Considering atheism as a religion

I felt a kinship with him. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak, speaks of faith. Like me they go as far as the legs of reason can carry them - and they leap.

I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We must all pass through the Garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anquished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we also are permitted doubt. But, we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

I've started reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi.  I'm only a couple dozen chapters into it, but it's obviously quite good. The quotation above suggests that atheism is not the absence of religion, but a religion all to itself, with its own creation story, its own (scientific) laws, its own intrinsic (though varying) ethical standards and practices, and the application of faith when all else fails.

More on the book later.

How to fly a kite (in style) indoors, without wind

YouTube link.

Filmed at "the 12th Annual Windless Kite Festival, January 18, 19, and 20 2013. AKA Open Individual Indoor Unlimited competition with Spencer Watson."

From Metafilter, where the thread includes some information on this history and technology of the competition, via Neatorama.

Shooting incident in Los Angeles

As reported in today's Los Angeles Times:

Police were on the lookout for Christopher Jordan Dorner, a disgruntled ex-cop suspected of hunting down members of the LAPD and their families in a twisted campaign of revenge. The radio call indicated that the truck matched the description of Dorner's gray Nissan Titan.

A few minutes later, a truck slowly rolled down the quiet residential street.

As the vehicle approached the house, officers opened fire, unloading a barrage of bullets into the back of the truck. When the shooting stopped, they quickly realized their mistake. The truck was not a Nissan Titan, but a Toyota Tacoma. The color wasn't gray, but aqua blue. And it wasn't Dorner inside the truck, but a woman and her mother delivering copies of the Los Angeles Times...

Beck and others stressed that the investigation into the shooting is in its infancy. They declined to say how many officers were involved, what kind of weapons they used, how many bullets were fired and, perhaps most important, what kind of verbal warnings — if any — were given to the women before the shooting began...

Law enforcement sources told The Times that at least seven officers opened fire. On Friday, the street was pockmarked with bullet holes in cars, trees, garage doors and roofs. Residents said they wanted to know what happened.

"How do you mistake two Hispanic women, one who is 71, for a large black male?" said Richard Goo, 62, who counted five bullet holes in the entryway to his house.

Then, after this incident occurred...

A few blocks from the first accidental shooting, police were responding to the shots fired calls and came across another similar pickup truck to the suspect's. There was a collision to the rear of the vehicle and police fired three shots (at least) into the windshield of the driver who was luckily uninjured and NOT INVOLVED.

Christopher Dorner, the intended target of the police, worked for LAPD and has accused them (manifesto here) of abuse of power and incompetence. 

The ultimate irony, as several other sources have commented, is that their response to him is validating his allegations.

Photo cropped from the original by Reuters / Patrick T. Fallon.

Was this man the world's greatest golfer?

In 1994, in the one time he played golf, Kim Jong Il made 11 holes-in-one in the process of shooting a 38-under-par 34 over 18 holes. It had to be true because the feat was witnessed and attested to by Kim's 17 bodyguards.

Note that was the first and only time he ever played golf.   I did a quick search of the web for other reports of this remarkable feat; some of them say that he got 5 holes-in-one on that round of golf, so the claim of eleven holes-in-one in 18 holes might be slightly exaggerated.

Scleral tattoo

A form of body modification.

Photo credit Russ Foxx, via The Soul is Bone.

The perks of being a blogger

A blogger writes a post about Milano cookies.  The next day he receives from Pepperidge Farm the letter above in a case of the cookies.  FedEx'd overnight.

For the record, I prefer Little Debbie cookies and treats.  And Ruffles with ridges.  And Diet Pepsi to make up for the previous two.  Thanks in advance.

The "Kidz breakfast"

It's called that because it weighs the same as a small child.

Consisting of a dozen sausages, 12 bacon rashers and enough eggs to be produced from a coop of chickens in a week, Jesters Diner's fry-up in Great Yarmouth contains more than 6,000 calories and weighs in at 9lb (4.08kg).

But despite hundreds being sold after it was first put on the menu 18 months ago, only one person has managed to eat "the baby". 

The restaurant "invites contestants to eat the breakfast in 60 minutes, with no additional help, to get it free of charge.  Its price if you fail is £15."  The restaurant acknowledges that offering it is a stunt: "It is what it is. It was done as a laugh and 99% of the population understands that." 

The other 1% want it banned.  I would think you'd take five friends and divvy it up for breakfast.

Story at the BBC.  Video here.

"The Avengers" + "The Breakfast Club" =

YouTube link. 

Sound track from a trailer for The Breakfast Club, mashed up with clips of The Avengers.  Very professionally done.

Via Neatorama.

A tribute to Elizabeth Mackintosh (Josephine Tey)

With all the fuss and publicity this week surrounding the identification of Richard III's skeleton, I think it's appropriate to stop for a moment to remember the author whose book first got me interested in Richard's life.  The best online biography I found is at Josephine Tey - A Very Private Person.

Josephine Tey [1896-1952] was the pseudonym under which [Elizabeth] Mackintosh published mystery novels. Miss Mackintosh used a second pseudonym, Gordon Daviot, for plays and also in her personal life, which she guarded jealously... Tey avoided the press, shunned photographers, and never granted interviews. For this reason, and the fact that she kept a small circle of friends, Tey is a difficult subject for biographers...

She was educated at Inverness Royal Academy, and, from 1914 to 1917, at the Anstey Physical Training College in Erdington, Birmingham...She taught briefly in schools in Liverpool and in Oban where she was injured in a gymnasium accident which she later used as a murder method in her novel Miss Pym Disposes...

Josephine Tey, which combines her mother's name with the surname of her English grandmother, was first used in 1937 for Tey's second mystery, A Shilling for Candles...

Her detective novels are classics of their kind, deftly constructed with strong characterisation and a meticulous prose style. Six of them feature as their main character the slightly built, dapper Inspector Alan Grant, a gentleman police officer... It is Grant who, in Tey's most original story, The Daughter of Time (1951), while immobilized in hospital, satisfies himself by reading and reason that the infamous Richard III of Shakespeare, school history books, and folk memory, is a Tudor fabrication...

She died of cancer of the liver... on 13 February 1952. Many of her theatre friends attended the funeral service, including Dame Edith Evans and Sir John Gielgud. Josephine Tey left her entire estate, valued at £26,718, along with the proceeds from her writings (which has amounted to about half a million pounds) to the National Trust for England.

In August of 2011 I posted a link to the "top 100 crime novels ever written."  I am pleased to note that according to the British-based Crime Writer's Association, Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time is #1 on their list.

See also Is this the face of a murderer?

Nation reassured by ExxonMobil's profits

HOUSTON—According to reports from across the nation, all 315 million residents of the United States exhaled in relief and expressed a contented sense of reassurance Friday on news that the ExxonMobil Corporation had recorded nearly $45 billion in profits last year. “Oh, thank God!” said visibly relieved part-time drug store cashier Helen Gregory of Youngstown, OH, who called the oil and gas multinational’s total revenues of $483 billion “deeply comforting” and “a true blessing,” echoing the sentiments of every other American from coast to coast. “I can’t tell you how good it is to know that the world’s largest corporation is still unimaginably profitable. Now I can finally get some sleep and stop worrying.”

As reported in the Business section of The Onion.

Spotted Lake (British Columbia)

Most of the water in the lake evaporates over the summer, leaving behind large “spots” of minerals. Depending on the mineral composition left behind, the spots will be of white, pale yellow, green or blue in color...

During the First World War, minerals from the lake were harvested for manufacture of ammunition...

Known as Kliluk to the natives of the Okanagan Valley, the lake is a sacred and culturally significant site whose potential for commercial exploitation recently generated much controversy. The therapeutic quality of the waters has been known for millennia - the Native Indians used the mud and waters of the lake to heal aches and ailments...

The lake and surrounding land were purchased by the First Nations and Indian Affairs Department in 2001.

Text from Amusing Planet, via NPR's tumblr.  Photo credit Fred Schaad.

"Nanny" laws and rules

Can someone please tell me these are urban legends:

(A) Local licensing authorities outlawed soap in pre-school bathrooms for fear that children might suddenly start drinking it. Now kids must come out and ask an adult to squirt some soap in their hands.

(B) Unaccompanied children under age 12 were banned from the Boulder, CO, library, lest they encounter “hazards such as stairs, elevators, doors, furniture…and other library patrons.”

(C)The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of certain fleece hoodies sold at Target because of lead paint on the zipper, which presumably could raise blood lead levels if the zippers are eaten.

(E) A New Canaan, CT, mom was charged with “risk of injury to a minor,” for letting her 13-year-old babysit the three younger children at home for an hour while the mom went to church.

(F) A Tennessee mother was thrown in jail for letting her kids, aged 8 and 5, go to the park without her, a block and half away from home.

Found at Cato Unbound without links to the sources of the stories, via The New Shelton wet/dry.

Civil War baseball

Very very cool.  Not just a Civil War era baseball, but one used in a battle zone:

During the War Between the States, the game was played on the battlefields and even in wartime prison camps. Baseball was, after all, portable, and even amid the horrors of war, soldiers sometimes found opportunities to play on the vast open fields where they needed only a bat, a ball, and a few willing participants.

This ball was found and retrieved in 1862 in Shiloh, in southwestern Tennessee, on the grounds of one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles. The ball is inscribed: “Picked Up on the Battle Field at Shiloh by G.F. Hellum.” Giles Hellum was an African-American who worked as an orderly for the Union Army at Shiloh. He later enlisted as a soldier in the 69th Colored Infantry. The artifact is a “lemon peel ball,” looser and softer than today’s baseballs, and it is hand-stitched in a figure 8 pattern with thick twine. 

From The Vault (Slate's history blog), via Neatorama.

Child suspended for throwing an imaginary grenade

The story is at Fox News:

LOVELAND, Colo. — A 2nd grader has been suspended from school in Loveland for a make believe game he was playing. The 7-year-old says he was trying to save the world. But school administrators say he broke a key rule during his pretend play.

“I was trying to save people and I just can’t believe I got dispended,” says Alex Evans, who doesn’t understand his suspension any better than he can pronounce it.

“It’s called ‘rescue the world,’” he says.

He was playing a game during recess at Loveland’s Mary Blair Elementary School and threw an imaginary grenade into a box with pretend evil forces inside.

“I pretended the box, there’s something shaking in it, and I go ‘pshhh.’”

The boy didn’t throw anything real or make any threats against anyone. He explains he was pretending to be the hero. “So nothing can get out and destroy the world.” But his imaginary play broke the school’s real rules. The school lists “absolutes” designed to keep a safe environment. The list includes absolutely no fighting, real or imaginary; no weapons, real or imaginary.

Via Boing Boing, where the comment thread includes a delineation of the school's "absolutes" rules and this salient comment:

Sometimes, for children, a weapon isn't a sign of violence; it's a sign of power.  Banning weapons tells children that they have no right to even imagine being powerful, that in the Oedipal struggle, it is their duty to lose.

Batman must have been the designated driver

"My friend got separated from our group in Vegas one night. He managed to make it back to our room. In the morning he was passed out holding his phone. I turned it on and this picture popped up."

Via Reddit.