Pixel Scroll 10/14 The pixel will see you now…

(1) What could be more appropriate to continue a discussion launched in yesterday’s Scroll than Jurassic Park: High Heels Edition! Thanks to Cathy for dropping this into the comments.

(2) “Emperor Palpatine and Sauron in the Afterlife” by Steve Ogden. Here is the first frame of the comic —

Sauron COMP

This crazy comic sprung from a Twitter conversation I was having with Scott King. He said he was considering writing an essay, the events of Star Wars as seen from Emperor Palpatine’s point of view. I said it would be a terrible idea, but really funny, to have a conversation in the afterlife between two dead bad guys, sort of swapping horror stories about how badly everything went for them at the hands of the Good Guys. Scott admitted it was both terrible and funny, and why don’t I go write it then. So I did, and here you have it.

(3) That was a strange experience – reading Alexandra Erin’s “Millennial Pledge: Trouble Edition”, which translates “Trouble in River City” into a bullet-pointed blog post.

(4) Recommended: Ty Templeton’s comic ”What if Bob Kane has created Bat-Man without Bill Finger?”

(5) Most of “The 20 Biggest Bombshells J.K. Rowling’s Dropped Since ‘Harry Potter’ Ended” are less cheerful than —

chocolate frogs COMP

Chocolate Frogs

Harry, Ron and Hermione all wound up with their own chocolate frog cards, which Ron reported as his “finest hour.”

Harry’s card says that he is “the first and only known wizard to survive the Killing Curse, most famous for the defeat of the most dangerous dark wizard of all time, Lord Voldemort.”

Ron’s card gives him credit for “destroying the Horcruxes and subsequent defeat of Voldemort and revolutionizing the Ministry of Magic.”

On hers, Hermione gets credit for being “the brightest witch of her age” and that she “eradicated pro-pureblood laws” and campaigned for “the rights of non human beings such as house-elves.”

(6) Remember the Star Wars blooper reported by Screen Rant that I posted here the other day? Io9 checked with Mark Hamill who says it never happened.

Instead of calling Carrie Fisher’s name out, Hamill insists that he started to say “There she is!”—dialogue provided in ADR that was cut short by Leia and Luke’s embrace.

(7) “Make Sure to Check Your Camera Settings” — a funny Flash reference at Cheezburger.

(8) Today In History –

(9) John ONeill profiled The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volumes 1-3 at Black Gate.

The lack of a complete collection of Clifford D. Simak’s short stories has been keenly felt among many old-school fans. So as you can imagine, I was delighted to discover that Open Road Media has undertaken the first comprehensive collection of all of Simak’s short stories — including his science fiction, fantasy, and western fiction. The first three books, I Am Crying All Inside, The Big Front Yard, and The Ghost of a Model T, go on sale later this month.

All three, like all six volumes announced so far, are edited by David W. Wixon, the Executor of Simak’s Literary Estate. Wixon, a close friend of Simak, contributes an introduction to each volume, and short intros to each story, providing a little background on its publishing history and other interesting tidbits.

As a special treat the first volume, I Am Crying All Inside, includes the never-before-published “I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air,” originally written in 1973 for Harlan Ellison’s famously unpublished anthology Last Dangerous Visions, and finally pried out of Ellison’s unrelenting grip after 42 very long years.

(10) Margaret Hamilton’s pioneering work on NASA computers is covered by Wired in “Her code got humans on the moon – and invented software itself”.

Then, as now, “the guys” dominated tech and engineering. Like female coders in today’s diversity-challenged tech industry, Hamilton was an outlier. It might surprise today’s software makers that one of the founding fathers of their boys’ club was, in fact, a mother—and that should give them pause as they consider why the gender inequality of the Mad Men era persists to this day.

As Hamilton’s career got under way, the software world was on the verge of a giant leap, thanks to the Apollo program launched by John F. Kennedy in 1961. At the MIT Instrumentation Lab where Hamilton worked, she and her colleagues were inventing core ideas in computer programming as they wrote the code for the world’s first portable computer. She became an expert in systems programming and won important technical arguments. “When I first got into it, nobody knew what it was that we were doing. It was like the Wild West. There was no course in it. They didn’t teach it,” Hamilton says.

She’s an unsung heroine of Apollo 8, because she got them home after a fatal input error in the spacecraft somebody at NASA insisted would never happen.

(11) Scientists measured the erosion of terrestrial river rocks to deduce — “Pebbles on Mars Shaped by Ancient Long-Gone Rivers Dozens of Miles Long”.

Using publicly available images of the rounded pebbles on Mars from the Curiosity rover mission, the scientists calculated that those rocks had lost about 20 percent of their volume. When they factored in the reduced Martian gravity, which is only about 40 percent of Earth’s, they estimated that the pebbles had traveled about 30 miles (50 km) from their source, perhaps from the northern rim of Gale Crater.

(12) NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been used to produced new maps of Jupiter – the first in a series of annual portraits of the solar system’s outer planets.

New imagery from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is revealing details never before seen on Jupiter. High-resolution maps and spinning globes (rendered in the 4k Ultra HD format) are the first products to come from a program to study the solar system’s outer planets each year using Hubble. The observations are designed to capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry. These annual studies will help current and future scientists see how such giant worlds change over time.

 

(13) Well, this is bizarre, but extremely well-edited (NSFW) humor video, a mashup of Hitchcock’s movies with Jimmy Stewart and Kubrick’s sf/horror movies.

(14) Free Nick Mamatas!

No, no, you don’t need to bail him out — just read his story free on the Glittership webpage (or listen to it on the podcast) — Episode #18 — “Eureka!” by Nick Mamatas.

Adam hadn’t worn the crushed velvet blouse in his hands for a long time. It was from his goth phase, twenty pounds and twenty years prior. He shuddered at the thought of it distending around his spare tire these days, but he couldn’t bring himself to put it in the box he’d set aside for Out of the Closet either. And not only because it would be embarrassing if anyone saw it.

There were memories in the wrinkles of the velvet—well, not memories exactly. Half-memories, images and glimpses and smells. Two decades of gimlets and bad decisions and a few teeth and a trio of cross-country moves. What was the place? It was Huggy Bear’s on Thursdays, when they played disco for a majority black clientele, but on most nights it was just The Bank. A real bank, in the sepia-toned days when great-grandma worked in an Orchard Street sweatshop, a goth/darkwave club now….

(15) Kameron Hurley interviewed at SFFWorld:

With The Mirror Empire, you’ve challenged many genre assumptions/expectations/tropes, most notably genre roles and expectations.  What other genre expectations did you seek to challenge but instead readers accepted easily?

So far readers have pretty much balked at everything I thought they would, though I admit I’ve been surprised at the reactions to Anavha, which were far more perplexed and passionate than I anticipated. It seemed like a fairly straightforward plotline to me, but putting characters with unexpected genders into those roles surprised people. I think it really made them think hard about reading abusive relationships like that in other books.

(16) Steve Davidson, taking as his sample the recommendations made so far at Sad Puppies 4, theorizes quite reasonably that works available for free are more likely to be recommended for awards. By implication, he wonders what will happen to authors who like to get paid.

I do believe that there is a distinct trend represented:  freely available, easily accessible works may very well swamp the nominations – if those works are given a little initial traction by readers, like including them on a recommendation list, because (I belabor), the fewer “objections” you place between a consumer and a potentially desirable product, the more likely they are to “buy”.  In other words, “click here and invest a few minutes” is far more attractive than “click here, pull out your credit card, wait for delivery, invest a few minutes”.

(17) Brandon Kempner latest survey “Hugo/Nebula Contenders and Popularity, October 2015” for Chaos Horizons. I’m late picking this up, and as Kempner notes in the post, Leckie’s book was still on the way when he wrote it.

Last year, I tried to track Goodreads stats a measure of popularity. This year, I’m tracking both Amazon and Goodreads.

I’ve been disappointed in both of those measures; neither seems particularly accurate or consistent, and they don’t seem to predict the eventual Hugo/Nebula winner at all. What is useful about them, though, is getting at least an early picture of what is popular and what is not. I do believe there is a minimum popularity cut off, where if you fall below a certain level (1000-2000 Goodreads votes), you don’t have much of a shot at winning a Hugo or Nebula. This also allows good comparisons between books that are similar to each other. If you think Uprooted and Sorcerer to the Crown are both contenders as “experimental”-ish fantasy books, one of those (Uprooted) is 10 times more popular than the other. If you had to pick between one of them being nominated, go with Novik.

(18) Dawn Witzke, in “Taking Sides” , says George R.R. Martin has convinced her to pick a side.

[GRRM] I have no objection to someone starting a people’s choice award for SF. Hell, I might even win it, since I have the sort of mass following that tends to dominate such awards. But it would not be as meaningful to me as winning a Hugo.

[Nitzke] There is no need to start a people’s choice award for SFF, one already exists. You may have heard of it, it’s called the Hugo Awards. And, I believe you might have won one of those once. After reading Game of Thrones, I can say it was definitely worthy of Hugo. (Trust me, that’s not a good thing.)

I do want to thank you, Mr. Martin. Without your rich elitist bullshit, I might have continued to sit on the sidelines again this year. Instead, I will be forking over the cash for a membership, because those of us who can’t afford to blow money on cons are just as much true fans as those who can. So you can go stuff it in your asterisk.

(19) Not everyone is tired of the subject —

https://twitter.com/horriblychris/status/654462570842091520

(20) Talk about a really sad puppy – William Shatner:

William Shatner is exploring strange new worlds in trash-talking his former “Star Trek” co-star George Takei.

Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk on the iconic sci-fi series, lashed out at Takei in an interview with Australia’s news.com.au published Monday.

“He is a very disturbed individual, the truth of the matter is,” Shatner said of Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu on the series and subsequent movie franchise. “I don’t know him. I haven’t seen him in 25 years, I don’t know what he is up to. It is not a question that has any meaning to me. It is like asking about George Foreman or something.”

And when asked about director J.J. Abrams, who is currently filming Star Trek Beyond, he told the Australian press:

“No matter what plans I make it is J.J. Abrams who makes the plans and no I don’t think he is planning anything with me,” Shatner said. “I would love to. In one year it will be our 50th anniversary and that is incredible.”

(21) “California nixes warrantless search of digital data”

In what’s being called a landmark victory for digital privacy, California police will no longer be able to get their hands on user data without first getting a warrant from a judge.

Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday signed the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), SB 178, which requires state law enforcement to get a warrant before they can access electronic information about who we are, where we go, who we know, and what we do.

US privacy rights groups have long been concerned that law enforcement hasn’t considered it necessary to get a search warrant before they can search messages, email, photos and other digital data stored on mobile phones or company servers.

States such as California, tired of waiting around for Congress to update 29-year-old federal electronic privacy statutes, are taking reform into their own hands.

(22) H.G. Wells took a shot at foretelling the future — “A Peek Ahead” at Futility Closet tells you how well he scored.

Readers of the London Evening Standard saw a startling headline on Nov. 10, 1971: “The Prophecy H.G. Wells Made About Tonight’s Standard.” Wells had published a story in 1932 in which a man unaccountably receives a copy of the newspaper from 40 years in the future. “He found himself surveying a real evening newspaper,” Wells wrote, “which was dealing so far as he could see at the first onset, with the affairs of another world.”

Most of “The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper” is devoted to Wells’ prophecies regarding world events in 1971, and most of these, unfortunately, are misses. Newspapers today are printed in color and the Soviet Union has fallen, but geothermal energy has not replaced the age of combustion, body clothing has not (quite) been reduced to a minimum, finance and nationalism still thrive, gorillas are not extinct, the human birthrate has not dropped to “seven in the thousand,” and there are no plans to add a 13th month to the year.

(23) Here’s a massive cosplay photo gallery from New York Comic Con. (Activate by clicking on arrows in upper right corner of image displayed for Slideshow #1 and Slideshow #2.)

Look for an amazing Raiden, an outstanding Mr. Freeze, a spot-on Nosferatu, and a glorious Muto from Godzilla. Spider-Woman, Hawkgirl, Princess Amidala, Mystique, gender-swapped Booster Gold, Ratchet, Venom… the list goes on and on! Take a look at the slideshows below and share your favorites in the comments!

(24) The sf magazine market contraction predicted by Neil Clarke is not far off, but L. Jagi Lamplighter doesn’t want it to begin with Sci Phi Journal, so she is making an appeal for donations.

Jagi, here.  I learned this morning that Sci Phi Journal needs help.

For those who don’t know it, Sci Phi Journal offers science fiction stories that have a philosophy to them. It is one of the few periodicals offering a place to the kind of stories that Sad Puppies stood for…in fact, it was on the Hugo ballot this year, as was one of the stories that appeared in it (“On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli).

Sci Phi offers a venue for the very kinds of stories that we all want to read but seldom get to see. It features some of the best new authors, like Josh Young and Brian Niemeyer, and a number of others. Both John and I have had stories appear in its pages.

It would be a real shame if it folded!

What can you all do to help?

If you should feel moved to make a donation, you can do so here. (The donate button is on the right. You may need to page down.)

(25) Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam will appear at Live Talks Los Angeles on October 19, 2015 at the Alex Theatre. It’s the launch event for Gilliam’s memoir. He gave an interview to a local paper to promote the appearance.

Terry Gilliam

What led you to write the book?

It really was supposed to be a book about just my art — whatever my art is — starting with childhood cartoons. My daughter Holly assembled a chronology of the work I’ve done. I would sit with a microphone and talk about it. Somewhere along the line, the publisher says “Oh, God, this is better as an autobiography.” It ended up being that, even though it’s a very incomplete one. I refer to it as my “Grand Theft Autobiography.” It’s a high-speed chase, crashing around the place, a lot of bodies left all over the place. It’s not the great summation of my life in the last hours of my life.

What was your reaction when you started digging into the art you had made?

I was surprised because I don’t linger in the past. Things I’d done over the years had been filed away. Holly had been archiving and dredging this stuff out. The other day I found something and I thought, “God, I can’t believe I could draw that well 20 years ago!” I can’t draw that well anymore.

(26) A Back To The Future prediction still has an opportunity to come true.

At one moment in the 1989 film a billboard reveals the Chicago Cubs have won the 2015 World Series, the joke being that the Cubs hadn’t won the baseball World Series since 1908 and likely never would do.

“A hundred-to-one shot,” the charity fundraiser jokes with Marty, “I wish I could go back to the beginning of the season and put some money on the Cubs!”

But now it’s looking like the Chicago team could actually win the 2015 World Series.

The Chicago Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals this week to proceed to the National League Championship Series (NLCS) and will face the New York Mets or LA Dodgers on Saturday for the chance to play in the coveted World Series. Think of it as a sort of regional semi-final for the biggest game of the baseball season.

The film’s writer Bob Gale said he chose the Cubs as the winning 2015 team as a joke, saying: “Being a baseball fan, I thought, ‘OK, let’s come up with one of the most unlikely scenarios we can think of’.”

The Dodgers, if they advance, will have to start the back end of their rotation which would really boost the Cubs’ chances. No time-traveling DeLorean will be swooping in from 1963 delivering Koufax and Drysdale to save LA.

(27) A high-tech prank — Real Mjolnir (Electromagnet, Fingerprint Scanner)

A replica of Mjolnir (Thor’s Hammer) from The Avengers that’s pretty much unliftable unless you’ve got my fingerprints!

 

[Thanks to Cathy, David K.M. Klaus, Will R.,and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

292 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/14 The pixel will see you now…

  1. Just to avoid possible confusion, Meredith is referring to marriage in a church, not all the myriad ways gay people can marry here in England…

  2. Do the Anglicans have gay women bishops, eh? Episcopalians have those. And gay men of all sorts, not in the closet any more. All marrying each other in church and everything.

    The only sin in the Episcopal church is using the wrong fork. And possibly not having enough varieties of hard liquor for parties.

  3. @lurkertype

    Apparently the Anglican church (in general, not just C of E) got into a mighty fuss awhile back because an Episcopalian gay bishop got made and! Episcopalians are (at least sometimes – I’m not entirely clear on whether its an opt-in opt-out thing) Anglicans! So it got everyone who was less happy about that all upset and a bunch of them boycotted the Lambeth Conference in 2008. So I guess I can half-claim Episcopalian everything because apparently Episcopalians are Anglicans? Only a bit ahead of most of us on the official end. FOR NOW. *muttermutterglareatArchbishopofYorkmutter*

    Episcopalian starts looking really typo’d after you type it a few too many times…

    (And yep, Stevie is correct, I should have disclaimer’d that with a ‘but we Brits have gay marriage outside of religious services’ thingamy.)

    A localish chaplain to me had to resign recently in order to marry his partner. It was very annoying. *continues to glare at the Archbishop of York*

  4. junego: So now you can say you’ve actually communicated with a dreaded atheist who explained what the beliefs of many, if not most, other atheists actually are and that I didn’t slaver (much) nor make fun of or misrepresent others beliefs (more than usual for a human being). :^]

    Um… I’m sorry, are you under the impression that you’re the first atheist I’ve met? That’s laughable. It also gives the impression that you’re quite young, if you’re still in the *dramatically whips off mask* Ha-hah! Little did you know you were speaking to… an atheist! stage.

    You also seem to have missed the point I was making, which was that regardless of how atheists may or may not parse the difference between “atheist” and “agnostic”, the average American doesn’t interpret the terms that way. In common American usage, as mentioned above, “atheist” means “believes there is no god”; “agnostic” means “isn’t sure whether there is one or not”.

  5. Lexica: regardless of how atheists may or may not parse the difference between “atheist” and “agnostic”, the average American doesn’t interpret the terms that way. In common American usage, as mentioned above, “atheist” means “believes there is no god”; “agnostic” means “isn’t sure whether there is one or not”.

    Which is why I said that a long career with computers and programming has me generally saying that I’m agnostic because I know better than to claim that I know anything for absolute certain.

    junego: Since atheists were vilified and less trusted than rapists before Dawkins

    Yeah, it really pisses me off and disgusts me that 42% of Americans would not vote for someone who is an atheist to be President, but that at least that many of them are quite happy to vote for someone who believes that some human beings are less human than others to be President.

  6. lurkertype:

    (They’ve tried to have happy-clappy Catholic stuff; it never works)

    Those would be charismatic Catholics, and yes, they exist and have existed (at least in the US) for around forty years. You could look it up.;-)

  7. Lexica commented:

    junego said: “So now you can say you’ve actually communicated with a dreaded atheist who explained what the beliefs of many, if not most, other atheists actually are and that I didn’t slaver (much) nor make fun of or misrepresent others beliefs (more than usual for a human being). :^]”

    Lexica responded:”Um… I’m sorry, are you under the impression that you’re the first atheist I’ve met? That’s laughable. It also gives the impression that you’re quite young, if you’re still in the *dramatically whips off mask* Ha-hah! Little did you know you were speaking to… an atheist! stage.”

    Obviously my ‘wry humor’ emoticon up there at the end didn’t convey the spirit in which I wrote that paragraph. For that, I apologise. So let me restate the point that I was trying to make in those last couple of paragraphs.

    An atheist has explained that the definition of ‘atheism/atheist’ used by some Americans is not the “correct” definition and not the definition used by atheists to describe themselves and their beliefs. After doing sufficient due dilligence and if you’re willing, would those of you who misuse it please stop and would those of you who hear someone else misusing the terms please correct them. You might also mention that atheists are people just like everyone else (good, bad and/or ugly) whose only difference is a disbelief in deities.

    Lexica: “You also seem to have missed the point I was making, which was that regardless of how atheists may or may not parse the difference between “atheist” and “agnostic”, the average American doesn’t interpret the terms that way. In common American usage, as mentioned above, “atheist” means “believes there is no god” “agnostic” means “isn’t sure whether there is one or not”.”

    Well, my response to your point is that when people tell me they think Muslim=terrorist or homosexual=pedophile I usually try to find some way to point out where they may be in error. Atheists are, in many parts of America, a vilified group that face discrimination, are socially ostracized, and are preached against from pulpits on Sundays. They are also repeatedly shown in American opinion poles to be a fairly despised demographic.

    IMO, the correct and principled response to these conditions by those of us atheists who aren’t in vulnerable social positions is to, when approproiate, stand up, show ourselves, and correct the misunderstandings, bad definitions, and mischaracterizations. Minds can be changed, eg the LGBQT community.

  8. @junego: “Minds can be changed, eg the LGBQT community.”

    Precisely the example I was thinking of. If we can agree that people have the right to determine their pronouns and define their sexuality in their own terms, it should only be logical that atheists and agnostics get to define “atheist” and “agnostic” from within, rather than having definitions concocted and imposed from without.

    At least, so says this agnostic atheist.

  9. junego: After doing sufficient due dilligence and if you’re willing, would those of you who misuse it please stop and would those of you who hear someone else misusing the terms please correct them.

    I don’t need to do “due diligence”. I understand your definitions perfectly. I am not, however, interested in spending a lot of time banging on about it to people whose perception of atheism and agnosticism is, at best rudimentary, and almost always reactionary.

    junego: You might also mention that atheists are people just like everyone else (good, bad and/or ugly) whose only difference is a disbelief in deities.

    I don’t need to do that, either. I prefer to live my atheism; in other words, the people around me know that I am atheist/agnostic because I’ve stated this when it’s relevant to circumstances or the current discussion, but I don’t really spend much time trying to “educate” them unless they specifically ask. I prefer to show them by living as an example.

  10. @Meredith, the Episcopal Church of America is part of the Anglican Communion, but as you know, it’s the broadest possible communion and is so mostly through heritage, inertia, and Originally Being British. (Although the coat of arms of the US version has a St. Andrew’s Cross, because our lot weren’t EVEN going to swear loyalty to the Crown, and so the English refused to ordain bishops. The Scots, of course, were happy to.)

    Being not an Established church, it has been freer to move with the times, though it still took till 1977 to ordain women priests. There’s a liturgy for the blessing of same-sex relationships, though it isn’t in the BCP yet, because people are still having a cow over the 1979 revision removing all the “thee and thou” in one of the two approved versions (You may guess which version was said at my mother’s funeral).

    They are very keen on Canterbury Cathedral, not impressed with Archbp. of York, put out by the people avoiding Lambeth (it’s just Not Done!), and built the lovely US National Cathedral, best known for having a Darth Vader gargoyle and appearing in that one episode of “The West Wing”.

    onyxpina: Oh, believe me, I know the Charismatic Catholics. Our local con has shared a hotel and convention center with their local conference for years (They’ve ceded the bar to us). The happy-clappy part really hasn’t caught on with most parishes, though; too reminiscent of all those dire Guitar Masses and rap sessions with the really hip priest of the late 60’s-early ’70’s. They still haven’t gone full prosperity gospel, either.

    junego: Most of the atheists I know don’t even use the terms in the way you mean them, “correct” or not. And they don’t go around being all pedantic about it even if they do, because they know they’re unpopular enough without launching into a rant that would confirm the religious folks’ views of general rudeness and turn off the sympathetic — or even their fellow nonbelievers. The ones I have heard do that are spectacularly rejected by all sides for being rude and anal-retentive. It does much more harm to the cause than good. My atheist friends do not specify whether they “know” or “believe” there are no gods. It doesn’t matter one whit in how they live their lives; life is too short and there are too few spoons to bother.

    So you certainly don’t speak for all atheists, only yourself.

    I figure most reading File 770 push back against “atheist = evil” thing, just as they do against “Muslim = terrorist”. (I exclude our hate-readers, of course, JCW.)

  11. Re: The Sci Phil Journal.

    I just ran into it on a philosophy blog (Daily Nous) and was thinking of writing something for it. I’m not going to now because of its connection to Vox Day, but it does seem that at first it had work by interesting philosophers like Eric Schwitzgebel. Recently, however, it seems non-philosophers, probably connected to Rabid Puppies, are writing for it.

    Is that assessment accurate? If so, it’s a pity: a journal of science fiction and philosophy would be fun.

  12. I have to say, rude or not (and I think they were very careful in their ladt response to correct any offense) , junego’s use of the words agnostic and atheist sound mightily sensible to me. Personally, because I studied philosophy with the attendant sensitivity to etymology, I have always taken agnostic as somebody who recognises the impossibility to know what is the ontological status of God, not somebody who hasn’t made up their mind.

    It is true that a lot of people say, when asked, that they are agnostic because it leaves the bystander in the comfortable delusions that they are not SHOCK HORROR unbelievers.

  13. @JJ
    “Which is why I said a long career with computers and programming has me generally saying that I’m agnostic because I know better than to claim that I know anything for absolute certain.”

    Yeah, but atheists don’t claim to “know…for absolute certain”, we just don’t believe! OK, I will now drop the pedantic drivel and permit those who are undecided about belief in a god to call themselves ‘agnostic’, just stop saying that atheists claim to “know” there are no gods, please? ;-p (Please note the winky-tongue-hanging emoticon which denotes a somewhat irreverant and non-serious attitude about the sentences preceding said emoticon.)

  14. junego on October 17, 2015 at 1:14 am said:

    @JJ
    “Which is why I said a long career with computers and programming has me generally saying that I’m agnostic because I know better than to claim that I know anything for absolute certain.”

    Yeah, but atheists don’t claim to “know…for absolute certain”, we just don’t believe! OK, I will now drop the pedantic drivel and permit those who are undecided about belief in a god to call themselves ‘agnostic’, just stop saying that atheists claim to “know” there are no gods, please? ;-p

    And indeed because we relegate such things to the same ontological status as fairies, unicorns, monsters under the bed, ghosts and Iowa; we really don’t need a specific name. There is a whole bunch of stuff we don’t believe in because we have no good reason to believe in it – which is just like everybody else.

  15. @JJ
    “I don’t need to do that, either. I prefer to live my atheism; in other words, the people around me know that I am atheist/agnostic because I’ve stated this when it’s relevant to circumstances or the current discussion, but I don’t really spend much time trying to “educate” them unless they specifically ask. I prefer to show them by living as an example.”

    I agree completely. I don’t go around proselytizing or anything. It doesn’t make any sense to do that. It’s only if someone sticks their ignorance in my face that I may sound off or, as you, say, if asked. I was asked to clarify and respond, so I did.

  16. I don’t think its rude for junego (or anyone else) to express a preference for terminology use. Terminology is important to a lot of people.

    It does seem junego needs to be a wee bit more careful about speaking for junego rather than speaking for atheists as a whole (based on a couple of the replies), but perhaps that’s a product of junego’s usual environment when discussing the subject. 🙂

  17. @JJ:

    I wasn’t mad as hell till afterwards, mostly because childbirth. But it was more than just a personal violation, it was an unconstitutional violation in a public hospital, and you can bet I made several loud and long official complaints.

    Of course, now the hospital’s been shut down, because our current owners don’t believe in “public”, so it’s all academic. We’re back to 19th century problems here at the margins.

    @Graydon:

    Thank you, and yes. I get to do a lot of explaining (not excusing) of those requirements around here (to other less-Americanized European lefties), it’s good to have performative legitimacy as a way into that explanation.

  18. @Meredith
    “It does seem junego needs to be a wee bit more careful about speaking for junego rather than speaking for atheists as a whole (based on a couple of the replies), but perhaps that’s a product of junego’s usual environment when discussing the subject. :)”

    Yes, junego feels properly chastised about identifying exactly who she’s speaking for and to also be more clear when she’s being wry or slightly-snarky-but-not-too-serious. (But all the atheists support me in email;)

  19. As has been said elsewhere, “The failure mode of ‘clever’ is ‘asshole’.” In discussions of sensitive matters like spiritual belief or lack thereof, children and childrearing, the ethical effects of one’s food choices, etc., I tend to drop humor entirely and don’t attempt it. It’s entirely too likely to be misread.

    I realize that this makes me appear painfully earnest at times. I don’t mind; I’d rather seem earnest than disrespectful or offensive. I also think it’s much less likely to put people’s hackles up, the way that attempted humor that doesn’t land can do.

  20. Suggestion for atheists who want to navigate between the Scylla of “being visibly atheist” and the Charybdis of not being horribly obtrusive about their atheism: Try wearing a t-shirt with an atheism-related slogan on it. If other people notice your shirt and want to talk to you about atheism, you can do that; if other people ignore your shirt, you can just do whatever you were already doing and not care.

    I have a “Just another happy atheist” shirt which I occasionally wear; it’s gotten a number of positive responses from randomly-encountered strangers, and no negative responses that were evident to me.

  21. h@Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
    “It is true that a lot of people say, when asked, that they are agnostic because it leaves the bystander in the comfortable delusions that they are not SHOCK HORROR unbelievers.”

    Sorry, I missed your post last night…
    Good point.

    People substitute agnostic for many reasons. Some for the reason you give. My husband is uncomfortable with the ‘A’ word in part because he experienced the active propoganda of the 50s-60s (including McCarthyism) in the US that non-belief was equated with communism was equated with lack of patriotism was equated with evil. So agnostic is what he calls himself, although with ME around he does know the difference. ;^]

    I got the double whammy of hearing that same propoganda plus being raised in a fundamentalist religion. I ended up doing a lot of reading and studying and questioning (and arguing with the preacher), so I got a little of your philisophical education while trying to figure out what I believed. I sure could have used the internet way back then. I thought I was alone! I didn’t even dare admit to atheism in public until the last 25 years or so. So I used agnostic as a euphemism, too. o_0

  22. @Camestros Felapton
    “And indeed because we relegate such things to the same ontological status as fairies, unicorns, monsters under the bed, ghosts and Iowa; we really don’t need a specific name. There is a whole bunch of stuff we don’t believe in because we have no good reason to believe in it – which is just like everybody else.”

    I missed your post last night, too.

    I know there are people who think “we really don’t need a specific name” for non-belief in entities that we don’t believe exist (like being an a-fairyist), but I disagree. There is a word for people who do believe in certain entities called god(s) – theism. For millennia people have organized their lives, their governments, and their cultures around different brands of theism. People have been persecuted and murdered for having no theism or the wrong theism.

    I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to pretend theism isn’t, practically speaking, different than belief in gnomes or elves or Iowa.*

    *I’ve never been to Iowa. Is it really imaginary? Do you have something against it? 😉

  23. @junego:

    I have it on good authority that Iowa’s real, but I still ain’t made up my mind yet about Toledo.

  24. Rev Bob: Whatever you say, Mr. Grudge. (Ever notice how most people call them green onions, but they’re really scallions?)

  25. Now, I’m an atheist, but that does NOT mean that I don’t believe in monsters under the bed. At least they ought to exist.

  26. I believe in monsters under the bed. Sometimes they meow at me. Once, one clawed my ankle. (To be fair, it was a very young and enthusiastic monster at the time…)

  27. junego on October 17, 2015 at 8:17 pm said:
    I know there are people who think “we really don’t need a specific name” for non-belief in entities that we don’t believe exist (like being an a-fairyist), but I disagree. There is a word for people who do believe in certain entities called god(s) – theism. For millennia people have organized their lives, their governments, and their cultures around different brands of theism. People have been persecuted and murdered for having no theism or the wrong theism.

    Acknowledged – I was being a bit flippant. There certainly has been a need for people to declare publicly that they do not believe in god(s), so that others who also do not believe know that they aren’t alone.

    I’ve never been to Iowa. Is it really imaginary?

    I was wondering if anybody noticed 🙂

  28. On the day of Obama’s caucus victory in 2008, I posted Heinlein’s line from The Puppet Masters: “There was no news from Iowa. But when is there ever news from Iowa?” (The post title was “How About Now, Bob?”)

  29. @Rev. Bob
    “I have it on good authority that Iowa’s real, but I still ain’t made up my mind yet about Toledo.”

    Hmmm, you may have a point. I’ve never been to Toledo, I don’t know anyone from Toledo, could it be mythical?

  30. @Cally
    “I believe in monsters under the bed. Sometimes they meow at me. Once, one clawed my ankle. (To be fair, it was a very young and enthusiastic monster at the time…)”

    My monster is older but still enthusiastically grabs my ankles (and toes…ouch!) from under the bed.

  31. @Camestros
    “Acknowledged – I was being a bit flippant.”

    Hah! Interweb nuance ain’t easy. That one bit me in the rear recently. I demand that our devices be able to infuse something like emoticons into typing automatically to prevent half the flame wars online! I don’t want face-to-face, though, because I refuse to go comb my hair and wash my face before I rant at 3am.

  32. Hampus Eckerman on October 18, 2015 at 10:29 am said:
    Now, I’m an atheist, but that does NOT mean that I don’t believe in monsters under the bed. At least they ought to exist.

    There’s more than one kind of bedtime monster out there.
    When I was about six, my older sister was sent off to Concordia Lutheran for junior high school, so as to get her away from juvenile delinquents in the public schools.
    (A failed project, I might add.)
    So anyway, of course I read all the exotic textbooks she brought home, all full of weird moral tales the like of which I had never seen.
    There was one story about a kid in the hospital getting his tonsils out, but in the next bed was a child who had been in a Terrible Accident, and in yet another bed a third exposition child.
    Exposition child explains to the group that Jesus walks the wards at night, and he will take you away from your pain if you just hold up your hand to catch his attention..
    Terrible Accident Victim is in great pain,
    So the other two kids prop up that kid’s hand with some pillows, so that Jesus will see it as he passes by.
    In the morning Terrible Accident Victim is cold and dead.

    I spent years keeping my hands carefully tucked up under the blankets so creepy stalky Jesus wouldn’t make a mistake.

  33. @Lauowolf

    What even..! Murderous Jesus stories? I’ve read vampire stories that were similar to that.

  34. I lived in Iowa for seven years, and can testify that it is entirely fictitious and a state of mind.

    The murderous Jesus story is…amazing. Though it reminds me strongly of “The Little Match Girl.”

  35. There was also the story of the young boy who defiantly went swimming instead of waiting after eating, and was attacked by the dreaded cramp.
    Except that I read it as crab – being, at most, six, and still a bit shaky at vocabulary at times.
    And I knew there were crabs in water….
    One of my earliest memories is seeing a box of moth balls in the attic staircase. and reading the label as saying “Kills Mothers.”
    I remember thinking we really shouldn’t have something like that in the house, but worrying about who I could ask about it.
    Scary is the lot of the lone reader.

  36. My eldest sister recounts how, when she was a young child (perhaps four or five) our mother told her, to help her sleep, that there was an angel behind the headboard of her bed that would protect her from bad dreams. My sister tells me that she lay awake in a state of dreadful excitement and curiosity, for weeks hardly getting any sleep at all, because she’d heard somehow that if you saw an angel you’d die (perhaps someone had told her that dead people become angels) and she wanted to see the angel behind the headboard but she didn’t want to die…..

  37. “If I should die before I wake…”
    Well, that’s always a cheerful thought to end the day with.

  38. junego: I’ve never been to Toledo, I don’t know anyone from Toledo, could it be mythical?

    I have a friend who lives in Toledo, whom I’ve visited twice (they often host epic SFFandom house parties over long holiday weekends). Toledo does exist. The only reason I would ever go there is for one of those epic parties.

    As for Iowa, yes, it does exist, on a scale marginally better than Kansas and Nebraska (it has the birthplace of the electronic digital computer, the U of I Writers’ Workshop, and Captain Kirk’s birthplace, after all)… but still — the less said, the better.

  39. True-ish story about Iowa: Sometime in the early 80s or maybe it was the late 70s, Iowa was looking to change its state motto to make it more cosmopolitan sounding, and rather less like a rural backwater. The Des Moines Register ran a competition to see who could come up with the best motto. One of the ones getting very high votes, and my personal favorite, was “Iowa, the state where suicide is redundant.” Perhaps even funnier is the fact that the motto the state actually chose, and used for many years, was “Iowa, a place to grow.” (I may have the wording very slightly wrong.)

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