I was listening to Sam Harris give a lecture yesterday.

It wasn't in person, he gave it at the Aspen Ideas festival and it was rebroadcast on Word for Word. You can listen to it here . If you don't know Sam Harris he is of the recent wave of published, vocal atheists. He is down with science but isn't as big an ass hole as Richard Dawkins
Also, he is also the hottest of the best selling atheists.



I would want to get drunk with Chris Hitchens, but I would want to get Sam Harris drunk. If you catch the drift. (sincere apologies to (e:Jim))


Anyway! Back on topic. In the lecture he said that god is primarily an author of books. That is, he chooses to speak to his creation not through TV spots or telemundo soaps; rather, god wrote the Hebrew bible, added the New testament bit, and then completed the trilogy with the Koran.

He said that science submits its material to peer-reviewed journals to weed out biased research. So, religious texts should do the same thing.

I had a good chuckle. Imagining Christ and Thor(see (e:drew)'s journal) browsing through Dianetics, suppressing a chuckle at each page turn.
"Hey Quetziquatil, you have to check this shit out! It is hilarious!"
"I can't guys, Dionysus is throwing up wine again. I have to mop the bathroom up."

So, I am not actually suggesting anything. Just giving you a little glimpse into the silliness which is getting me through my Thursday.

Oh! Here is an awesome They Might Be Giants video

I am SO excited!

Being a snooty New Yorker by proxy I love me some NY Times. Their web site has been the way of choice to read it for me. About four years ago they changed their site creating Times Select: a subscription service where you can get articles about certain subjects emailed to you, their op/ed pieces, and access to back issues going back to... when ever their content becomes public domain. The first two of those services were absolutely free before that, of course.

What would I do without my Nicholas Kristoph! Or my beloved queen of snark Maureen 'I should be writing for Designing Women but instead I am a journalist' Dowd. Tom Friedman leaves a bad taste in my mouth now a days, what with the whole Iraq War RULZ thingie. And nobody blows smoke up your ass like Frank Rich (who I guiltily enjoy).

Well, starting tomorrow (I believe) we will have access to the Op/Ed pages once more! Of course, in those four years I stopped reading traditional media and became hooked on the likes of Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos and it is sad watching great giants of journalism drag their neanderthal knuckles of paleo-journalism together towards extinction with dinosaur-blog newspapers.

But at least for a few weeks I can enjoy Dowd's tangy fluff!

Ahoi,

New user (e:wwebby) has a lovely user icon that reminded me of one of the little gems I found on the internet. Yes, my lovelies, Edward Gorey presents an original teleplay of the infamous Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles.

enjoy

(e:Jim) is the freakin' BEST!

Just out of no where, for the heck of it, he gets me two books on how to teach leftist politics in the classroom. Just so show he cares. I am so happy.

Soon I will be diving into "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom" by Bell 'ZOMG I LOVE HER!!' Hooks. and "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire: whom I have never read but always read about, like Dewey or Foucalt but less opaque.

I am so happy this weekend. I can't wait to get my hands on these suckers. He shall have to be repaid with a fancy dinner and some sweet, sweet lovin'.

My uncle James has been my hero since I cast off childhoods diapers for grander things. He lives at the tip of long island and I live at the tip of western New York, opposite sides of the same state which is much larger in the driving than one would think of the state. Well, I had a chat with him on the phone tonight and it made me supper giddy!

You see, my uncle went to school for history, like me, and so we both get really worked up talking about the finer points of the Hapsburg monarchy in the latter part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Well, he has become a sinophile of late and was very happy to hear I was taking a graduate class on Chinese history.

Well, he was in Beijing as a guest lecturer at a law school. While in China he was invited to a large, formal dinner party. He was the guest of honor and was, kind of, set up on a date with a Manchu princess. The Manchu's are the people of northern China and are a different ethnic group from Han Chinese: the largest group. They ruled all over all of China under the Qing dynasty from 1648 until the Empire was overthrown in 1911.

He and she were having chat. He asked her how she was a princes. She said she is royalty through a relation to an emperor. "Oh," he asked "which one?" and idly she told him Kangxi. Now, being related to Kangxi for a Chinese is like being related to Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt for an American. He is a big deal, considered one of the best Emperors ever.

My uncle made a face like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Do you know Kangxi?" the princess asked. He said 'of course, every school boy in America knows of the great Kangxi!" But it got better.

He also said that no American wants to learn to speak Japanese because we all believe that in 20 years everyone in Japan will be speaking Chinese. Japan will be referred to on our maps as 'East China' well, considering little acts like killing every man, woman, and child in a city of 45,000 south of Manchuko at the beginning of WWII by the Japanese my uncle was loved by them! He was made an honorary descendent of a famous Chinese general.

I love that man.