blog
Dear Seattle Transit Authority: It takes me 25 minutes to drive to work. The same distance takes an hour and a half on the bus. I want to take the bus. But my time is valuable too, and I can't justify two extra hours in transit a day.
Dear Washington Department of Transportation: Traffic is horrible stop and go on 520 until the carpool lane ends and it drops to just two lanes. Is this just correlation or is it causation?
Dear Kaiser Permanente: I've spent my past three lunch breaks trying to get a written and not just verbal referral. Your hold music sucks--you need more than three songs, clearly. Have you never had to issue a referral before?
Things that are right: I saw a kid so excited to get to the ice cream truck he jumped an eight foot fence in two bounds.
Dear Washington Department of Transportation: Traffic is horrible stop and go on 520 until the carpool lane ends and it drops to just two lanes. Is this just correlation or is it causation?
Dear Kaiser Permanente: I've spent my past three lunch breaks trying to get a written and not just verbal referral. Your hold music sucks--you need more than three songs, clearly. Have you never had to issue a referral before?
Things that are right: I saw a kid so excited to get to the ice cream truck he jumped an eight foot fence in two bounds.
This year I'm celebrating the winter solstice rather than Christmas. We're probably going to do the same things we do for our usual Christmas celebration, but a few days earlier, on the shortest day of the year. I mentioned this to a (fellow atheist) friend, and he said, "Oh, you're one of those atheists." Since I don't believe the religious foundations of the holiday, why shouldn't I celebrate the lengthening of the days instead? I actually care that we'll be getting more sunlight, and am excited to usher in a new season and a new year. I'm not waging a War on Christmas.
American atheists and agnostics number between 20 and 60 million--why do we have no political representation or respect? An Economist article claims we are choosing the wrong fights and giving people fuel to fight back against us by tackling ceremonial deism and public displays of religion in addition to 'more direct' or 'clearer' cases of government-sponsored religion like the 10 commandments being displayed in court rooms. To me, this makes clear that we MUST continue to fight against ceremonial deism etc because people still do not understand the symbolism of ceremonial deism.
Writing "In God We Trust" on our money and pledging "one nation, under God" constitute a governmental sanctioning of religion from a government that should be completely secular. Declaring our united belief and trust in god through civic rites and on government-issued funds is not merely ceremonial. The words are not meaningless because they are so commonly used. Nor is 'ceremonial deism' continued and fought for because it fosters civic responsibility and patriotism, as some claim. Ceremonial deism is as much government-sponsored religion as federally sponsored faith-based organizations and required prayer/'moments of silence' in public schools. Or how about House Resolution #847, passed 372-9 TODAY, whose stated purpose is to "recognize the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith"? Dear Economist--is this one of those 'ceremonial deism' issues I'm not supposed to be upset about? Maybe I should write my representative to thank her for being one of the nine against.
American atheists and agnostics number between 20 and 60 million--why do we have no political representation or respect? An Economist article claims we are choosing the wrong fights and giving people fuel to fight back against us by tackling ceremonial deism and public displays of religion in addition to 'more direct' or 'clearer' cases of government-sponsored religion like the 10 commandments being displayed in court rooms. To me, this makes clear that we MUST continue to fight against ceremonial deism etc because people still do not understand the symbolism of ceremonial deism.
Writing "In God We Trust" on our money and pledging "one nation, under God" constitute a governmental sanctioning of religion from a government that should be completely secular. Declaring our united belief and trust in god through civic rites and on government-issued funds is not merely ceremonial. The words are not meaningless because they are so commonly used. Nor is 'ceremonial deism' continued and fought for because it fosters civic responsibility and patriotism, as some claim. Ceremonial deism is as much government-sponsored religion as federally sponsored faith-based organizations and required prayer/'moments of silence' in public schools. Or how about House Resolution #847, passed 372-9 TODAY, whose stated purpose is to "recognize the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith"? Dear Economist--is this one of those 'ceremonial deism' issues I'm not supposed to be upset about? Maybe I should write my representative to thank her for being one of the nine against.
Labels: activism, atheism, opinion, rant
- laptop power cable demands to be at a particular angle
- cell phone does not receive text messages; has recently developed habit of refusing to dial out or end calls
- still have problem with my WEP network key being automatically deleted although I have done nothing to the network settings
- packing box lid snapped off--that's what duct tape is for
- living room blinds only go down on the right side
EDIT: one hour later
- glasses just exploded--Brian is attempting to screw the screw back in
- cell phone does not receive text messages; has recently developed habit of refusing to dial out or end calls
- still have problem with my WEP network key being automatically deleted although I have done nothing to the network settings
- packing box lid snapped off--that's what duct tape is for
- living room blinds only go down on the right side
EDIT: one hour later
- glasses just exploded--Brian is attempting to screw the screw back in
Labels: rant
Oh great, "American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods." Walls have always been positive in the past, right? I mean, the Jewish ghetto that was supposed to protect Jews, the Berlin Wall, the walls along the U.S.-Mexico border that force illegal immigrants to cross dangerous deserts? Tell me how this strategy is radical or new--it's a classic!
It's true that building a wall will reduce interactions between Sunnis and Shia in the area--they will now chiefly occur at the established passages through the wall. Perhaps the Americans think that because they know the locations of these passages, they will be able to concentrate their patrols there and better control what and who goes through. In turn, the passages will present better targets for killing the other sect by concentrating people in one location.
A wall is a short-term solution to a long-term problem, and a response to the effects of problems rather than the causes. According to the NYTimes article above, "many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led government has choked off basic services to their neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up in the streets, banks to shut down and health clinics to languish. So the wall raises fears of further isolation." Dividing people with a physical barrier perpetuates psychological categorizations of 'us' and 'them', which will in turn maintain the desire to kill each other. The only way I can see this potentially being positive is if construction of the wall is coupled with major efforts addressing the roots of the problem, which I do not know, but would guess include the lack of balanced government representation, infusion of religion into government, desire for and justification of revenge, and the fear, anger, and stress of living through a civil war.
It's true that building a wall will reduce interactions between Sunnis and Shia in the area--they will now chiefly occur at the established passages through the wall. Perhaps the Americans think that because they know the locations of these passages, they will be able to concentrate their patrols there and better control what and who goes through. In turn, the passages will present better targets for killing the other sect by concentrating people in one location.
A wall is a short-term solution to a long-term problem, and a response to the effects of problems rather than the causes. According to the NYTimes article above, "many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led government has choked off basic services to their neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up in the streets, banks to shut down and health clinics to languish. So the wall raises fears of further isolation." Dividing people with a physical barrier perpetuates psychological categorizations of 'us' and 'them', which will in turn maintain the desire to kill each other. The only way I can see this potentially being positive is if construction of the wall is coupled with major efforts addressing the roots of the problem, which I do not know, but would guess include the lack of balanced government representation, infusion of religion into government, desire for and justification of revenge, and the fear, anger, and stress of living through a civil war.
