In The Gay Marriage Debate, Stop Playing The Bigot

Many of the news blogs and podcasts I take in have been addressing the topic of gay marriage as the next step in the “gay agenda” now that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been repealed. Beside the rather ominous use of “gay agenda” rather than “desegregation” I have seen a troubling trend: the complete lack of understanding of what marriage is. So let’s look at that.

Many of the people that argue against gay marriage make the same points. They say marriage is a religious contract and so the state should go no further than making civil unions, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that marriage is about procreation, that it’s not a civil rights issue. Some of these can be simply addressed with a look at basic facts. Others require a little bit of context and history.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post Matthew Franck tries to make a case that using the term “hate” (as in hate speech) against those who argue against gay marriage as w right. This isn’t inherently correct but it can be. Not everyone who stands against gay marriage is spouting hate speech. Not everyone who fights for a definition of marriage as “one man, one woman” is doing so out of hate. However, that is the kindest thing I can say because if they are not fueled by hate then they are fueled by ignorance, and in either case it is still bigotry.

Marriage is a religious institution

It is not. At least, it is not exclusively. In fact, the United States won’t recognize a religious marriage. In most religious marriage the couple is actually getting two ceremonies performed at the same time. The clergy member who performs the marriage is creating the religious and civil marriage. If a clergy member is not registered as a state officiant with the United States then any marriage they perform will not be legally binding. Similarly, if a couple has a Jewish wedding and then a purely civil divorce they are still married under Jewish law. I had a purely civil marriage and that means I don’t need a Jewish divorce if my marriage ever fails since I don’t have a Jewish marriage.

So anyone who claims that the government should stop at civil unions for gay couples is in the wrong on this point. Heterosexuals can have state sanctioned marriages and so should homosexual couples. No clergy will have to perform them so keep your church out of my state.

Traditional marriage is between a man and a woman

Let’s talk about traditional marriage according to the bible. Because that’s the traditional marriage they are talking about.

A traditional marriage is an ownership contract that a man enters into regarding a woman. The class of property that the woman is is called “chattel”. It is a complicated status but can be boiled down to “property with rights”. In a traditional marriage a man signs documents that contractually obligate him to all of, but not limited to, the following:

• provide food, shelter and other necessities
• sexually pleasure her a on a schedule that is dictated according to his occupation
• It is work noting that he is obligated to her. She is not obligated to have sex with him. It is strictly the wife’s right.
• Another fun sex fact: sex was part of the engagement process in biblical times. There was no separate “engaged but not married” status for couples back then.
• Christmas tie-in: That means that Joseph and Mary were having sex before Jesus was born since they are referred to as already married in the bible
• A settled upon amount to be paid to the woman in the case of divorce. This was usually in the range of an amount that could be lived on for 5 years I believe
• According to a biblical marriage there is no such thing as a valid prenuptial

This was all in exchange for obtaining land and estate rights from the wife’s keeper. This was usually her father, sometimes a brother.

It is worth noting that this was not looked at as an exclusive contract. A woman could only be owned by one man but as long as the man could fulfill the contractual obligations he could take as many wives as he wanted. That does mean sexually pleasuring them according to biblical law.

Marriage is about procreation 

Go back to the section above. It was about tribal property. This could only be passed down through a male offspring. Really, this point only applies if you look at women as chattel, marriage as a property contract regarding the wife and her father’s lands. This hasn’t applied for a long time.

Also you would have to argue that infertile couples could not wed and that a married heterosexual couple that remained childless for a certain number of years would have to annul their union.

The bible is against gay marriage as well as homosexuality 

Wrong wrong wrong. While the bible certainly doesn’t condone either the people that wrote it don’t think about sexuality in the same way you do. So this one needs to be put into historical context.

A lot of the bible laws regarding sexuality were written in response to contemporary Greek practices. You know how the Greeks are know for homosexuality? Well, they weren’t. Back then there was no concept of homosexuality. A man having sex with another man was, while obviously sexual to some degree, more about status. The sexual taking of a man back then was akin to calling him chattel, proving that he was in a class below you. It was strictly a gay thing.

To separate themselves from the heathen Greeks all status shifting sex between men was banned. This kept the levels of status set at men over women and elder over younger. One could not prove they were of a higher status than what the existing Jewish culture dictated by screwing your way up the ladder.

The same way that same sex intercourse was a status issue, so was marriage. How could a man own another man when men aren’t chattel? A similar idea would be to ban whites from owning white slaves but still allowing black slaves. Well, biblical Jews could own women but were banned from owning men. It wasn’t that the marriage would have been sick or wrong from a societal standpoint. It’s that a same sex marriage wasn’t legally conceivable from an ownership perspective. And women marrying women? Women weren’t at the status level where they could hold contractual obligations like that over someone else.

Biblical slaves were another story. Slaves in the bible are a level above objects but below women. In fact, biblical slaves hover around the same level as important farm animals. Women could own animals but certainly not other women and absolutely not men.

All of this may seem like a lot of information to take in. Their way of life in bible times were so different from ours. It’s almost like they were an entirely different civilization, right? Weird.

It’s not a civil right 

Then what is it? Taking away biblical precedent (which are constitutionally invalid arguments) there’s really not a lot to point at as far as reasons to stop gay marriage. Both people entering into a same sex marriage have to be of a certain age and legally able to enter into a contract. Actually, that’s a lot like the method for entering into a “traditional” marriage. The biggest difference is now we don’t have a tribal antipathy for ancient Greek culture and accept that women are legally equal in status to men. With those issues already revised it seems that a traditional marriage is possible between two people of the same sex.

So what’s stopping it? Bigotry. It’s a (now we see baseless) hostility towards people with a different set of preferences than someone else. And since there’s no logical reason to ban same sex marriage (we’ve taken care of the bible, procreation and sacred institution arguments) it comes down to bigotry. Whether this bigotry is built on fear of change or “the other”, hatred or religion it is still bigotry. Even arguing up to, and stopping at, civil unions is a form of “Separate But Equal” legislation.

Feel free to leave an argument that I missed. I can’t conceive of a logical reason to stop same sex marriages. The best I’ve heard is to abolish all state marriages and establish hetero and homosexual civil unions as the only state sanctioned unions. I would vote for it but it’s an unfeasible goal. First of all, there is no way the government and citizens would agree to a social shift that huge. In addition, it would have to dissolve all existing marriages and I can’t see that happening either. So it’s really a pipe dream option.

Oh, and try to keep it to something that can be brought up in constitutionally abiding law. Say “God doesn’t like that” isn’t something that fits the criteria.

My Day. Every Day.

This is my day. Every day. by bulletproofheeb

Writing about not writing. Because I'm writing.

Just wanted to announce that October was busy and November is National Novel Writing Month. I am doing a lot of writing but none of it is blogging. I apologize for my silence and hope to be back in December.

The Un-Watchable

Here's the concept: what movies would you go back in time to stop yourself from watching?  It has to be a theater release because something you see on cable or rent or Netflix is still a pretty passive experience.  When you go out to a movie there's traveling, usually a $40 bag of popcorn and a block of time set aside for the experience.  And it can't be something terrible that at least you have fun with now.  This is a movie so bad you actually regret the entire experience.  There are two for me that come instantly to mind.

The first is Spider-man 3.  Yeah, I regret spending money of the second one but number 3?  I left that theater in a sort of shock.  I was actually turned off from movies for a while.  Something rekindled my interest (looking at 2007 releases it was probably The Lookout) and I like to think I made a full recovery but... I admit, I may have developed a Pavlovian mistrust of Tobey Maguire.  If given the chance I would erase this from my personal history.

The second is What the Bleep Do We Know.  It claims to be a science documentary but is actually groundless propaganda from a cult that believes their leaders are reincarnations of priests from Atlantis.  Yeah, it's that bat-shit stupid.  Like many new age cranks (*cough Deepak Chopra cough*) it's formed around the amazing science of quantum physics.  And like many new age cranks they fail to grasp the actual concepts they build their belief system on.  I left the theater feeling more than cheated.  I felt insulted.  With Spider-man 3 I assume that it was made to entertain.  Sure, the target audience is probably coma patients and glue-huffing hobos but it works for them, I assume.  What the Bleep Do We Know was a glossy ball of misinformation that was either made by actively scheming con-men or utter morons.  Either way I was subjected to their "vision" for 109 minutes and I would love to have that time back to do something more productive.  Like pass into a coma or huff glue.  The worst part?  I saw it on a recommendation.  Some recommendations make you question someone's taste level.  And some make you flat out question their sanity.


And now I open I open it up to you.  What would you go back in time to stop yourself from going to a theater to see?

Windows Mobile 7

Windows Mobile 7 is coming out soon and it looks to be a huge departure from all WM up through 6.5.  Up until Android hit the market a few years ago Windows Mobile was the most open a phone could get other than an actual linux phone but name me one person who owned one of those.  There was no unified place to buy or even brows apps (they were called applications back then).  There were tons of different handsets running WM ranging from all screen to non-touch screens with hardware keyboards.

That's all changed.  Now Microsoft is setting incredibly strict rules for the hardware.  Standard buttons, in house testing, a hard set market for apps.  You know what all this seems like?  The iPhone.

While I saw this coming and have written about the coming of the iPhone-ish WiMo as a reason I jumped to the open Android I don't look down on Microsoft for this.  It's obvious by now that they have been edged out of a market that they essentially ruled not too long ago: a professional smartphone that's not run through the Blackberry servers.  As soon as there was competition Microsoft lost the battle.  Their artillery was great as long as it was the only option.

I honestly think this is a positive change for Microsoft.  I think they need something like this.  I would have  gone with a more radical change in strategy, not imitating an existing method but creating a complimentary modular system.  But that's just me.  Hopefully this works because the more options out there for smartphones the better the competition gets.  Android wouldn't be what it is today without iOS and the 3rd party upgrades are standing on the shoulders of stock Android.

I'm eager to see where this goes even if I don't hitch my wagon to it.

Library Safety Tips

Library Safety Tips by bulletproofheeb

Anne Rice renounces and reaffirms her faith

Anne Rice, the writer of Interview With A Vampire and the 1,000s of pages that surround that book, has quit Christianity. Oddly enough, she also has reaffirmed her faith and love in Jesus as her Christ figure. One would conclude that this makes her a Christian but one would be... right.

Anne Rice For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten ...years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

Anne Rice My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

I get what she's trying to say. She's fed up with the church that she was a member of, which was the Catholic church. That's fine. Makes sense. Hating the Catholic church is a logical response to being exposed to it. What she doesn't seem to understand is that the Catholic church isn't Christianity. To be a Christian one does not need be Catholic. One simply needs to believe that Jesus is a Christ messiah. So while she might be sick of her church she hasn't rejected Christ. She explicitly still needs the concept of a messiah to comfort her (she went back to Catholicism after a number of severe medical incidents) and has settled on Jesus as her personal #1.

I don't know. Call me strange but if I had came to the conclusion that I actively knew how the universe operated and loudly proclaimed such I would at least be familiar with the word that I'm using to label myself. But that's just me. Choosing a world view based on fear, passing your own personal take on centuries old version (Catholic) of a multi-thousand year old tradition (Christianity) as the "true" version and then getting the name of your faith wrong; that all just seems sloppy and careless to me.

But following Christ does not mean following His followers.

That kind of makes you a Christian, Anne.

But following Christ does not mean following His followers.

Yeah, that's true but it's also not the definition of Christian. Crack open a dictionary before you pick up your bible again.

Christopher Nolan has an existential thesis, not a crisis

I just finished a Christopher Nolan movie in which a man accidentally becomes responsible for his wife's suicide. To deal with the grief and guilt he builds a world made of real, false and modified memories. He then progressively falls deeper into this absolution fantasy until he can no longer tell reality from his personal fiction. This movie is called Memento.

There's been some writing on how Inception is similar to The Prestige in that the main characters act out various functions in a trick or con that closely parallel the creation of a film. While this is true, Inception is not really a spiritual twin to The Prestige. Rather, it is a philosophical continuation to Memento. Both Inception and Memento are existential exercises in what makes a person's perceptions real, how real are they and does fact matter as much as how we comprehend it. In both of these films the main character creates their own reality which is built upon a foundation of meaning rather than fact. What's interesting is that in both cases this is revealed to us. Granted, in Inception it is done in a much more circumspect way but both movies clearly state at the end (and in the case of Memento the beginning as well) choosing to live within a falsehood may distance one from reality but it will ground one in their own drive to survive. The character of Teddy in Memento says that everyone lies to themselves to be happy. Nolan's repeated thesis is one step further; that some people lie to themselves to survive, even if it takes one away from happiness.

What's really interesting is after paring Nolan's existential perspective down to this concept we see it manifested more in Dark Knight than we do in The Prestige. At the end of Dark Knight the audience sees that Batman is faced with a dilemma. After Harvey Dent turns to murder and then dies, Batman has to choose how to present this to the people of Gotham City. He can give them the truth, that their near saint of a DA has turned to murder and tried to kill children, or present them with a lie, that Batman is a killer and Harvey Dent died in the pursuit of justice. The truth would devastate the community while the lie would strengthen their convictions about good people in power and therefore add stability to a shaky metropolis. As Leonard does in Memento and Cobb in Inception, Batman chooses to preserve the lie that gives purpose over the truth that would destroy.

Taking this concept back to The Prestige we see a bit of this peeking out, but only in shards. Hugh Jackman's character is never able to figure out what is the truth (whether it was a difficult knot that led to his wife's death or simply her inability to perform the trick) and without truth he can never face the existential crisis of purpose or truth. It seems that it is this situation that makes Jackman's character turn outwardly destructive. In the other three films the characters choose lies and turn it into purpose but also self destruction. Their choices to build their world on falsehood adds fuel to their fire, making them burn stronger rather than sputtering out but also burn faster. The obsession that comes out of not being able to choose in The Prestige leads to an outward feud, to a life of external destruction. Both of these situations lead to erosive lives but only when faced with a choice to deal with the truth and make a voluntary choice to live within a lie does the character find any fulfillment in their existence.

The situation I'd like to see Nolan tackle next is making a character face the choice between truth or purpose and choose truth. Purpose over truth shows a materialist pragmatism but what would people inside of a world created by Nolan do if they took the philosophically ideal path?

A quick note on what INCEPTION is (SPOILER FREE)

INCEPTION is not the best movie ever. Ebert's blog below is all about that. However, it is very good. It is Nolan's best; far more satisfying than The Prestige and far more refined and masterful than Memento.

INCEPTION is very good. It's not perfect but a lot of fun and you get to think.

INCEPTION is not incredibly smart. It is competently smart. It is not quite clever. It is complex. Christopher Nolan was smart and clever as a director. The construction of the film is brilliant. The actual movie is less so, though by no means dumb. You need to pay attention and think during the movie. You should leave being reasonably sure of what happened. Most of its secrets will clarify after some reflection.

INCEPTION will not change movie making or story telling. It probably won't change your life but it is still a very good film.

Recently there has been some confusion between complex and clever. And much like irony it is something that is much easier understood when witnessed than explained. The first season of LOST was clever. The later seasons were complex. Christopher Nolan shows himself to be a clever director while making this complex movie.

INCEPTION link - THESE DO CONTAIN SPOILERS
11 Points about Inception
Ebert's blog on Inception reviews
CHUD's "solution" to Inception
Salon.com All About Inception

4th of July - 2010

IMAG0500.jpg
Originally uploaded by trickstertao

Just finished cleaning up and posting all my fireworks shots from the 4th. Have a few more pictures of Coney Island to post but I'll do those in a day or so.

Check out the rest.

Searching for a Cell Phone or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Open Markets

Sometimes being an educated consumer can be a pain in the ass. Here's my adventures in cell phone shopping.

Here's where I started: AT&T, 2.5 year old Windows Mobile HTC Tilt, known outside of AT&T as the Tytn II. My usage is probably around 90% data, 8% voice, 2% text. I'm tied onto a family plan with my father. In fact, we were originally on Sprint and signal strength at his house alone is what made us move to AT&T. It cost me my original Pittsburgh number but was better than going off on my own contract.

So that's what I had. Now let me tell you what I wanted. Smartphone. On AT&T that pretty much cut me down to WiMo again or the iPhone. This may come as a shock to those who know me but I latched on to the iPhone when it was first released. You see, I wasn't just looking for a good piece of hardware. While hardware is probably my number one priority, once you spend a couple of years with WiMo you realize that interface is a much closer second than you might have originally thought. And then the iPhone came out. It was shiny, it was usable out of the box (I run SPB shell on my Tilt) and it had what no one can deny Apple: a fantastic interface experience. I was sold.

But all techies know that there is a fundamental choice with new tech. Option one is to early adopt. That's when you get it as soon as it comes out and that comes with a big wow factor. Option two is the prudent revision two. That's when you wait for the early adopters to complain and for the company to release the second version, which is usually what the first version should have been. Essentially you let the early adopters test it for you. It means waiting anywhere from months to a year, which in terms of technology is an excruciatingly long time, but you'll most likely end up with a stable product. I wanted to jump right in but this was an entirely new platform. Would there be enough applications (now called “apps”) released? How was performance on these new handsets? And what's the deal with this new touch screen that can't do handwriting recognition? So I figured maybe waiting for a software update would be a nice compromise. But there was a problem. It wasn't a lack of apps. It was the process of getting apps.

With Windows Mobile there was no consolidated app store. You went around online to individual pages and found apps. You downloaded them and installed them. Microsoft had no hand at all in the process. Apple, in their ease of use and closed system style, made a walled garden of apps. And only the apps they liked made it in. Up until this point there wasn't a lot of restrictions on smartphones. WiMo handsets could be flashed with different OS updates by hand. You could install whatever you wanted. Apple changed that. It turns out that the wall around their garden was very high and the bouncer at the gate was very strict. And sometimes arbitrary. I did not like this. With WiMo I was the gatekeeper. With the iPhone one needed to hack their handset to become the keymaster. Suddenly the iPhone wasn't usable out of the box anymore.

The longer I waited the worse the iPhone looked. That's not strictly true. The iPhone still looked great. It was the Apple infrastructure/baggage that it came with. With each OS update gaining complete control of the iPhone seemed to become more of a hassle. I didn't want a phone where being up to date meant owning a crippled product. If I didn't care about complete freedom I would have taken the iPhone plunge then and there. For some people root access isn't an issue. For me that choice being taken away at the moment of purchase was a deal breaker.

So I waited. A few more WiMo phones came out but nothing all that impressive. It was just more of the same and all things shiny and new were frolicking in Apples fields. But every now and then came a whiff of hope. Palm, a player that had been essentially dead to me since high school, was coding a new phone OS from scratch. And there was talk of Google making a phone. Probably a pipe dream but who knew. And like behemoths of fantasy epics I bid my time and waited.

Suddenly things became exciting. The Palm OS, WebOS, garnered fantastic responses from tech testers. And the G1 came out. The G1 didn't impress me as a phone but as proof of concept it was downright thrilling. I'm a tech-head. It was thrilling. I managed to push down my excitement and recalled what happened last time I felt this way; Apple started to fight its own customers and they broke my heart. I didn't want that to happen again.

Palm kept looking good but it didn't seem for me. It was more interface than OS for my taste. I wanted something better than the the WiMo UI but I do like the option to get my hands dirty in the system when the mood strikes me. The WebOS simply felt... hollow to me. But Android... Android was wooing me with a vengeance. Open source, an app store with the option for 3^rd party installs. An interface worlds beyond Windows Mobile, though still no iPhoneOS. I was set. And then AT&T broke my heart.

The problem became my carrier. They have an exclusive deal with Apple to carry the iPhone. They don't want to introduce competition that would scare away their biggest cash cow. Suddenly people who had hated, and still hated, AT&T were flocking for contracts. Sure, the were carrying new WiMo phones but I didn't want more of the same. I had seen the future of user interaction and hardware. Windows Mobile was not part of that future. So my father and I considered shopping another carrier.

But like that traffic jam in Office Space, you can never be at the right place at the right time. Once we started to shop around two things happened.

1. Windows announced the next WiMo.
2. AT&T announced that they were getting a number of Android phones.

The next Windows Mobile was to be called Windows Phone 7. It was going to be coded from scratch. In fact the whole thing felt like a Sci-Fi channel original movie: assembled from the cast off gimmicks of a number of recent blockbusters. Like Palm, it was to be coded from scratch and focus on a fresh interface designed to stream data to your home screen. Like the iPhone it was to cut open system multitasking and be app store only for installs. In fact, it was pretty much the worst features of the iPhone without the benefit of Apple's wonderful interface or established market. Suddenly Windows went from my safety choice to a non-option. So my father and I looked at the AT&T Androids. And that's when AT&T broke my heart again.

Their first Android was the Motorola Backflip. It was, in essence, a Sidekick for the new generation of smartphones. Except that it started leaking clues. For instance, the search provider was locked into Yahoo. Odd. Also the option to install 3^rd party apps was permanently locked out. It was a highly customized, highly crippled Android phone. Then AT&T let out the specs for a couple more, the Dell Aero and the Samsung Galaxy. Neither blew competing Android sets out of the water and then the news broke about the OS. They would all be locked down. And the provider for search and mail would be locked to Yahoo.

What AT&T did here was to insist that all its smartphone customers be treated like children. Be it Android, iPhone or Windows the user was going to have to go through app store only on locked handsets. In order to get a phone that met my requirements I would have to hack any of these. Suddenly it became obvious what the problem was. AT&T no longer had a single smartphone that was not going to be a downgrade to the freedom I had on my 2.5 yer old Tilt. The only free option would be to buy an unlocked Nexus 1 at full price and even then we're locked into the carrier because of the operating bands on the phone. We'd be paying hundreds of dollars to keep the same service and contract we've had for years. That's not appealing.

That is the point when you know a market is so far from free that it's locked up in a tiny box. There is no good reason that my “ancient” hardware should offer me options that no current phone can. Where's the competition to insure innovation? With systems this closed your only option is to strap in and try to enjoy the ride. If these were airlines you would suddenly realize that you can't bring your own music or books on the plane and there will never be the option to walk about the cabin no matter how clear the weather.

So we worked out a similar contract on Verizon (they have the phones we want and a decent enough data network. Sprint is still out until they improve coverage in our area). It turns out to be a bit cheaper which is nice. We got the HTC Incredible which has specs that should last us a while. The OS is open to 3^rd party installs and that means easily rooted once the Incredible ROM hits the net has already been rooted to custom ROMs are now an option..

Verizon may turn out to be a pain but let's be honest, what cell phone company is pleasant to deal with? In this case we came to realize that in AT&Ts zeal to keep Apple happy as the only feasible smartphone the devil we knew became so clearly the greater of two evils that we couldn't stay with them. When you stick with a service for years and the only choices they provide are more restrictive each time a new option comes out then it's clear that their system is broken.

AT&T, I hope you're happy. It's clear you can only make one customer at a time happy. And that customer's name is Steve Jobs. I wish you two the best. You certainly deserve each other.

EDIT It's been a few weeks with Big Red and the Incredibles (band name?). I'm satisfied and it looks like the iPhone is coming to this network, too. I guess there's no escaping Apple's legion of fan-boys anymore. Of course, the iPhone 4 seems to have more than its fair share of problems...

Comic strip: Quiet in the library...

Toy Story 3 - Both Dynamic and Flat

The other day I was thinking about Toy Story 3 and the Toy Story series in general.  I'm not a huge fan of them, though I did enjoy the 3rd one.  I tried to figure out what about the movies didn't really work for me and it occurred to me that while (some of) the characters are three dimensional their world view is too flat for me.

What do I mean by that?  Well, we see how the toys grow and learn from each other.  Buzz goes from a tool to one of the gang. Yay.  What we don't see is any of the toys actually thinking beyond the set of roles they are presented with.  They are told that they are supposed to function as entertainment for children and they follow this role with dogmatic adherence.  Even in the 3rd film, in the midst their fears of being rejected possibly coming to fruition they stick to that same role in all their choices: stick with Andy or move on to other children.  At no time to they think that after being thrown out the then have complete control over their lives and movement.  They are free not only to entertain other children but they can also venture out on their own.  While they do derive pleasure from making kids happy we know that they can find emotional fulfillment in other ways.  Just look at the happily married Potato Heads.

The only character to question this role is Lotso, the sinister and unredeemed bastard bear who rejects children.  But putting this up as the alternative lifestyle against the forever devoted Woody is a bit of a thin and pathetic dichotomy.  If children are seen as gods then this is the equivalent of portraying all people as devout fundamentalists or self-assigned anti-Christs.  Woody has pure and ultimate faith in Andy and any child who he serves.  Bringing them joy, no matter how neglected he becomes, is his only purpose in life.  Lotso, alternatively, actively distrusts and hates the capricious children and essentially makes his goal in life to live a completely hedonistic lifestyle while punishing believers.

I understand that this is ostensibly a children's series but it's Pixar.  We're allowed to expect more from them.  That combined with the fact that this is the third installment means that there's a reasonable expectation that these characters could grow to question the world they've inhabited since 1995.

To be fair, Pixar still brings the Toy Story characters to a level above that of most kid's movies.  But they rarely do sequels to by installment number three I'm going to expect new levels of the story and the world to be exposed and played with.  With Up we have a relationship blossom in just a few minutes and it's strong enough to fuel the whole movie.  In The Incredibles we see a family fighting against society, their nature and see that sometimes not all people are equal.  Ratatouille essentially took a bunch of things that should have bored the pants of kids and made them enticing and joyfully appealing.  WALL-E was... well, it was WALL-E.  That movie was constructed not as a children's film but as an experiment in classical direction but with robots in a post-apocalyptic landscape.

With all that under their belt it's not beyond reason to expect Pixar to push out a bit in the third Toy Story movie and make the characters think beyond raging fundamentalism by both sides of the plot.  What was there was good. Don't get me wrong.  I liked it.  But the series falls flat for me because I expect the world to be a bit deeper.  Instead they stop short of any sort of breakthrough.  They may push the edges of their roles but they never quite become as self aware as an autonomous, growing character should.

Dining at the chef's table At The London

I'll start by saying that beyond the meal, which was incredible, this was a fantastic experience.  Dining at the chef's table is something completely different than just eating a restaurant.  Beyond the food and the wine there is the kitchen and the chefs.  For each course the chef that prepared it came out to explain what went into that specific dish.  The attention to detail regarding both the food and the group I was with was astounding.   So now, onto the food.

Amuse bouche

Olive paste on celery

melon soup shot with  crème fraîche

Selection of canapés 

 I suppose that after this it's safe to say that I'm not a fan of olives.  It's obviously not the preparation but the actual flavor.  I did not care for the olive paste.  The shot of melon soup not only cleared the olive from my tongue but was delicious.  It wasn't sweet but rather creamy.  Perfectly set up my palette for the canapés.  For the life of me I cannot remember what went into them by they were light and delicious.

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Seared hamachi and uni with squid vinaigrette

 The hamachi was great.  Just fatty enough, soft texture, not fishy at all.  This was offset by the fishiness of the uni.  The hamachi faded a bit while the uni lingered but not in an unpleasant way.  Just strong.

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Sautéed Hudson Valley foie gra, cippolini artichoke, foie gras ice cream with shaved truffle served with toast

This was a bit of a shock.  The ice cream on the left was very salty on its own while the artichoke and foie gra was much more mild.  It seemed overpowering and an odd choice until combined together and eaten on the toast.  The salty from the truffles mixed with the butter foie gras.  My only complaint is that I think there was too much truffle in the mix.  At times it was a little overpowering.

paired with Riesling Spaetlese, Schloss Vollrads, Rheingau 2005

 One of the smoothest sweet wines I have ever had.  It wasn't mouth puckering sweet but was still a very strong fruit bouquet.  The finish was smooth beyond measure.  Highly recommended.

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Maine diver scallops, pressed octopus, white asparagus, crispy potatoes, grilled watermelon

On the way over the the London we were discussing what foods we didn't like, though agreed to try everything served.  My named food was scallops.  I have never liked scallops.  Well, they served scallops and this is up with the beef course as one of my two favourite dishes of the night.  It tasted as scallops have never tasted to me before and the watermelon complimented it.  The octopus was dense but not chewy.  Each part of this dish was great and together was amazing.

paired with Viognier, Triennes, Sainte Fleur 2008

I believe that this is the wine that tasted strongly of apricot.  The crispness of it went very well with the seafood.

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Caramelized veal sweetbreads, lemon poached endive, marinated spring onions, English peas

Well, I've tried sweetbreads.  The onions lent an nice edge to the soft flavor of the sweetbreads.  The taste was actually tasty.  The soft texture is what took me out of completely loosing myself in this one. More interesting than great but still damn good.

paired with Weingut Knoll, Loibner, Federspiel, Wachau 2007

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Mediterranean sea bass wrapped in eggplant and stuffed with ratatouille, crème fraîche gnocchi, Meyer lemon and crispy garlic, tomato and gin consommé

This was the other surprise for me that night.  Normally I don't like cooked fish because it becomes flaky and sometimes fishy tasting.  This had a mild sea flavor which was perfectly augmented by the tomato and gin consommé, which was the secret heart of this course.  The eggplant had a great texture to it that really pulled the fish together and the ratatouille in the center made for a perfect finish to each bite.

paired with Jean-Noël Gagnard, Les Masures 2007

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Triple seared dry aged NY strip loin, smoked beef tongue and broccoli, romanesco, tamarind sauce

The cube of tongue is hidden between the broccoli and the strip.  It was great.  Incredibly smoky and verged on too much but since it was just one small cube it was just enough.  The aged strip loin was essentially a perfect piece of beef.  It tasted like meat rather than spices.  It was tender.  It was cooked just enough to be considered cooked all the way through.  Wonderful.

paired with Bodegas Mas Alta, Artigas 2005

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Brillat-Savarin, truffle honey, candied almonds

 The almonds went wonderfully with this butter-like cheese.  My one complaint is that, once again, it tasted as if there was just a bit too much truffle in the honey.  I know, to complain about too much truffle, right?

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White chocolate with lime, mango and coconut

 A number of people thought this was the dessert.  The coconut crème fraîche on top was fantastic.  It didn't have that dry element that a lot of coconut tends to.  The mangos and lime were fantastic, and the white chocolate on the bottom was so creamy and delicious that I didn't mind it being (falsely) called chocolate.  That means it was really good.

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Vanilla parfait with passion fruit curd, young coconut water and sorbet, coriander

It's hard to see but they poured coconut water into the bottom of the bowl so it soaked up.  This was delicate and delicious and the passion fruit curd is wrapped up in extremely thin sliced mango.  Eating those pouches put a fantastic closing fruit flavor to a soft pelleted dish.

Single-origin Venezuelan chocolate mousse, passion fruit, balsamic reduction and crème fraîche sorbet

 My favourite dessert of the two.  The chocolate mousse was slightly on the dark and bitter side, exactly how I like my chocolate.  The passion fruit matched that perfectly and, like a negative of the previous dessert, the crème fraîche was a smooth and light finish to an incredibly rich and striking chocolate dessert.

Lost, what a long, strange trip it's been. Too bad the destination was a bust.

I can only assume that the writers worked themselves into a corner that they ultimately couldn't get out of and did what Sawyer would do: con their way out. The whole “Lost is a metaphor for purgatory” was postulated by the fans back in the first season and was explicitly denied by the writers. So what happens? They half get off the island and then that half turns out to be purgatory. So in essence the island doesn't matter.

OK, it matters a little but in a show that features its location as a character the island should matter more than just a little. Let's get some things out there.

• The sideways flashes during last season take place far down the line when everyone is dead.
  
  We know this because Jack's dad, Christian Shepard (frakking really?) knows all and tells us so. We also know that Hurley becomes the new Jacob and has since died so this could actually be taking place thousands of years after the crash of flight 815.

• The island is not part of the afterlife.
  
  Once again, we know this because our good Christian Shepard tells us so. He tells Jack that the reason these people have to meet again in death is that the most important part of their lives are with each other. Since it's impossible to have the most important part of your life occur after your death....

What's wrong with all of this? Let's just agree to accept the Christian/Mormon afterlife that Lost throws at us in the final moments of the series. The first thing that struck me is that there are a good number of characters who Desmond didn't even bother “activating” with their memories. Where's Miles? Captain Frank Lapidus? I understand why Richard Alpert isn't there, as his afterlife is probably with the others, but this core cast is the only set of people who deserve to move on? And how can people like Ana Lucia not be ready when the mechanics of their afterlife bar them from growing through self awareness unless specifically activated by someone else? If Ana Lucia isn't ready then Desmond needed to help her become ready. And is Lost saying that without romantic love your life is incomplete and you can't move on? It also bothers me that Jack spent years of his life trying to be a good father, loving his son, and finds out at the end of the show that his son isn't real and doesn't have a soul and will never meet him in heaven. And speaking of rejection, wasn't Sayid in love with someone else when the show started and wasn't he desperate to get her back even though she was dead and wasn't she NOT Shannon? Why isn't she the one Sayid finds in purgatory and who is she going to love for all eternity? Pretty callous, god.

Those are just nitpicks about the way the Lost afterlife works and aren't the crux of why this finale fails. The big issue is that the sideways flashes were death. Why is that a problem? Lost established itself with odd storytelling about this mysterious island. It was partially character based but since so many of those characters come and go (I read that over 75% of the cast died within the show) the series is anchored in this island. It really was the unspoken character. Then this last episode comes along and explains in soft-focus, drawn out detail what happens to some of the characters and ignores the island completely. It is the same as publishing a book that is a murder mystery up until the last chapter and tacking on the final chapter of a romance novel for “closure”; it doesn't work for either part of the story. What the writers of Lost have done was slowly get the viewers emotionally involved in the mysteries of this strange tropical location and then tell everyone “But that's really not the point. Love is”. While love played an important factor in many of the character relationships we already knew that because we saw that love develop on the island. Love and the island aren't mutually exclusive so whay was any explanation about the island cut in order to show viewers the same romances blossom once more in yellow tinted montage bursts?

All of this goes beyond the science-fiction to fantasy problem that I've written about before. The island never stopped being science-fiction and the purgatory epilogue that was fantasy. That's fine. What is problematic is that nothing pertaining to understanding the island really mattered. That's 5 years out of a 6 year show wasted. The Dharma experiments? Doesn't matter. Whidmore and his life long quest? Frak it. Whidmore and his last minute experiments with Desmond and electromagnetism? Forget about that. Anything about the time traveling? Doesn't make any difference later so don't worry about it. The subplot about babies not being able to be birthed on the island, Walt's mystical powers, Charlie's psychotic episodes like when he kidnapped and baptized Aaron? There are countless little questions that we're left with. I'm not saying everything needed to be spelled out in the end but beyond that we're all told that none of it makes any difference. Those problems, those mysteries, those first 5 seasons of the show aren't important.

I don't mind not having everything spelled out in the end. I'd rather a show err on the side of unexplained rather than giving half-assed excuses. I think lack of explanation is the one smart thing about the end of Battlestar Galactica. My favorite show is The Prisoner. Lost, especially early Lost, borrowed a lot from The Prisoner like setting as extension of identity, knowing one's self as dramatic conflict, subjective versus objective narrative to blur the reality of a show. I don't mind not knowing everything. I don't mind when characters lie if it's part of their character. Obfuscation in a show can be very rewarding. But with Lost the entire concept turned out to be a lie. And not in the manner of a twist. A twist is an exercise in irony where the assumed subject specifically turns out to not be the true subject of interest. With Lost's limbo ending, well, that could be tacked on to literally any show at any moment. It's a completely stand alone idea and negates all earlier elements of a story. Really. Take any TV show that you've been interested in. Then replace the finale and any closure it established with “then they all died and fell in love and went to heaven”. It's such a self contained concept that it really can be tacked on as a preassembled ending to any story.

I don't even think it's worth the effort of analyzing the show now that it's over. Play back the finale without the side-flashes and it's pretty straight forward. Watch all the side-flashes in a row after that and even the afterlife twist is easy to understand. Other than the unanswered island mysteries there isn't much about the finale that is unclear. The mysteries of the island, well, you just have to let those go. We know that everyone (eventually) dies. We know that the afterlife is fundamentally in line with Christian mythology, with a heaven, hell and purgatory. More specifically we know that it's pretty close to Mormon where you take the knowledge you gained in life and use it to build your own afterlife world which you share with the soul mate that is meant for you. We know that the island isn't part of the afterlife because of the reason addressed in the above bullet points. On a technical level it is true that “then they all died and fell in love and went to heaven” is an ending. What's left to discus? From the characters' perspective I suppose that once their soul passes to heaven with their soul mate, all those pesky questions about science and time travel and free will (Faraday and his mother show us that there is no free will anyway) don't really matter much anymore.

Lost has always been, foremost, an experiment in storytelling. With Lost, the way the story was told was always more important than the story. Were there good parts to it? Absolutely. It had enough good parts to keep people watching for 6 seasons and the first season is flat out brilliant. It's just disappointing to complete this show's run only to find out that the entire plot wasn't just secondary but arbitrary. So in the end Lost was interesting storytelling, a mediocre story. But I think “interesting” is the biggest compliment that I can give the show.

"Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is nearly upon us!

It's May 20th for those who want to participate.  I know I will and I'll probably be posting my amateur art.

I'd like to address is some negative reaction that this has received.  I found a well written response by Ann Althouse, a law blogger.  She argues that while anyone is well within their rights to draw Mohammed but that doesn't make it a good idea.  I agree that not everything legal is a good idea.  She claims that it will do nothing but incite anger by being disrespectful and this is where I part company with her.

While it may not be respectful of Islamic law that is the very point.  Anyone who is not Muslim should not be expected to follow Islamic law.  Althouse then likens the act of drawing Mohammed to the art piece entitled "Piss Christ" in which a crucifix was photographed submerged in a jar of urine.  These are not comparable acts, though both are legal and valid.  With "Piss Christ" the artist did something that was not specifically breaking a religious law but was intended to be controversial by going against social graces.  Submerging any symbol in urine shows disrespect to the subject.  A drawing of Mohammed is almost the opposite.  It breaks a specific religious decree but does not violate social graces.  Simply drawing a symbol or person is not normally a sign of disrespect.

It is this point that "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is supposed to express.  Doing something that is not normally rude and is not forbidden by someone's beliefs shouldn't be a problem simply because someone else doesn't want to do it.  A much more applicable comparison would be how Jews should react to the crucifix itself.

Assuming that Jesus is actually god then it counts as a a graven image of god, which is forbidden.  If Jesus is not god then it's idolatry which is forbidden.  Simply from a historical perspective Jews see people hanging up and wearing crucifixes as a group of non-Jews parading around the image of a murdered Jew.  That's pretty tasteless and cruel from a non-Christian perspective.

And yet when is the last time you heard of a group of Jews protesting the very existence of the crucifix.  I  can't think of an instance.  Why?  Because the people that wear this symbol are not Jews.  They are not bound by Jewish law.  If a Jew were to start wearing a crucifix they would surely be confronted about it.  If a Muslim were to being drawing images of Mohammed I would assume that their community would confront them.  But I would not expect a rabbi to give a Catholic a stern talking to nor do I expect an Imam to tell me that I'm breaking a law that binds me.

To be fair there are portions of every religious population that will turn to violence to get their point across.  Fundamentalism from any source will act violently to opposition.  Orthodox Jews in Israel (and New York or really anywhere for that matter) have been known to stone cars and people for violating the Sabbath.  Christians have been killing others for not being Christian or Christian enough since there was such a thing as Christians; from the inquisition to George Tiller.  Even some Buddhist monks have led mobs to destroy property and attack people.  In general if you piss off Jews you'd expect letters and protests.  Piss off Christians and you expect sponsorships pulled and protests and bitching on Fox news.  Piss off Buddhists and, well, no one really worries about that much.  Piss of Muslims and people get scared.  And attacked.

There was just a post on American Atheists that makes this point.  In the same South Park episode they portray Jesus watching porn and Buddha snorting cocaine.  And yet there's been no Christian or Buddhist backlash.   The only response that's feared is an Islamic one.  I know, there are violent Christian groups that aim to hurt and kill.  I also know that not all Muslims are violent.  It's not even a majority.  What I am getting at is that people keep fighting back when Christians kill doctors or counter-protest when the Phelps folks show up somewhere but there's a pre-emptive censorship when dealing with Mohammed and other Islamic content.  That is what needs to stop.  It's not the people making commentary and criticism that should be curbed.  It's the violent reactionaries who push their holy symbols as universally untouchable.

Which brings it all back to "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day".  I've personally done a web comic where "Christ-ee the cross" was a reoccurring minor character.  So I'm following, well...  That is interesting as well.  Molly Norris drew the original cartoon that's over at The Stranger's page but has since gotten cold feet and has pulled her cartoon from her own site.  So now it's really just rolling on its own.  I completely understand why she would get scared.  After all, if there ends up being some sort of response it's easier to attack one woman that the internet.  The ironic (real irony!) thing is that she's scared over her own protestation of the media being scared.

Rebecca Watson puts it very nicely in video form over here.

My perspective is that people should gauge how they control their speech based on respect, not by fear or force.  You can't make a decision to be respectful until you have the freedom to choose your actions.  So who's in on this?

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day
Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Movie Review: Kick Ass

First of all, it wasn't. When you have a property named “Kick Ass” then it better come across pretty damn strong. Instead this movie was just a moderately weak addition to the current trend of “gritty and realistic” super hero movies. I put that in quotes because anything actually realistic can't also be about super heroes. That's like having a non-fiction book on leprechauns.

I held off on watching this because it's based on a Mark Millar comic. I haven't read his Kick Ass but I have read enough of his other books to know his standard notes: glorified brute force as character development, all women as whores or mouthy vaginas, rape as more character development, lots of guns, obnoxious 4^th wall breaking narrative. I only saw the movie after being told that some things that a friend objected to in the comic were supposedly absent from the movie.

The film does have a strong Millar feel to it so I don't know how much was taken out. Not enough, in my opinion. And yet it's too soft to function as the testosterone-loving Millar vehicle it wants to be. The story is bland, the directing adds nothing and there are too many genres being dropped on a weak foundation. The result is a film that is less than the sum of its parts.

There is action and blood and guns. That cannot be denied. However, this is all placed on the framework of a teen sex comedy and that chassis is not strong enough to support everything that is piled on top of it. We have a young, whiney teen who takes up the role of Kick Ass, a super hero. But he has real world problems. Eventually he becomes the “gay best friend” of the girl he likes. Oh, that's so hilarious. Except that there's not enough character to go around and really it's just something he's doing because that's the situation that's been placed in front of him. And that's really his special ability. He simply does whatever is in front of him. He buys a costume and then fights people that he literally falls on top of. At one point he gets taken to the hospital after a fight and this results in him being full of nerve damage and metal plates. Of course the “gritty and realistic” drops completely as he has entire bones and joints replaced but is walking again in what appears to be a week or less. He then is confronted with other heroes (Big Daddy and Hit Girl) and pretty much does whatever they say.

One would think that this could lead to him growing into his role. But the journey of the hero is twisted to useless steps in a loveless dance. His “rejection of the call” stage lasts for all of three lines until Hit Girl tells him to essentially man up and get back to work. So how does he come into his role as a full fledged super hero? It's not by inner strength. It's because someone buys him a large gun. That is probably the essence of any Mark Millar property. Can't be a man? Get a gun.

All that? That's the whole movie. Sorry if I spoiled it. Sure, he gets the girl. She has some ridiculous social associations that act as ridiculous plot devices. She goes from being a sweet girl who does charity work (and dates pimps/drug dealers?) to a mini-skirt wearing nympho who has to have sex against dumpsters in trash filled alleys. This too has a very Millar feel.

There are also action sequences. Sometimes they are flat out fun but they are never really fun in the context of the movie. There are some nice stunts but often this is knocked flat by bad narration or the injection of awkward sentimentality or out of place pop-culture references in order to keep the teen sex comedy aspect in there. The parts that do work revolve around Hit Girl and Big Daddy. Why? Because they really don't have anything to do with Kick Ass' male sexual fantasy and fetish fulfillment.

Unlike Millar's stock “boy becomes man by way of a gun and dirty sex” story they are interesting and fun, if not all that three dimensional. Nicholas Cage is the best I've seen him in a long time as Big Daddy. He plays his out of costume persona as a father well. In costume he's not channeling but imitating Adam West as Batman and it works. Do realize that his cheese factor works in a “gritty” movie so often it's the world around him that fails to add to the story and that is a shame. Hit girl is great. Some of her scenes are bordering on “look, it's an 11 year old cursing and killing” but for the most part watching an 11 year old cursing and killing is disturbingly entertaining. Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl gives a solid performance. She's not courting any awards with her role but the actress, much like the character, gets the job done and does it well.

A Hit Girl movie is what this should have been. She has a story arc. She has an interesting back story. She's funnier, more shocking and a better fighter. She's the perfect subject for a twisted super hero story. Hit Girl, to put it plainly, kicks ass. Kick Ass does not.

On a scale of -5 to +5

Kick Ass is a +1.5

Freedom from Porn?

Over at Gawker there's an email exchange between a blogger and Steve Jobs.  It's a bit heated, there were things misspoken bits on both sides and it doesn't change anything.

What it does do is clarify Steve Jobs' comfort level about pushing his close-fist agenda.  When I buy a computer product I like to think I own it.  That entails being able to do what I want with it.  That doesn't include accepting the manufacturer as a morality firewall.

Jobs said that "some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is."  Why on earth he would brag about an open system being converted to a closed system is beyond me.  Yes, Apple puts out very nice hardware.  Yes, Apple is currently the pinnacle of user interface design (though Android with SenseUI reviews put it anywhere from close to better then iPhoneOS).  Yes, Jobs is making computers into easily used appliances.  That's all great.  What I can't get behind is that they are appliances linked directly to Apple.  Your washing machine can clean clothes from any store.  Your oven cooks food from all groceries.  Your car will drive on anyone's gas on any pavement.  Why should your computer not run apps that Apple hasn't personally approved?

I get why he wants total control.  Who wouldn't?  Plus it guarantees that the user get the simple interface he produces.  An iPhone running tons of 3rd party software can get bogged down in bugs.  What I don't accept is that he refuses to offer the option of making your own choices.  I'm an adult.  Perhaps I want porn on my phone's screen.

By the end  of the exchange Jobs gets downright nasty and asks, in a sinister parody of "Where do you want to go today?", what the blogger has accomplished with his life.  My guess would be writing.  And if this email conversation is any indication I'd also guess that it'll be done on less Apple hardware in the future.

Did "Lost" just jump the shark?

So last night's episode of Lost... It was interesting. Well, was. The more I think about it the more it simply doesn't work. I understand that when you have a show with devoted fans and years of build up to a finale you're going to run into problems pleasing people with your story. Look at Battlestar Galactica. But Lost is different. It is its own special case in a lot of ways. The manner in which the world-building was done is, well, unique. Lost spent seasons building up mysteries with barely any reveals. And that's why this episode doesn't work.

The fans came to Lost for the mysteries. It was a puzzle and really drew the viewer in. You'd watch and try to work out what the hidden black light map meant in the hatch. You'd wonder about the polar bear. You'd try to figure out why Walt had magic powers or Locke couldn't die. But then they announced the final season and things started to get answered. And the answers were mundane. I don't think Walt was ever really explained. The polar bear was part of an experiment. Alpert didn't know as much as people thought. The mysteries of the show turned out not to be that interesting. Instead, the focus went from “what's going on with the island” to “we have to protect/leave the island”. No one cared about the why and because of that gave up a lot of motivation.

So in last night's episode we get a whole lot of back story on Jacob and The Man In Black (the baby that no one bothered to name). They're brothers. New information but not shocking. Same age, same period of time on the island... and it's simply not a big deal. Their mother? Some random woman. We learn that they were raised by a white woman (good thing they don't look remotely like their mother of darker coloring). The immortality thing? She did “something”. And apparently that “something” was a lot more effective than the “thing” she did so they couldn't hurt each other. Something else we learned is that this whole struggle to keep safe/escape the island is really nothing more than Jacob having nothing else to do and The Man In Black having a desire to go “home”, somewhere he's never been or heard of. That seems like pretty weak motivation on both their parts to keep pushing them for centuries. In fact, the thing that Jacob is protecting has been changed from “the island” to “the special light in the island”. While this may have some metaphysical value it has no story value as of yet. That's not a reveal or an explanation; it's just a diversion. “You were looking here. Now look here!” and nothing is told to us about it. The only thing of any consequence that was show was Jacob killed TMIB. Great! We see how he used to be angry and violent while TMIB was impetuous but more even tempered. Other than that one fact this episode was weak reveals and constant runaround. At the very end we see that the non-mother and TMIB are Adam and Eve. At this point is it even important to know that? We have multiple universes, a time traveling island and immortals locked in an eternal struggle. We need to have every small mystery explained? We don't need to know everything so make sure what we do learn is important!

I was also a little put off that the flashback pointed to a lot of things being magic. The island has the spark of life within it. TMIB was suddenly turned into the smoke monster after his death by floating through this spark. Up until now we've had a the strangeness based on science-fiction: Desmond has some effect when it comes to electromagnetic fields, the core of the island was held in check with computers and magnetic machinery, Faraday worked out the mathematics of the time travel effect for frak's sake! Hell, even the smoke monster is held at bay with electronic pylons. Suddenly we have sparks of life, “things” done to create immortality, bodily transformations. The most science-fiction consistent point in the episode was when TMIB explained he was going to install a wheel inside the spark of life “with a system” he and his people worked out. A system? We get magnetic fields, quantum theory, branching universes, genetic research and suddenly it comes down to the spark of life and a wooden “system”? I always say it's important to know which side of the sci-fi/fantasy line you're on. Lost started out in a place where it could have been anything. Science-fiction, fantasy, religious afterlife, mental psychosis. I do realize that recently there have been a number of characters using fantasy buzzwords but these people were mainly getting it from Jacob and TMIB. If they want to turn on some fantasy aspects then at least weave it into the established sci-fi. Battlestar Galactica had mythology and gods from the get-go. Star Wars is based on the Force. 9 (with Elijah wood) starts with machines that can transfers parts of the soul. Focusing on time travel and quantum physics has, over the seasons, dug Lost itself deeper and deeper into science-fiction territory. It's too late to switch sides without loosing a lot of good will from followers.

So, what wasn't explained? How the two are immortal, exactly what's important about this life light, why does the spark of life make time travel possible... It's not that these weren't really touched on but rather that they were poorly explained elements in the story. Lost used to be impressive because, even if they were making it up as they were going along the details of different stories weaving together into something larger was impressive and fulfilling. This felt like filler and that's a problem since it was most of the origin story of the two eternal characters who seem to be the point of the show. If TMIB is immortal, invulnerable and can fly why doesn't he swim/fly from the island? He has the time. Is Jacob really destroying hundreds of lives just because the woman that killed his mother told him that this light was important? If the spark of life is extinguished everywhere if something happens to that cave of light then why is everyone fine in the alternate world where the island sank? I could understand it if the writers created a world that was falling apart due to issues brought about on the island but it just seems like the script is what's crumbling. If this whole thing has just been a Cain and Abel/Jacob and Esau retelling with the island used as a MacGuffin I will be royally pissed.

VERSUS: Atheism and Agnosticism

I am an atheist. Most people know this. What they might not know is what an atheist actually means. In fact, I'd say most non-atheists don't have an accurate meaning in mind when they think about atheism so I'm going to clear this up. To be fair I also think a large portion of atheists are confused about the term as well. To clear this up I'll be clarifying a few terms but the main focus in this post will be Atheism Vs. Agnosticism. Don't be scared.

The first step is to break these words down to see what they really mean, not what some people assume them to be.

• Atheism – without a belief in gods
• 'a' – no or absence
• 'theo' – god or divine
• 'ism' – a practice of, belief in, condition of

• Agnosticism – without enough knowledge to know. And in this case “know” is in terms of scientific thought so it needs certainty.
  
  • 'a' – no or absence
  • 'gnostic' – know, learn, discern
  • 'ism' – a practice of, belief in, condition of

Most people have a sort of scale in regard to belief in gods. From what people say and from what I've personally experienced it generally looks like this:

atheist → agnostic → deist → theist

This is actually being generous as I find fewer and fewer people who are aware of deism. Deism is a belief in a creator who has, since creation, not interacted with the universe in any personal way. Deists don't believe in any sort of revelation from a god and tend to think of their creator as a sort of watchmaker who created the universe and then took a step back to observe. Theists believe in (at least one) god and that it/they have, since creation, interacted with the universe and communicated with humans in some way.

There are many more branches than this but I wanted to get out just the basics.

Let us say that there is a button. There is a group of people who think pushing this button is the right thing to do. There is also a group that thinks pushing it is the wrong thing to do. But not everyone falls into this dichotomy. Some people aren't completely sure. They say they currently don't know whether pushing the button is right or wrong. If you take that undecided group and look at them right now they actually fall into the non-pushing group. While undecided it would be stupid to push the button. It could do something great. It could do something terrible. But either way no one is going to push it if they're not sure.

Pulling this back over to atheism you can see that people who are agnostic are not fulfilling any sort of belief. They are not being theists. Someone who is unsure of whether to press that button is not a button-pusher. Someone who is abstaining from belief in a god because of lack of knowledge is not currently believing in any sort of god. That means they are being atheists. Agnostics are a subgroup of atheists.

Here's another way of thinking about it. Let's take a hobby, say, stamp collecting. Some people are stamp collectors. They collect stamps. I do not collect stamps. I really don't care about stamps one way or another. If I learned more I might either feel strongly that they are a good investment and become a stamp collector, or that it's a huge waste of time and become an anti-stamp collector. As it stands, stamp collecting is just something I don't do. Now replace “stamp collecting” with “believe in god”.

An agnostic isn't 100% set in either direction in regard to belief. This means that they are in a subcategory of non-believers since they are not actively believing. They could have a leaning (Richard Dawkins ranks himself at 6.5 on a scale of 1-7 where 1 is complete faith in god and 7 is complete rejection) but since even someone leaning towards belief still hasn't gotten there they are still an atheist. In fact, as long as there's any percent of uncertainty then that person is still uncertain. Inside of the term 'atheist' an anti-theist would be 100% sure and an agnostic would be 99%-50% sure that there are no gods (50% being an estimated tipping point of doubt. Actual tipping point between belief and doubt may vary). If you decide that you want to go out and buy a set of stamps to collect you're not actually a stamp collector until you do it. If you choose to press a button you're not a button pusher until your finger pushes down on that button. If someone doesn't think there's enough evidence either way to make an educated decision regarding the existence of a deity then they are an atheist.

One note on the above is that there's actually a much more complicated aspect to doubt than I put in. There is the possibility of harboring doubt and still being a theist. An example is someone who takes up Pascal's Wager, that if there is no god but you worship him then you still get into heaven but if there is no god and you don't then you go to hell. That means Pascal finds it a better bet to pointlessly worship than possibly damn one's self. Since the person might fulfill the acts of worship but not truly believe then there's the whole question of whether following the actions commanded by a religion is enough to fulfill that religion. Whether it is enough differs from faith to faith so the result of doubter being or not being a button abstainer/atheist is different from religion to religion. In most forms of Judaism the action is more important than the motivation. In Catholicism the opposite is true. So in the spirit of openness I am admitting that this post is written with the assumption that doubt stops one from pressing the god button, as this is true for the Christian majority.

Since most atheists are Skeptics you'll actually find that the large majority of atheists are technically agnostics. Skeptics use reason and the scientific method in refining their world views. This means that since the god concept has been set up to be unfalsifiable at least recognition of this has to be acknowledged. For those who don't know, unfalsifiable means "not capable of being proven false". This does not mean it is true but only that the concept has some built in self defense mechanism to negate any investigation as to its existence or not. The idea that a god created the world in 7 days but made everything to look as if it were billions of years old is unfalsifiable since the concept negates any test results showing the universe to be older The standard skeptic's atheism says “There is not enough evidence to believe in any gods, however if proof was ever found then it would have to be acknowledged and atheist belief reconsidered”.

A lot of people think of anti-theists when they hear the word atheist. The idea behind anti-theism is “against believing in a god”, usually because they think it's detrimental to the mental well being of the believers and society in general. Similarly, but different enough to make a note of, are anti-religionists. The idefa behind anti-religionism is obviously "being against religion".

Belief is an active state. If an agnostic has not taken the action to believe then they are without belief, without god, a-theist.

Since “a theism” means “without god” and all of this is without god. “With god” is JUST deism and theism. Another differentiation I have been seeing a lot recently is the term "non-theist". Often times I see it used when the author thinks that atheist is too strong a word and agnostic will open up, well, this whole can of worms that I'm addressing now. But there is already a word that means non-theist. It's "atheist".