A good day ^^

 

Believe as you wish, but leave me out!

There I was, minding my own business. I was eating my breakfast, alone on a bench in the middle of campus. I sat nestled peacefully under a tree surrounded by pigeons. My head phones were on and I was listening to either Frank Sinatra or Big Band music. To my surprise, a Japanese fellow sat next to me all of a sudden and began talking to me. You have to respect the guy because that’s pretty hard to do in Japan (in my opinion), but it is a bit rude. Then a revelation …

!—<BEGIN stream_of_consciousness   >—
“… god damn it … a Christian trying to proselytize to me … in Japan?! … what do I do? I am not skillful enough in Japanese … I wish I could explain how much this pisses people off … YARG! … I don’t want to sound rude … do I? … “
!—<END stream_of_consciousness   >—

Seriously, when I left America for Japan, this was one thing I was surely not going to miss. I am all for respecting and protecting your civil rights to believe whatever cooky thing you desire, but please leave me out of it. I live in reality, and I hope you respect my right to be realistic about reality. I welcome you to join me there some day. I am perfectly fine without dreaming up fanciful stories. Thank you.

Quote of moment…

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” – Douglas Adams

 

My new(?) home! Let me show you it…

Ok, so I have been neglecting my promise to sort my pictures of Tokyo (/Yokohama). I will make an attempt in this little ditty. Perhaps another day I will regale you with tales of nothing but non-stop problems in grad. school… But everyone has problems in grad. school, so that’s probably pretty boring.

Oh, as an update and slightly egotistical booster shot (since it wasn’t mentioned in the post-conference entry), I wanted to point out that I was one of four international researchers honored with a student-presentation-award at the ICPEPA conference in September. Good times, and well worth the effort. Did I mention that the server crashed the day before making me go nearly bonkers? Oh, well, it did… I almost lost all of the data before formulating the figures for the poster, among other problems with the poster that day… *whine whine* mmm wine…

Ok, seriously though. I realize that I’ve been living here for nearly four months, so its not exactly a “new” home. But hey, I’ll throw in some cat sightings for free. It’ll make up for the heartache of waiting.

 

BLARG!

I’m sorry that I’ve been awful at keeping up this blog. Considering the recent surge of traffic that I have been receiving I’m going to start collecting my many pictures and get to work over the next couple of weeks in order to update. In the mean time, I will provide you with a scene from Star Wars, the fowl-version.

Disclamer:

To be honest, I just randomly found this picture on my computer and decided to post it up. I remember making this picture a long time ago in order to send to a beloved creationist I know. I think the humor was lost if I remember correctly. Also, luke skywalker was a tool … just sayin’.

 

Conference in Sapporo

Howdy,

I have returned to the intert00bs and come bearing photos. Having had several people misinterpret my intentions when dealing with philosophy, I will reassure you that my intentions are to support sound scientific, rational, evidence based reasoning and will only tackle scientific questions when philosophy attempts to contradict rationality. If you disagree with those intentions, then you are likely continuing your misinterpretation as it should conflict with no one’s belief system (except maybe Christian Scientists and other anti-rationalist philosophies [note: I have seen signs at various places of worship exclaiming, "A rational mind is the hand of Satan," which is where I base this claim.]). This is not to mention the Methodist preacher who assaulted my profession when I was nice enough to visit his church to spend some time with my family before I left for Japan … luckily, I don’t hold grudges .

Now on to the real stuff. A few weeks ago, I attended the International Conference of Photo Excited Processes and Applications (ICPEPA-6) in Sappporo Japan. It was a lot of fun, but being as it was my first conference, I made it my duty to attend all of the talks and discussions. I didn’t get to tour the city very much, unfortunately, but I did get to take some really interesting photos of the Ainu Museum outside of Chitose. Enjoy!

Drying fish that have been smoking for nearly a year at the time of this photo.

Traditional Ainu houses.

Boats anchored off of the shore of the lake in the Museum. The Ainu focused mostly on meats and much less on grains in their diets.

Giant Wooden Caving (I'm sorry, but I forgot who/what it depicts)

I am not entirely certiain, but I like the multiple lines in the photo

Animals kept at the museum which are animals that the Ainu often dealt with.

==========================================================

*Edit*

I have a bunch of new pictures since moving to Tokyo on Thursday, but I will need a bit of time to organize them and post them. Sorry for being such a delinquent .

 

Gimme a break … Please

Doh! I have to confess, I didn’t write the article that I promised a couple of posts ago … I blame it on being a temporary Technician (aka quasi Grad Student). They say you are actually making a contribution to science when nothing is going right, or something like that. Well, I had to restart 3 weeks of simulations, which delayed the writing of my proceedings paper for the upcoming conference in Sapporo (September 9th) and of course, most importantly, delayed my blogging. I’m trying to get into this blogging, but as George Bush said, “It’s HWAARRRDD!” (Yes, that was quote mining…) So, instead of giving you my feelings on religion, I will quench your thirst for the time being with Atheist/Agnostic inspired LOLcats! Oh, but first, I want to give you the link to the hilarious LOLCat Bible. Enjoy!

*edited:

Ok, I figured that you might enjoy a snippet of the LOLCat Bible.

Genesis 1:1-10

Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.

9 An Ceiling Cat gotted all teh waterz in ur base, An Ceiling Cat hadz dry placez cuz kittehs DO NOT WANT get wet.10 An Ceiling Cat called no waterz urth and waters oshun. Iz good.

 

Wha?

 

Democracy, not Theocracy

Stop changing science classrooms to meet your theocratic agenda! A must read article discussing the need for evolutionary theory to be taught in classrooms and why it would be a disgrace to drop it all together (?!). From Optimism in Evolution by Olivia Judson of the New York Times:

Moreover, since the science classroom is where a contempt for evidence is often first encountered, it is also arguably where it first begins to be cultivated. A society where ideology is a substitute for evidence can go badly awry. (This is not to suggest that science is never distorted by the ideological left; it sometimes is, and the results are no better.)

But for me, the most important thing about studying evolution is something less tangible. It’s that the endeavor contains a profound optimism. It means that when we encounter something in nature that is complicated or mysterious, such as the flagellum of a bacteria or the light made by a firefly, we don’t have to shrug our shoulders in bewilderment.

picture via here

 

Why this country has no future …

Warning: Comments section contains offensive language (against me).

Hey there, I hope no one missed me. It’s been pretty hectic at work, but there’s a more pressing issue I would like to discuss.

Recently, I began to have some conversations with creationists (also know as IDiots = Intelligent Design proponents) on the BeliefNet Community. Not only was I trying to help educate by pointing out their logical fallacies but correct their distorted view of the facts. These “facts” were given to them by fanatical religious websites, which I refuse to link to at this time because they, like Fox News, lie out their teeth. I found that these people not only had arguments covered with Confirmation Bias, but creationists also stooped to the lowest forms of unsubstantiated personal attacks (“You interpret the bible wrong. You have been deceived by Satan,” Christians just love each other, don’t they?). This, of course, must be the minority of individuals in the US, I thought… Unfortunately, a look at recent Gallup Polls shows a different trend:

• 44% God created man in present form
• 36% Man developed, with God guiding
• 14% Man developed, but God had no part in process

Are you joking me? 44% of the population believe the literal interpretation of scripture?! (Note: The Bible is just a story book filled with allegorical tales sometimes related to history) Not only that, but the fact that 36% believe god at least helped is also frightening. Magical mythical sky fairies aren’t guiding our development, unless of course you can show me some objective evidence. But for now, you want to rittle our minds with ludicrous stories of creation when nothing supports your claims. To the rest of mankind, I am sorry, but we are in for some serious trouble if we let ignorance florish as it appears to be occurring here in America.

I won’t get into the debates* in detail (it doesn’t deserve scientific debate … it isn’t science), but would like to show you (in picture form) how I feel about your silly rants. Also, I feel so passionate about how religion is destroying our society that I will soon be posting a detailed description of my personal feelings on theism and why I am not a theist (that means I am atheist). If you have any questions related to creationism or evolution, feel free to post a comment and I will try to answer it as best I can. Also, if you do not believe me about poor tactics of creationists? Look up “creationism” or “intelligent design” on YouTube, but I will not post that trite on this blog. Want to argue for ID? Go ahead and try…

*Update: I forgot that I already wrote an article explaining the common misconceptions held by creationists: Civil Discussion with a Creationist

This is what you actually think?!?! (another attempt at indoctrinating children)

What you seem to want ...

What will happen ...

What is the cause ...

Creationists, making their children dumber with every generation.

To the IDiots out there, pick up a biology textbook, heaven forbid you actually learn something …

 

I … can … do it!

577 Kanji Down, 1465 to go … 59+ more for today