SSA Conference (Friday)

Hello, I'm back! I didn't have internet access for the rest of the conference, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had time to blog anything even if I did. This is the second part of a short blog series on the SSA conference; you can read the first part here.

I'm just going to say it--Friday sucked. I was still tired from my miserable plane trip (I hadn't slept well in the heat) and I was surrounded by people I didn't know. I'm stressed out by crowds, by meeting people, and by being a guest in another person's house, so I was not feeling very happy. On top of all that, we spent most of the day at the Columbus Zoo.

Don't get me wrong. I love zoos. I volunteered for the St. Louis Zoo for a semester, and went there almost every week. But have I mentioned the heat? It was BAD. I honestly nearly fainted, it was so bad. On top of that, sweat kept pouring into my eyes and made it nearly impossible to see*. At that point, I just didn't care about looking at the animals anymore. I was just concentrating on not falling over.

There was a talk of some kind at one point, but I didn't hear most of it. Again, the heat. There's a picture of me on Facebook where I'm just slumped in my seat with my eyes closed. I'm sorry, professor guy, I was half-dead by then. :(

We finally made it back to campus, where I checked into my dorm room. One of my roommates (I eventually had three roommates--in a TINY TINY quad) was already there, which was fortunate, because I didn't bring my own shampoo (*cough*). After I showered, I fell face-down on my bed and didn't move again for several hours.

I woke up in time for registration and opening remarks, which was, again, stressful. Not because of the heat this time (we had A/C), but because of the whole meeting-people-and-having-conversations thing. I did finally say hi to Hemant, Jen from Blag Hag, and Mark (Jen's friend, whom I've known online for quite a while), but then promptly retreated into the back of the conference room for the rest of the evening. There was an awards ceremony for student groups who put on excellent events, and Mark and Jen's group received Best Service Project award for their Send an Atheist to Church event. I don't remember if anything else happened that night; I was busy staring at the ceiling and hoping that Sunday came quickly.

After registration was over, I went back to the dorms and crashed, exhausted. I was not a very friendly or happy person at that point, and I really just wanted to go home.

...and that was Friday. Don't worry, it got much, MUCH better. Stay tuned for details on the rest of the weekend!

*My friend Mark had much worse eye problems, though, so I'm not going to complain...too much.

SSA Conference (Thursday - Friday morning)

Yesterday, I left home at 3:00am to travel to the annual Secular Student Alliance conference. Four planes, five airports, and 12 hours later, I stepped out into the muggy heat of Columbus, Ohio. A combination of extreme sleep deprivation, travel nerves, and suffocation in this horrible climate rendered me nearly insensible for the rest of the evening (an evening spent at the house of Students for Freethought president Samantha Snyder, our very generous and friendly host). Now that I've slept, I'm alert and ready to report on the goings on of student skeptics from around the country!

Today's schedule:

• Trip to the Columbus Zoo with Jeffrey Mckee, a biology professor from Ohio State University. He will be speaking on the biology of evolution, using live animals to illustrate.
• Some sort of welcoming ceremony thingy.
• Lots of orgies (probably).

At some point, I hope to corner Hemant Mehta and ask him if he wants to be a guest on Rational Alchemy, but I don't know if I'll get the chance. I'll keep updating throughout the conference!*

*With a stolen netbook, of course. I didn't bring my laptop.

A Dose of Hypocrisy

Remember when I posted about that iPhone application based on the Index of Creationist Claims, by TalkOrigins? I said:

The skeptic's movement should be promoting critical thinking and independent research. We need to teach people how to think and argue, not what to think and argue. If any clown can scroll to the appropriate claim and read off a stock answer, that's missing the whole point. That's not skepticism. That's mindlessly rehearsing someone else's argument--exactly what the creationists themselves do.

Well, I was thoroughly thrashed in the comments section of Pharyngula for daring to compare skeptics to creationists.

But now, there's a similar app targeted to Christians. Hemant Mehta rips on it in his blog:

Bring it on.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Christian or an atheist — Intelligent people who really know their arguments will always be better off than a person equipped with an iPhone app containing suggested responses.

I totally agree with that statement. That's pretty much what I said, actually. But do you want to know the funny part? Hemant endorsed the app for skeptics!

Do you ever find yourself in a heated debate with Creationists and all you have with you is your iPhone?!

Yes. Yes, you do. Every day.

That’s why you want to download Creationist Claims by Insomnia Addict — it’s the iPhone version of The Counter-Creationism Handbook by Mark Isaak.

A little consistency here would be nice, people!

Why yes, I AM comparing homosexuality to pedophilia.

I have participated in many debates concerning the morality of homosexuality, and almost invariably the debate will turn into a discussion about whether or not sexual orientation is a choice. For the life of me, I can't figure out how this is relevant. I mean, I sort of get why people bring it up. People who are against gay rights want to show that gay people are rebelling against God's will and that they could be just as happy (or even more so!) in a straight relationship. People who support gay rights want to show the opposite.

But it doesn't matter.

Well, that's not exactly true. It's an interesting question for biologists, sociologists, psychologists, etc., and I certainly think it's a valid line of inquiry. But it doesn't affect the morality issue in the slightest. Just look at pedophilia. It seems unlikely to me that most pedophiles choose to be attracted to children when the consequences of that "choice" are so dire (sexual frustration at the best, life in prison at the worst). However, whether or not they have a choice in their attraction, pedophiles are morally obligated to not act on their desires.

Similarly, whether or not people choose to be gay has no bearing on whether homosexual acts are immoral. If we found out that sexual orientation is indeed a choice, would that make homosexuality wrong? No, because homosexuality is amoral. No defensible ethical theory can make sex between consenting adults a moral issue. It's like preferring green over white; morality doesn't come into it at all. (Or, if you oppose gay rights, would scientific evidence that sexual orientation is not a choice convince you that it's okay? I doubt it.)

So, regardless of which side you come down on, keep choice out of the morality debate. It's distracting and irrelevant.

Christianity vs. Islam

Epic.



(Via Common Sense Atheism)

Elitism Gone Bad

Don't get me wrong, I'm an elitist. My taste in books, movies, food, etc. is almost certainly better than yours*. You doubtlessly think the same about your own tastes, and that's okay. We're different people and enjoy different things. As a friend of mine likes to say, "De gustibus non est disputandum". ("There is no disputing about tastes.") But sometimes, people slide out of the realm of mere preference and start to make claims about the objective value of things. Unfortunately, many of these opinions are still based on arbitrary preference, but they're taken as obvious facts about the world and anyone who dissents doesn't just have poor taste, they're wrong. This is elitism gone bad, and it's driving me nuts.

An example:

A few weeks ago, I drove home to see my family. I rented a car for the trip, and ended up with a Prius. I didn't request one, but I was excited to try driving one for the first time. I'd heard a lot of things about the car, from people on both sides, and wanted to find out for myself whether it was worth a damn. Turns out, I loved it. It was quiet, turned smoothly, accelerated well, and barely strained over the mountains. I don't know a lot about cars, but I've driven my share of really shitty vehicles and this was not one of them. I also spent about $40 in gas for the entire trip, which was fucking sweet.

So I got home, and I started telling a friend about the trip and how pleased I was with the car. She cut in, "You rented a Prius? Those cars are shit!" I expected that reaction out of this particular person, but I went ahead and asked her why she thought the Prius was a bad car. She mumbled something about "power" and started talking about some sports car that was so much better than a Prius.

Again, I don't know a lot about cars, so I asked her to explain her comment about "power". After all, I could be mistaken about the value of the Prius, and I definitely want to avoid buying one if I am! Would it poop out on me at certain speeds? What about winter driving, and regular trips through the mountains? More importantly, was there another car that drove as well or better, with similar gas mileage, for a comparable price? In response, she threw out some numbers on horsepower and RPMs and started talking about Sports Car X again.

Thing is, I don't care about Sports Car X, although I'm sure it outperforms the Prius in many, many ways. I want to know about other affordable cars that perform as well or better than the Prius. It's a shitty car if it performs poorly for what it's supposed to do. I kept making this point to my friend, who finally got frustrated and spat out something about how Prius owners are "smug assholes". Hm. Forgive me if I'm not convinced.

More recently, I've started to pick up web design. I haven't done any in the past and decided to use Dreamweaver to learn the basics and quickly throw up a simple website. Immediately, I was jumped on by anyone who's ever done even a little bit of web design. Dreamweaver is utter shit, I can't believe you don't know better, etc. One person even grabbed my keyboard and started typing HTML in NotePad to show me the real way to do it.

From what I understand, the main objection to Dreamweaver is you have limited control over what kinds of features you can put on a website. There also seemed to be a more subtle accusation that using Adobe software somehow makes me an agent of the man. First off, I'm not trying for anything amazing here; I want a simple, navigable website that doesn't look like shit. Dreamweaver can do that. Second, who is this freaking man, and why does he care what software I use? (Software I didn't even buy, I might add: I have free access to CS3 through our library computers.)

Basically, I'm pissed that people get these wild notions about certain things and react almost violently to the mere suggestion that they might not be worthless! What is going on here? Please enlighten me!


*Granted, I really love bad movies, but I like them because they're bad.