific book The Theory Toolbox. On page 153, after bloviating for a while on structuralism vs. post-structuralism, the writers ask:

The big bang theory seems to be the accepted scientific version of the birth of the universe: It all started in one huge mass that broke apart in a huge explosion. The universe will expand as far as it can go and then begin again to contract, bringing everything crashing back into one undifferentiated mass. (This theory also helps to explain gravity, entropy, thermodynamics, and a series of other scientific concepts.) Is there anything suspicious about the big bang theory from a “poststructuralist” point of view?

Okay, I know what you’r thinking. You’re thinking: “Well, I can’t really answer that until I’ve read the pages on poststructuralism.” Yeah, that makes sense. In fact, I wasn’t even sure how to respond to the question, either, so I just sat in class and listened to what my fellow students said.

The discussion was very haphazard. One girl didn’t understand how gravity could be pushing everything apart but then, suddenly, one day, will pull it all together again. Another girl said it’s just a theory so we shouldn’t accept it as fact. Clearly, Hamline knows how to churn out intelligent graduates.

In the hubbub, one girl (okay – side note: there’s a lot of girls in my class – they acount for 13 of the 16 students) mentioned that we routinely defy gravity when taking airplane trips. Not many people heard her, because there were, like, five people talking at that moment, so I just let it slide. But then, a few minutes later, the Professor asked us if gravity really held true all the time. She cited, by way of illustration, the fact that astronauts just float in space.

So, I had to raise my hand and say something. I know my formal training is a bit lacking, but I had to say that gravity always applies. Flying in an airplane or floating in space is not evidence that the theory of gravity is wrong, and no one is “defying” or “violating” gravity at any time. Further, the laws of gravity hold true everywhere we’ve observed in the universe, and there is no reason to think they don’t hold true elsewhere. Gravity, I said, doesn’t mean that we are always stuck to the earth, it more correctly states that matter is attractive. An astronaut is falling to the earth at the exact rate specified by the mathematical laws we’ve uncovered, just as sure as an airplane is falling to earth, and the earth is falling to the sun and, heck, the earth itself is even falling toward this pencil.

I know there’s a lot of room for interpretation in these words (e.g., you could argue that “defying gravity” is simply a colloquialism for “not plummeting to the earth like I do when I jump off a diving board”), but my point just was that the sciences aren’t some fuzzy ideas like the humanities are.

I had a similar experience at the start of my last class. The professor asked if there were any absolute facts we could all agree on. Well, no, I guess, because there’s always some looney out there who will insist that the sky is a metal bowl, but I raised my hand anyway and said, “What about mathematics?” The professor said I was wrong, and then said this show that everything is open to interpretation.

I get this when it comes to history and English: Maybe Nixon was the best president America has ever had, maybe Shakespeare was a feminist, maybe Andy Warhol’s painting suck…but I must be missing something when this is applied to scientific laws and math…

Sunday, 30 September 2012

Yesterday, Jennifer’s parents invited the family over for a barbecue and bonfire. I decided to load up the trunk with lots of tree roots that I have extracted from the yard over the past month. They’ve been sitting in a pile drying out and, what with there being no rain and all, were plenty dry by yesterday morning. I unloaded them in my parents-in-law’s backyard and we cremated them that evening.

So, this morning, the car’s trunk was very dirty. Dirtier, even, then just filling the trunk with firewood because, remember, this was wood that had been underground. The rattling of the car ride shook all the dirt loose.

Damn if Owen doesn’t like to vacuum.

He vacuumed the inside of the trunk so efficiently and gleefully, that it behooved me to remove the cover over the spare tire (Owen asked, “Hey, what’s that tire for?”) and remove said tire so Owen could vacuum in the darkest recesses of the trunk.

But I didn’t stop there. Oh no. I didn’t stop there. I next opened all four doors and extracted the floor mats. I shook them out and Owen then vacuumed all of them and the floor around them. He even got in between the seats and around the door frames.

 The bottom one inch of our car is now quite immaculate.

Monday, 01 October 2012

Today I perfomed my first of two public readings from my work in The 2012 St. Paul Almanac. This reading took place at the Fresh Grounds Coffee Shop, which is close enough to our home so that we rode our bikes. Well, Jennifer, Owen, and I rode our bikes. Isla freeloaded in a trailer on the back of my bike.

We ordered some snacks, and then took a table far from the microphone. We’re not exactly the quietest people (especially isnce Isla decided to wear a pair of ruby tap shoes). Then we waited until it was my turn. The crowd was only about about 15 people, which Kimberly, the moderator, said was one of the smallest so far (some readings have had 40-50 people).

A couple of people who were signed-up to read didn’t show up, so my name came up quicker than I thought. Kimberly introduced me by reading the short bio I’d submitted for the almanac. Owen came and sat closer while I read, which was cool, since he is the main character in both of my essays.

I chose to read my essay “Park Two,” because I thought that was the funner of the two essays. After that, the moderator asked me to read my other essay. This kind of surprised me, and I stumbled for a moment wondering if I’d heard her correctly. She said, yeah, please read the other essay since we are short on readers tonight. So I ended up reading both essays.

As we got up to leave, two more readers showed up. They thought the event started at 7:00, I guess since a couple of earlier events were at 7:00. But no, tonight’s event was at 6:30. Kimberly let them read their pieces. Jennifer and I stayed because I thought that was the polite thing to do, and every once in a while I like to be polite. After shaking a few hands, including one guy who really liked my essays, we took off and got home right before sunset.

I’ll be participating in a second reading on Monday, November 19th at 7:00 at Claddaugh Coffee, in case you’d like to come support me. The complete schedule is HERE AT THIS LINK.

Saturday, 29 September 2012

Years ago, I had this grand idea that I would have a large bedroom on the second – or maybe third – story of my house, and one whole wall would be floor-to-ceiling windows. Large, single pane windows, like they use in aquariums. And then, in the morning, I could wake up, pull the cord or push the button (or clap, whatever), and the blinds would part, recessing into the side walls. And then I could look down at my property where, there, in the back yard, would be this enormous sundial. Like 20 feet long on each side, probably made of granite. “Well, it’s 10:30,” I’d say to Jennifer as I looked out at the old-school chronometer, “time to get up.”

Or something like that.

Anyway, I scaled that idea down a bit, and, following the instructions from this ancient book titled Fun With Astronomy (it was published before I was born), Owen and I constructed a sundial.

Okay, so first I did most of the work. I bought some wood and cut it to square, then made a groove down the center. I actually made three of these groovy squares, trying to get it just right. When Owen asked why I was making three, I told him I needed the practice, and maybe we’d give the other two to his cousins. This made sense back then, when he only had two cousins.

Anyway, so then I glued the gnomon onto the board, sanded the board real well, then painted it white. That was in 2009. We lived in an apartment back then, so I tried setting the sundial out on the deck. Yeah, that didn’t work. Primarily because we never received direct sunlight before 1:00 in the afternoon. So the sundial just languished in the garage.

A couple of months ago, Owen and I took the sundial outside to nail it to a tree stump in our yard. This has to be done exactly at noon – when the style can be moved until the gnomon casts the thinnest shadow possible. Alas, we didn’t do it correctly, so we had to abandon the project that day.

A few weeks later, when we had another free weekend day, we tried again. Success! After securing it in place, Owen drew a line on either side of the shadow and drew a “12” inside the lines. He did this every hour for the rest of the afternoon, writing in the correct time, respectively.

Owen marks the two o’clock position. His trusty water bottle waits nearby, in case the task becomes formidible and Owen needs to rehydrate.

The next day, we went outside in the morning and marked off 9:00, 10:00 and 11:00 and at some point later in the week, we also marked off 6:00 PM.

A week later, Owen wiped off the style (which a squirrel had been using as a walnut-cracking station) and carefully applied fancy-schmancy numerals. Owen pointed out that we used a lot of ones. This is true: a twelve-hour clock exhibits five numeral ones.

Owen applies the numerals while Dad (not pictured) barks at him to get it “just right” lest the universe end. Just to be safe, Owen donned a bike helmet for the duration of the activity.

This morning, we cleaned off the squirrel mess yet again, and Owen applied a coating of polyurethane, just like the anicents used to do when they built sundials.

Mission accomplished!