Pointless Waste of Time

Your life with a liberal arts degree in a nutshell.

Pointless Waste of Time is a cute website...think DocWu first pointed it out to me.

300

Woah...while watching Heroes on TV last night (on Tivo), I saw the trailer for this movie. My jaw dropped to my chest and I got an immediate adrenalin rush...Spartans! Persians! Spartans AND Persians fighting! Big war-elephants! Ugly guys that look like they came out of the game, Doom! Oh My God, this looks cool.

Live Concert Recordings on NPR

I’ve mentioned the variety of music available on NPR’s www.npr.org/programs/asc/ before, but wanted to do another plug for the live concerts recordings they have available. Most of the shows were recorded at D.C.’s “9:30” club. Some of the artists include The Decemberists, Neko Case, Arctic Monkeys, The New Pornographers, Death Cab for Cutie, David Gray, and my current favorite, Gomez.

Take a break from the radio, "See the World" and enjoy a concert.

Nontheists in America

Having finally found a "home" in secular humanism for my personal world view, last year I purchased an annual subscription to the monthly publication of the American Humanist Association. After a couple of issues though, I concluded the organization was rabidly anti-religion and hell-bent on making me that way, too. I was hoping for something they didn't provide -- maybe just a bit more company in my comfortable little philosophical sandbox.

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that, "Atheists challenge the religious right". Once you get past the challenging headline (atheist is such a dirty word in America!), it's pretty interesting reading. "Seven organizations of nontheists - including atheists, freethinkers, humanists, and agnostics - began the Secular Coalition for America (SCA), a lobby seeking to increase the visibility and respectability of nontheistic viewpoints in the United States." I like their central position: We affirm the secular form of government as a necessary condition for the interdependent rights of religious freedom and religious dissent.

As for company....
A 2006 survey by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life asked, "What is your religious preference?" and 11% responded, "No religion, not a believer, atheist, agnostic." While 56% responded as Protestant and 23% as Roman Catholics, other categories (Jewish, Mormon, Orthodox Greek or Russian, Islam/Muslim, and other religions) totaled 8%. That means that in the United States there are more atheists and agnostics than there are Jews, Presbyterians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Roman and Greek Orthodox combined. I need a bigger sandbox.

Occasionally I have to remind myself, and others when they ask, of just what a secular humanist is. Wikipedia has a good summary of the tenets:

Secular humanism describes a world view with the following elements and principles:
Need to test beliefs - A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
Reason, evidence, scientific method - Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
Fulfillment, growth, creativity - A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
Search for truth - A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
This life - A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
Ethics - A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
Building a better world - A conviction that with reason, an open exchange of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

So what do you think would happen if the majority of the U.S. population suddently became secular humanists? I think we'd create a better world. I think it's quite possibly the only path that can save our world.

Further "Dangerous Readings"

And finally...a blog that made me think of Andy again: "No matter how cynical you become, it's impossible to keep up"

Auld Lang Syne

According to Richard Lederer, hardly anyone knows that Robert Burns is the reason we all sing (or hum) Auld Lang Syne as we enter a new year. I suspect that few today would even recognize the name. I'm sure Andy is smirking at us all.

When Robert Burns died in 1796, he was but 37 years of age. He was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage of two rooms at Alloway, near the southwestern coast of Scotland. His father was an unsuccessful farmer, and young Robert was assigned heavy work in the fields when he was only 11. The strain resulted in a progressive heart disease that was to prove fatal at the age of 37.

In 1786, Burns's life reached its low point. In despair over his poverty and the rejection by the woman he had hoped to marry, Burns resolved to emigrate from Scotland to Jamaica. He gathered together some of his poems, hoping to sell them for a sum sufficient to pay the expenses of his journey. The result was a small volume of poetry titled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

Burns bought his ticket to Jamaica from the 20 pounds he earned from the sale of his little book. The night before he was to sail he wrote "Farewell to Scotland," which he intended to be his last song composed on Scottish soil. But in the morning he changed his mind, led partly by some dim foreshadowing of the result of his literary adventure.

In the late 18th century, with its emphasis on elegance, style and refined manners, the rustic, simple lyrics of Burns seemed incongruous. But Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect took Scotland by storm and was universally praised by critics. Burns was dubbed The Peasant Poet and The Plowman Poet, and became instantly lionized as a natural singer and rustic philosopher.
Ultimately Burns's work established him as the Scottish national poet and the primary bridge between the rational satire of the 18th century and the exuberant romanticism of the 19th.

More than two centuries after his death, Robert Burns sings to us in another special way, for one of his lyrics is the first that many of us hear each year. On New Year's Eve, when the clock strikes midnight, the song that many bands around the world often play consists of verses written by Bobby Burns.

According to Wikipedia: Burns forwarded a copy of the Auld Lang Syne to the Scots Musical Museum with the remark, “The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man's singing, is enough to recommend any air.” One should probably take Burns' statement with a pinch of salt -- it is a fair supposition to attribute the poem as a whole to Burns himself.

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?

CHORUS
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
And surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin’ auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin’ auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
And gies a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS