Do Christians even read letters that weren't written by St. Paul?

I just recently read Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. It is short, but easily the most succinct and clear work on a perils of religion in the modern world. I can't emphasize this enough: READ THIS BOOK! Seriously, READ THIS BOOK!!

Dental Misadventures

Last night I was flossing, as suggested by my dentist, and my new temporary crown came off (for the second time). I figured this morning that I would just jaunt over to the campus dental clinic (about 2 blocks from studio). I tried to call first - the line was busy - so I figured, they'll be able to squeeze me in for a five-minute session to get the crown attached.

How could I have been so naive? I completely underestimated the amount of bs involved in a simple medical visit. Here's a transcript (edited for flavor!)

Me: Hi. I have a temporary crown that came off, and I need it reattached.
Desk Bitch: Okay, when is your appointment?
Me: I don't have an appointment, I just need this crown put back on.
DB: Oh. Did you call ahead?
Me: No, I was right here on campus.
DB: It's usually better if you call in first. We'll need to schedule an appointment. Are you a student or staff?
Me (rapidly losing patience): Student.
DB: What's your ID number?
Me: Takes out wallet, gets UCard, reads number.
DB: Looks at screen. Brian?
Me: Yes.
DB: Did you have that done here?
Me (extremely annoyed by now): No, my regular dentist is in Rochester.
DB: What kind of insurance do you have?
Me: Hands insurance card to her with heavy sigh.
DB: Will your insurance let you see a different dentist?
Me: Out of patience at this point. I just need the thing reattached.
DB: Right. But they'll charge you --
Me: Or maybe I can go without?
DB (Impervious to sarcasm): [I don't even remember what she started saying at this point, because:]
Me: Just gimme my card. Takes insurance card and walks out.

Of course, I still need the thing fixed. I just couldn't deal with her bullshit any longer.
SO I walked back to studio, then called my good friend Mary over at Information. She connected my directly to the dental appointment desk, & I set up a 2:45 appointment to get a crown reattached - again, this is about a 5 minute job. My favorite part was the last thing the chick said: "We'll need you to show up about 2:30 to fill out paperwork."

Student apologizes for Holocaust

In light of the state of Virginia apologizing for slavery, and the fact that the movie 300 has upset modern Iranians (because of its portrayal of ancient Persians as "barbaric"), I've realized that I need to apologize to members of the Jewish community for the Holocaust. Yes, I know that my German ancestors (and ancestrices) left that country long before either World War. But who knows? Maybe some of their relatives were involved in the Nazi party at some level. At the very least, they had the gall to exist in Germany during the War, so one can only imagine what manner of horrors might have happened within 100 or so miles of them.

So, here it is: I formally apologize to all Jews for the Holocaust. I hope that makes things better.

I probably ought to apologize for the Crusades while I'm at it, despite the fact that I'm no longer a Catholic. I mean, better safe than offensive, right?

I'll have to get started on a comprehensive catalog of the horrors done by the British Empire (for the British part of my heritage) and anything else the Germans might have done in, oh, the past 10,000 years. I wonder if that includes the Germanic tribes that invaded the British Isles ... oh, shit. I now need to apologize to myself. Fuck.

Then again, how many of you owe me an apology for your ancestors' actions against mine? Money would be nice, too. It would really alleviate my mental anguish.

I'm waiting....

Nice Pants

I went to get a couple new pairs of jeans, and had to go three different stores to find jeans that didn't have hobo creases. You know, those creases at the top of the thigh, where they would normally show up after you've worn them 3 or 4 days in a row? Why would I pay for a pair of jeans that looks like it was stapled to a hobo for two weeks? They look filthy and torn up, and I'm supposed to pay $45 for them? Screw that.

How to make a fundie's head explode

What if there was proof that being gay was strictly genetic, and you could test a fetus for gayness? Would it then be okay to either abort it or manipulate its genes to make it straight?

When I grow up...

I want to be a Japanese school girl. They're adorable! Who can resist their charm?

Psst, have you heard the Secret?

The latest self-help/Oprah craze is called The Secret, and it reeks of bullshit. The central premise is the so-called "law of attraction," and it claims that if you think positive thoughts, positive events and things will be attracted to you. Check out the trailer, and notice how many great minds of the past "knew" this alleged "secret." It's a who's who of who's whos: Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein. (Let's not apply any critical thought and ask things like, "What evidence do we have that these people were familiar with this concept?")

I also love the people who say it will change their lives forever. If I cared about them enough, I'd revisit them a year from now and ask if their lives are better, and if so, if it's because of this hocus pocus baloney sandwich of crap.

Check this fun clip from Ellen. The guy says that if I think about getting out of debt, I'm still thinking about debt, and will attract it. He goes so far as to claim that this is the reason so many people are in debt. I'd like to suggest that people (in this country, at least) are in debt because of a consumerist credit-oriented culture. But that might be too obvious a connection. He says "start to see what you want rather than what you don't want." I could be stupid, but isn't "not being in debt" a thing that people want?

Oh, and that FedEx thing is a nice distracting gimmick that has absolutely nothing to do with the point. It has nothing to do with "seeing the universe in a different way." It's a simple cognitive issue. The brain focuses on the foreground element. The "arrow" is simply empty space between the letters that happens to make that shape. Yeah, it's cool, and ever since I first saw it (about 8 years ago) I can't look at the logo without seeing the arrow. But that's because I know it's there, and I think it's neat, so I focus on it.

===REDEEMING QUALITY ALERT===
That one guy did make a good point with his 3rd law, about taking action: Shit happens when you DO SOMETHING to make it happen. The only correlation between positive thinking and success is that those who think positively are more likely to take action to make things happen. It's the doing that makes it happen, not the thinking. However, it is important to know that thinking is a prerequisite for doing, and visualizing yourself succeeding can give you the drive to go out and get what you want, to make things happen. For example, if I want to get rich, I visualize myself dressing up this same concept in a new hat, writing a book about creepy motile cheese, and going on Oprah to take money from her idiot followers. Then I DO those things, and voila! I am awash in hundred dollar bills.
===END REDEEMING QUALITY ALERT===

I have two great examples. Ben and I once had a pretty hefty amount of credit card debt. We worked hard to get out of it. We didn't think about being rich, or winning the lottery, or getting a great job that paid us $200,000 a year for sitting on our asses. We worked to get out of debt. It took time, and it wasn't always easy, but we took action and made it happen. We didn't use little cellular magnets in our livers to make the universe send us money. We learned to reprioritize our financial habits. No big secret there.

*UPDATE* I need to make note of the fact that up throughout this time, not only did we not spend time sitting around visualizing our way out of debt, but I personally made frequent comments about how horrible it was, having all that money to pay off, and how horrible our (financial) life was and would likely continue to be. AND STILL, despite all this negativity on my part, we worked our way out of it.

My other example is more recent. I had a midterm exam last week, & had heard from a classmate that took the class a year previous that the exam was brutal. Granted, a new professor is teaching the class, but I still spent 2 days freaking out about it. But I also studied, and the exam wasn't that tough. So, what's the lesson here? The lesson is, it doesn't matter what you think. It only matters what you do. My thoughts were consumed by "Shit! I'm going to bomb this exam!" The action I took was to study, thinking, "I'll just have to try my best, & hope for a C." I haven't got the grade back yet, but after taking the exam, I'm counting on a high B to low A. So much for the big secret.

Goddammit, people can be stupid sometimes.

Gettin' nekkid in tha airport.

Invasion of the naked body scanners. Apparently the technology now exists to do a low-level "backscatter X-ray" that looks through clothing. Hanes is probably already developing lead-lined underwear. It's all about security, & the need to detect non-metallic objects that might be stored on your person for use in a hijacking.

If you're upset, first read the whole article. Looks like they're working to preserve anonymity - separating the images from your face & name, making sure that no person sees both you (in the flesh, so to speak) and the digital images of your flesh. Plus, it's not (yet) being applied to everyone, from what I gathered.

Enjoy the new world order, kids. It's not going away anytime soon.

Stephen Colbert....

just said, "It's pi-day today, 3.14. That must be why I'm feeling so irrational."
(yeah, it's a replay of "yesterday's" show)

Are they even trying anymore?

Flipping through the channels on the cable... 11:30 pm, and obviously there's not much on. The Learning Channel (not exactly sure what I'm supposed to be learning from this channel...) has a show on called "When Sleep Goes Bad." The description is "A profile of three people who are experiencing severe sleep disorders." Okay, I get the idea of a show about sleep disorders. But could they come up with a more tabloidy name please? I wonder whe runs that channel? Maybe TLC stands for Tabloid-Like Channel?

But "When Sleep Goes Bad" isn't on till midnight. So what's on right now? "The Man Whose Arms Exploded," about a guy who got so jacked up on steroids that his biceps "exploded." I'm not even really sure what that means, but maybe that's not the important part. Granted, I'm not sure what the important part is, or if there even is one. Given that they can't even find enough material about this guy to fill out the hour (45 minutes, really), and need to spend a lot of time talking about the steroid trade in Britain and the negative consequences of various gym drugs, maybe they shouldn't be calling it "The Man Whose Arms Exploded." Maybe they should call it "Idiot Muscleheads and Their Adventures with Drugs."

Oh, and can a just mention, bodybuilders are gross.