Metacentricities

Sarcasm is my favorite mode of humor, and Stephen Colbert is, I think, the king of sarcasm. In my post about the torture compromise I said I was speechless. That was speechless with indignation and distress. Colbert made me speechless with laughter about the same topic in his sketch on the issue. Watch it. It really hits that funny bone.

First, watch this on YouTube, which is Jon Stewart on the interview of Clinton. Then, watch this:

He is good. Really good. And don’t forget "Good night, and good luck."

I’ve been thinking a lot about spirituality and religion, spirituality or religion. I have, I think, pretty good personal definitions for both terms, but I’ll start with the "official" ones (both from dictionary.com)

spir·i·tu·al (spr-ch-l)
adj.

1. Of, relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material. See Synonyms at immaterial.
2. Of, concerned with, or affecting the soul.
3. Of, from, or relating to God; deific.
4. Of or belonging to a church or religion; sacred.
5. Relating to or having the nature of spirits or a spirit; supernatural.

Then…

re·li·gious (r-ljs)
adj.

1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.
2. Of, concerned with, or teaching religion: a religious text.
3. Extremely scrupulous or conscientious: religious devotion to duty.

They are, in some ways quite similar. And they are quite different.

My own definition comes out, I think, from a relatively recent distancing of people from church, from those legions of those who are "spiritual but not religious." Spirituality is the way one is concerned with the immaterial, the intangable. Spirituality includes practice - prayer, meditation, ritual. Religion, for me, is about organizations, structures, creeds.

I have always been spiritual, but I have wandered in and out of religiosity. It feels like I am in a phase of wandering out of religiousity again. Or am I? How does calling myself a Christian change that perspective, since I am associating myself with a religion, in fact, the dominant religion of this culture. And how will that change, as I move forward, move outside of the kinds of religious organizations and structures I’ve moved myself into over the past few years?

I have another term I think about: devotion. What does being devout mean? How is devotion different from spirituality or religion? I’ve wondered if whether or not devout was a better way to describe myself, but then I get caught, because I’m not exactly clear what it is I am devoted to. It’s all very slippery, isn’t it?

For now, I guess I’m happy to be somewhere along some sort of spectrum of religious, spiritual, and devout. Things will form themselves later, I’m sure.
 
 

I’ve been pretty out of the news loop for the last few days. I did hear, though, that Chavez’ mention of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival (which I’ve read, by the way, and is a very good book) sent it from an Amazon rating of 20,664 to number 1. I am beginning to have hope for the people of this country.

But, I have completely lost hope for the leadership. Apparently, through an "agreement" between the Republican leaders and the President, they neither condone, nor condemn torture done by the CIA or military, and they have given amnesty to anyone in the past that might have violated the Geneva Conventions. It prevents people who have been held (and possibly tortured) from using the Geneva Conventions to challenge their detention or treatment.

And, further, the Democrats were mostly silent, or "wary". Not even any righteous indignation. How is it that we can have one single shred of any idea that the US has any moral authority in the world? What on earth is this country supposed to be about, anyway? The kicker:

Negotiations then turned to the amount of time that a detainee’s
suffering must last before the treatment amounts to a war crime.
Administration officials preferred designating "prolonged" mental or
physical symptoms, while the senators wanted something milder. They
settled on "serious and non-transitory mental harm, which need not be
prolonged."

This is like debating whether or not hitting someone’s thumb hard with a hammer is better or more acceptible than pulling their thumbnails out.

I can’t even begin to describe how this makes me feel. No wonder Chavez called Bush the devil. As is every single Republican that agreed to this deal, and every single Democrat that remained silent.

Cindy ordered me to do this, so I’m doing it. Keith Olbermann did an incredible job a couple of days ago at calling Bush to task for his comments. It’s an amazing commentary. Play it.

then, Cindy says:

I think that the President is so out of bounds in general and in
particular with his statement that "it is unacceptable to think there
is any kind of comparison between [actions of the US and of
terrorists]…" that it deserves not only the apology Olbermann
demands, but a gianormous turning away from sin repentance experience.
What America should do with this speech/editorial/statement, over and
above reading it quietly or watching Mr. Olbermanns’ excellent delivery
and then talking about it on blogs, at watercoolers or in grocery
stores, is to do an All-American Dramatic Reading. Outloud. In public.

In
fact, I think that all of America could do a simultaneous reading of
this statement, in unison, church style. Our President continues to
believe, being surrounded by sycophants as he is, that he not only
knows best, but that he’s speaking on behalf of the country.

Therefore, I call for Americans everywhere to organize and read this essay in unison as a National Call for the President to Repent and
Turn from his Ways, this Sunday, September 24, at noon Eastern Time.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Here’s a bunch of things I came across that I think are useful, with a bit of commentary.

• The unintended consequences of human action often provide the need for huge remediation projects. Case in point: the Mississippi River. Years and years of levee projects has caused problems for the Mississippi, and where the water would have flowed. Scientists say, apparently, that it’s time to move the Mississippi.
• This is a great list of foods you should try to eat organically, because of the amounts of pesticides used in growing them conventionally. Ooops. Too bad I didn’t read this list yesterday.
• Al Gore (why, oh why won’t he run for President again?) says to tax CO2 emmisions, not payrolls. I like the idea.
• In the Very Old News department: Acadmic institutions, not ability, hinders academic women in science and technology. Duh. I hate when some "new" report states the patently obvious (and well known for decades), and then a news organization picks it up as news. Sigh.
• Karen Armstrong has her typically fabulous words to say about the Pope’s comments on Islam.

I’ve always thought the threat level thing was pretty bogus, and designed just to keep us scared. Well, Wired has a much better one - one that really shows the likelihoods of dying from terrorism in more realistic proportion. So, according to this, the threat level should really be "low" - as they say, "your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is."

When I lived on the east coast, I used to drool about Fry’s. Fry’s is the place where you can actually buy a motherboard, or a case, or a big internal hard drive, or an LED, or soldering iron or … all of those things that geeky types like and want.

So, I did a geek pilgrimage to Fry’s today. The closest Fry’s is in Fremont, which is quite a ways from Berkeley. There is basically nothing around it except office parks and malls - it feels very sterile.

But Fry’s was fun, and I had a great time walking down the aisles looking at varied and sundry computer/electronic stuff. I managed to only leave with a little more than what I went there for (some micro screwdrivers so I could install new memory in my MacBook Pro.) But so much was so tempting. It reminded me of how much of a geek I still am.

And now my laptop has twice the memory it used to have, so I’m happy.

I admit it - I never read those long legalese agreements on software or websites. It’s just too much of a pain. Well, it might be time to read them.

As you might know, everyone is trying to get into the movie downloading business. Apple just released iTunes 7, with the iTunes store that has movies. And Amazon launched "Unbox" - it’s own movie downloading service.

Well, thanks to Cory Doctorow, and Boing Boing, it turns out that the Amazon Unbox agreement is really, really evil. You basically give them permission to take over your computer, and let them tell you exactly how, and when, to play the movie you supposedly "bought." Right, you are paying them for the right to control what you see, and how you see it.

It turns out that the Unbox software is Windows only, so I won’t be buying any videos anyway. And it’s also true that Apple’s service has it’s own DRM (Digital Rights Management) - but you have much more control of where and when and how you play what you bought. Yes, I’d rather have no DRM - but then again, I don’t really have the desire to own many movies, so I’m not anyone’s optimum customer anyway.

So, I’m going to start reading agreements more closely - and I’d suggest that you stay away from Unbox.

These are some science and environment stuff that I found in my RSS feeds over the past few days.

• Scientists discover that endogenous retroviruses are necessary for sheep pregnancy. Talk about symbiosis. Endogenous retroviruses are segments of our genome that for a long time were thought of as "junk" DNA, and were incorporated into our genome a long time ago by what used to be an exogenous retrovirus. I think just about every thing that used to be called "junk" DNA, and not useful, is turning out to have a lot of uses.
• James Lovelock, the originator of the "Gaia hypothesis" is interviewed about his new book, “The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back — and How We Can Still Save Humanity". He is a proponent of nuclear energy.
• John Michael Greer has a relatively rational set of predictions for life after big oil.
• Astronomers are beginning to figure out more about when galaxies were born after the big bang.
• I knew there was some reason I like green tea so much. Drink up.