Monthly Archives: January 2014
Kirk Cameron: Perpetual floater
A friend of mine, who ironically happens to be a nonbeliever, recently interviewed Christian apologist and charlatan Kirk Cameron for The Mountaineer newspaper in Haywood County, N.C. Cameron is going to be appearing in Franklin, N.C., to promote his anti-gay program, “Love Worth Fighting For.”
In the story, Cameron describes how he came to be a Christian and now calls himself a “recovering atheist,” according to the story:
As a teenager, Cameron starred as the goofy and loveable Mike Seaver on the sitcom “Growing Pains” from 1985-1992 alongside Alan Thicke and Leonardo DiCaprio. But it was his on-screen girlfriend Chelsea Noble that perhaps influenced his life for years to come.
Noble and Cameron have been married now for more than 20 years and have six children. In an interview with The Mountaineer, Cameron said he had labeled himself as a “recovering atheist,” as his Christian faith developed when he was older.
“I lost my faith in atheism when I was 18,” he said. “I had a personal shift in my life that made a big difference (meeting Noble) and I’m thankful for God giving me a new direction to move in.
This account of how he became a Christian just screams someone who has never had a single independent thought in his life. He developed a relationship with his on-screen girlfriend, and he “converted” to her religion at 18 years old. I put “converted” in quotes because I doubt very seriously that he was ever a strong atheist to begin with, possibly someone who had never given much thought to religion, but certainly not an atheist who purposefully rejected religion. He simply became a Christian because he liked her and adopted her worldview. What a weak-kneed, lazy approach to such an important question. I wonder what it’s like to just float through life and to make up your mind at such a young age to follow something blindly for no other reason than another human being claimed it was true.
I once followed Christianity without giving it much thought as a teenager and young man, obviously, but here’s the difference: Unlike Cameron, I didn’t make a choice to follow Christianity. It was all I knew, and like many, no other options existed at the time. Such is the stultifying life in evangelical America. It was only when I discovered a larger world through my own studies and an examination of the evidence that I made a conscious decision to reject religion, a conscious decision to reject faith, not embrace it.
House of Leaves book review
I purchased “House of Leaves” by Mark Danielewski more or less on a whim during a visit this past fall to New York City. The book was displayed prominently on a shelf at the Strand, and I guess because of some good marketing work, I was intrigued enough by the cover and a quick flip through the interior that I decided to pick it up. I purchased the full color paperback edition.
The book is a type of book within a book as the fictional author Zampanò, an old blind man, pens the portion of the narrative dealing with the mysterious house on Ash Tree Lane that is larger inside than it is on the outside. The protagonist, Will Navidson, a photojournalist, has apparently made a film documenting the strange happenings within the house, including neverending passageways, receding stairways and stairs that protrude seemingly from nothingness, a crypt-like coldness inside the house and a unexplained growl. The film is supposedly called The Navidson Record, and it details the unknown horrors Navidson and his crew face when they venture into the bowels of the house. The side story follows the life of Johnny Truant who, along with his friend, Lude, discovered Zampanò’s papers about the house after the old man kicked the bucket. We learn that The Navidson Record apparently never existed.
The two narratives, Truant’s personal struggles with anxiety, drugs, his clinically insane mother and general listlessness, along with Zampanò’s story about the house, are separated by different fonts so readers can tell who is saying what. But the different fonts are among the least confounding aspects of the novel. Fairly early in the book, readers will notice strange typography, unusual textual arrangements on the page, black boxes, mirrored text, nearly blank pages with only a word or two and a relentless barrage of footnotes, and during parts of the book, readers are met with the tedious task of turning the book to and fro in all directions to read the words on the page.
Critics have criticized some of these elements as needlessly obtuse, and I agree to an extent, but they are not without purpose. The intricate network of destination-less passageways and stairways to nowhere Navidson and his friends encounter are mirrored by the text in the book itself and the black boxes on the page and the mirrored text illustrates elements in the plot. In music, this is called word painting. For instance, if the character is going down a staircase that seems to be receding endlessly downward, the text will appear at the very bottom of the page. For spiraling staircases in the house, the text is all over the page. While these elements do illustrate elements in the main plots — and I appreciate the symbolism — I do agree with some critics that this approach makes reading the book a rather disjointed and tedious affair, not to mention all the footnotes citing fictional sources.
All that said, I was surprised by the number of people who said they thought this was a challenging work even surpassing the obscure writing of Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon is far more challenging in my view. Sure, “House of Leaves” is, perhaps, more abstract in some ways than Pynchon with all the footnotes and seemingly random typography, along with multiple narrators and different languages, but Pynchon mainly relies on English and his novels are among the most difficult to decipher in all of literature. I found “House of Leaves” relatively straightforward, at least for those who have the ability to follow a complicated plot line. Although I will say that, at times, it was needlessly tedious and at times, disjointed. Still, I think it should and will go down as a literary classic.
[rating:80/100]
She rocks it out
In which The Killers tackle the philosophical question of the ages
The Weather Channel hits desperation mode
If you haven’t heard, The Weather Channel has launched this big campaign against DirecTV because the large satellite provider has opted to drop the cable channel. The channel has apparently struck a deal with Dish and other providers to offer a lower rate for people who make the switch away from DirecTV.
To the rest of us — that is, those of us who don’t watch The Weather Channel regularly or find its information indispensable — this campaign smacks of silly sour grapes.
One day some suits from NBCUniversal, DirecTV and associated parties, none of whom have any particular fascination with the wonders of modern meteorology, sat down and could not come to terms, almost certainly over money. DirecTV broke rank, and The Weather Channel suddenly begins extolling all kinds of virtues about the importance of people being aware of the weather and how indispensable the channel is in helping to keep people safe, as if The Weather Channel is some kind of nonprofit providing a public service.
See for yourself:
Sad really, using children to try to convince gullible people that a for-profit cable network “matters” any more than any other weather report available on TV or online. In reality, The Weather Channel, like every other cable channel on the dial, is all about money. It’s just that The Weather Channel has somehow been able to carve a niche for itself and has attempted, and with a measure of success, to make something innocuous as the weather marketable as “must see” TV.
But here’s the rub: These days, people can get the weather anywhere, and ironically, in the event of a storm bad enough to take out the TV, people will most likely take to the their smartphones and visit any of the hundreds of websites currently reporting accurate and timely weather information, not the least of which is the National Weather Service, really the only agency that could actually claim to be indispensable in a time of emergency.
Are there actually people out there who would say, “You know what? This is a deal breaker for me. I’ve got to have my Weather Channel!” They, along with The Weather Channel itself, have clearly lost their minds.
Shameful frat party
Welcome to Arizona State University’s Tau Kappa Epsilon: Proudly setting humanity back 200 years: Fraternity suspended for throwing racist MLK party with watermelon cups.
Sad to contemplate that these are the adults of tomorrow.
Obama’s legacy
I get really tired of conservatives types on Twitter and Facebook propagating bullshit and falsehoods about Barack Obama’s record since taking office. I’m definitely not one to sing his praises without also being critical. He has yet to close Gitmo as promised, and he has more or less been a centrist president, towing the cautious line, since taking office. But my more optimistic self hopes the folks who criticize Obama simply don’t like his political stance on the issues; more cynically, I sometimes think that the tireless hatred runs deeper.
Take this meme I found on Facebook today posted by a white conservative:
Why do people think the president has direct control over things like the price of gas and employment? It’s not that simple. In any case, let me address a couple of these points. Gas was at $1.50 or so when Bush II took office. By 2008 when he left, it was at $3. It dipped way down to just over $2 in 2009 and after some fluctuations it’s been holding steady at about $3. To say it has doubled is an exaggeration at best. As for unemployment, Obama critics like to talk about how many people dropped out of the workforce in a given time period as if that’s an important measure. The important measurement is the unemployment rate. Sure, the jobless rate was at 5 percent when Bush II left office. It climbed to just under 10 percent in 2010 and has steadily declined since. Right now, it’s at 6.7 percent. That’s not ideal, I guess, but not a catastrophe like conservative types might like to imply.
And to answer the above question, I will remember Obama for helping to ensure that thousands of sick people with pre-existing conditions who would otherwise be shit out of luck can get covered and will on longer go broke because of their medical bills, no thanks to the insurance companies, and for overseeing the assassination of the most wanted terrorist in American history, again, no thanks to Bush II.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Science, religion not compatible
Beginning with a discussion of the Big Bang at the 16:00 mark, Bill Moyers in the following video seemed to press astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on his thoughts on religion and attempts to reconcile faith and science, in which deGrasse Tyson bluntly said he didn’t think the two were reconcilable:
Unlike other prominent scientists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking who have elaborated their views about religion and God, deGrasse Tyson said in this video, as he has elsewhere, that he is not concerned with what people think about God — whether people believe in one god, 10 gods or no gods — his main focus was ensuring that religious elements do not slip into the science classroom.
Although deGrasse Tyson seems to be firmly in the either agnostic or atheist camp, some nonbelievers have expressed a wish that he go ahead and describe himself as being part of the skeptical community. I’m sure deGrasse Tyson has his reasons for remaining neutral on religion — with his only bias really being toward teaching students true science against creationism or intelligent design — not the least of which is attempting to continue a mainstream following. I suspect that he thinks if he announced that he was firmly in the atheist camp, support for the Hayden Planetarium and the American Museum of Natural History may take a hit because he took a stand on a controversial topic like religion.
I think concerns along those lines might be exaggerated — how much support will donors really withdraw just because of the nonbelief of a single person? — but then again, as Hemant Mehta implies, perhaps more people come to hear and appreciate true science because of deGrasse Tyson’s calculated decision. It’s obviously difficult to quantify, but if that is indeed the case then let deGrasse Tyson’s brilliance shine on.