A Faith of Reason?

OK, I found this kind of creepy:

A few miles south of Lynchburg in Campbell County sits a large and attractive octagonal building which is home to one of most unique churches in the world. Founded in 1977, “The Spock,” as the church is called, is the world’s only church of Star Trek, a religion centered on the popular 1960’s television series featuring the adventures of a crew of interstellar explorers. “The Spock” promotes beliefs associated with one of the popular characters in the TV series, Mr. Spock, who was from a peace-loving race of aliens known as “Vulcans.”

The ideology of the church is centered on so-called Vulcan philosophy which includes the belief in pure “logic” and which emphasizes a lifestyle devoid of emotion. A huge stained-glass likeness of the church’s namesake is featured in the sanctuary, where churchgoers recite sequences of dialogue from the series and participate in what they call a “Holy Mind Meld.” Many church members wear stick-on pointed ears (mimicking those of the TV character) during services and at other church functions (in one case of excessive dedication to the “faith,” one member attempted to have his ears surgically altered but with disastrous results, requiring extensive corrective surgery).

Now, normally, I find myself of the same mind as Professor Steven Dutch on this subject:

Contrary to popular psychology, this is not a society where people are out of touch with their feelings. This society wallows in feelings. If anything, what most people in this society need is precisely to get out of touch with their feelings for a while. Beirut, Belfast and Belgrade were all creations of people who were entirely too much in touch with their feelings.

When film does show rational people, it is often as a caricature. The Vulcans in Star Trek are the type examples. They are regularly portrayed as secretly longing to have human emotions but unable to do so because of their conditioning. (The Vulcans nearly destroyed themselves before they learned to control their emotions. See Beirut, Belfast and Belgrade above.) Or when the characters simply proceed rationally (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace) critics lambaste them as stiff and wooden. Considering the number of people in the arts who have destroyed themselves through suicide, substance abuse or self-destructive lifestyles, I conclude that many media critics are simply unable to relate to characters who solve their problems rationally without going into depression or hysteria, that unless a character has some defect requiring deep therapy, they simply aren't interesting to the critics.

Clearly, though, these "Spockians" are not acting rationally at all, since a rational person would be the first to admit that one cannot be rational all the time. In fact, the effort to do so is extremely irrational.

Just in time for Halloween!

I wrote up this phony press release for work as a joke last Halloween, and many of my co-workers seemed to find it funny, so I thought I'd post it for all to see.

A bit of backstory: some of my coworkers noticed some teenagers using a ouija board in the library, and another one joked we should adopt a ouija reference service.

Anytown Public Libraries is pleased to offer another information service for our customers. We already offer our top-notch public service, our 24-hour email reference service, and our one number for all your information needs: (555) 555-BOOK, as well as our website located at www.anytownlibrary.com. This year, in the wake of Ontario Public Libraries Week, Anytown Public Libraries is pleased to add our newest information service, InfoGhost.

Using proven necromantic principles of ouija and seance, Anytown PL is now able to ask questions of the dead and departed on your behalf. Genealogical research has never been easier--why not ask you late grandfather exactly where his grandfather came from? And if great-aunt Winnie is haunting your attic, maybe she knows where your missing library book is!

InfoGhost will launch on October 31, 2007, as our psychic consultants have informed us that the etheric energies released by Ontario Public Libraries Week will form a sympathetic resonance with the Gate to the Underworld while Scorpio is in the House of Jupiter at the end of the tenth month. Assuming these auspicious portents hold true, InfoGhost will go dead--er, live on Halloween!

InfoGhost is available only to registered members of Anytown Public Libraries. We regret that because of a deeply-held cultural belief in metempsychosis, InfoGhost may not be able to contact deceased relations of the Hindu or Sikh faiths.

You can have my action figure when you pry it from my cold dead hands

Figures that the event that would end my dry spell on this blog would be the profaning of one of my childhood icons:

Paramount has confirmed that in the movie, the name G.I. Joe will become an acronym for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity" — an international, coed task force charged with defeating bad guys. It will no longer stand for government issued, as in issued by the American government.

The studio won't elaborate, saying filming hasn't begun and details are still in the works, but the behind-the-scenes rumblings are that the producers have decided to change the nature of G.I. Joe in order to appeal to a wider, more international audience.

At first I thought this was typical Fox News propaganda, but there seems to be independent confirmation.

I'm reminded of this Penny Arcade strip for some reason.

I'm hardly a big fan of American imperialism, but the essential fantasy of GI Joe was the "Real American Hero" who recalled the morally upright American soldier of the post-Second World War era, and stood in contrast to the sins of Vietnam. Obviously, this involves a lot of mythology: the Korean War US soldier was no angel, nor were most serving in Vietnam baby-killing devils.

It should be noted, however, that while G.I. Joe was an anti-terrorist unit, their arch-foe, COBRA, was a domestic terrorist group. COBRA was a bunch of malcontented Americans sick of the system that had "screwed" them (Cobra Commander himself being a failed used-car salesman who became a millionaire through pyramid schemes), living secret lives alongside their fellow citizens. In the comics, COBRA had tanks hiding in auto shops all over the USA, and had even taken over a small Midwestern town, Springfield, and turned it into a fully-indoctrinated home for COBRA personnel, complete with their version of the Boy Scouts (but more like the Hitler Youth). The upper ranks were bolstered with some Eurotrash mercenaries like Destro, the Baroness, and Major Bludd, but COBRA was largely a domestic terrorist group. That's why G.I. Joe was a secret unit in the comics--the U.S. military is not supposed to operate on American soil without an emergency declaration.

G.I. Joe was never really a propaganda tool for the U.S. armed forces, given that their enemies were completely over-the-top James Bond villains (in the cartoon, COBRA destroyed the Golden Gate bridge like 5 times). There's no need to change the basic concept of the show and comic out of some sort of marketing agenda: foreigners will watch any American action-film that isn't too oppressive with the flag-waving.

Pun fun

Thought I'd take a break from all the tributes to dead people with some amusement. Via MadJenny, I got this amusing picture:

Librarians are groaning right now.

On a somewhat related note, the youth services librarians at work are gearing up for the Summer Reading Club, and to celebrate this year's theme of "Lost Worlds", have transformed Arthur the Aardvark into...

...Arthotep, the Ever-Living!!!

The Day The Science Died

Another icon has passed away.

Don Herbert, AKA Mr. Wizard, has passed away at the age of 89.

Mr. Wizard, through both his show in the 50s and the 80s, introduced two generations of children (including this blogger) to scientific principles illustrated with common household items.

It's almost ironic that a science icon passes on while public understanding of science is in such a tailspin.

Via Pharyngula.

Eulogy

Well, this weekend, something I've feared for weeks happened. My favourite blogger passed away.

Regular readers of Steve Gilliard's The News Blog have known for the past few months that the site's primary author, editor and manager was seriously ill and in the hospital, suffering from heart problems and related complications. Many fans and readers, led by Steve's usually silent partner Jen, kept the site going with donations, and most importantly, truckloads of new content. While he was still conscious, Steve was appreciative and embarrassed at all the support.

Steve Gilliard began as the first "front-pager" on Dailykos, an American Democratic partisan blog that was one of the first avenues of progressive thought in the blogosphere, and is now the most popular political blog on the internet. (Dailykos frontpagers are appointed by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the site founder, to contribute content to the blog's "front page", although any member of the Kos community can write "diaries" on the site.) Gilliard's contributions to political writings on the World Wide Web go back to at least 1999, however, and unlike many political bloggers he was never anonymous.

After a couple of years at Dailykos, Gilliard left to start his own blog, The News Blog, and it became very popular and influential in its own right. Ostensibly a political blog, it was so much more. Politics was certainly at the forefront, and although Gilliard clearly leaned in a left-wing/Democratic direction, he wouldn't hesitate to call bullshit on Dems and liberals who were out to left field. But Steve was a voracious reader with myriad interests. He would blog about sports (hating the Yankees and cheering the Mets was a constant pasttime), and predicted that soccer would soon become the third largest sport in the US. He had several relatives in the US military and was greatly informed on military history, and his posts on the Iraq War showed a depth of knowledge and understanding that most pundits and bloggers could only hope to aspire to. Through it all, he supported the boys and girls in uniform, while he knew before it began that the war was doomed to fail.

As an African-American from a journalist background, Steve pounded home a perspective that I as a member of the privileged white straight middle-class male had never really thought of before. Through his posts, he explained to me and his other readers the significance of the New York transit strike, "macaca" and Katrina to the black community.

But Steve was also a man who enjoyed living, and he would also blog about food, drink, relationships, education, and videogames. My tribute pales in comparison to the numerous ones all over the internet, but nothing speaks like the man's words himself. The main site is black in deference to Steve's passing, but the original site is still up and running.

RIP, Steve Gilliard.

UPDATE (June 6, 2007): Gilliard's obituary in the New York Times:

Steven Gilliard Jr., 42, Dies; Founder of Liberal Political Blog
By NOAM COHEN
Published: June 6, 2007

Steven Gilliard Jr., a political journalist who found his calling as a combative and influential blogger on the left, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 42.

He died after having been hospitalized at Lenox Hill Hospital since February because of heart and kidney failure, said his cousin Francine Smith, a spokeswoman for the family.

From his perch at The News Blog, whose advertisements and donations paid for his modest living expenses, Mr. Gilliard offered his powerful readership a blunt and passionate take on the events of the day. He was one of fewer than a dozen liberal political bloggers to make a living from his blog, said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the founder of the Daily Kos Web site, to which Mr. Gilliard had been an early contributor.

Mr. Gilliard was born in Harlem and attended Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School before graduating with a degree in journalism from New York University.

After working in print journalism, Mr. Gilliard migrated online, working for a Web site, Net Slaves, that chronicled the lot of the tech worker during the dot-com boom. His involvement in online political writing received a critical boost when Mr. Moulitsas chose Mr. Gilliard to help create material for the Daily Kos site at a time when it had 4,000 visitors a day; it now has 500,000 a day.

Mr. Gilliard eventually left Daily Kos to create The News Blog.

Mr. Gilliard’s survivors include his parents, Steven Gilliard Sr. and Evelyn Lillian Gilliard of Manhattan, and two sisters, Valerie Gilliard and Roberta Smalls, both of Massachusetts.

In what is a now-familiar story among Internet collaborators, many of the thousands who posted online reactions to Mr. Gilliard’s death wrote that they had known little about him, even the fact that he was black. Others, though, mourned the loss of an African-American voice in the liberal blogging world. Those closest to him offline similarly knew next to nothing about his life as blogger.

“Most of the family didn’t know what he was doing on the Web site,” said his cousin, Ms. Smith, who said his parents did not own computers.

Hometown History

So this weekend I finally went to the annual reenactment of the Battle of Stoney Creek, a significant event in the War of 1812. I lived about 25 years of my life in Stoney Creek, but had never been to this event, so I took a day off work to finally catch it.

There was a number of vendors in period costume selling period items, but the real draw was the reenactment itself. There were two battles, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. These videos capture parts of the evening battle:

Bill Hicks Friday

One of my favourite bits from the legendary Bill Hicks:



Bill, you died far too early.

From Science After Sunclipse.

Not so funny bunny

So according to Mad Jenny, today is Rabbit Day.

Oh sure, they look all cute and helpless and twitchy, but what evil lurks beneath that cottontail of evil?

Peter Cottontail is coming to eat your children.

Anya tried to warn us all, didn't she?

Time for a Nintervention

The trials and tribulations of Mario as he tries to adjust to the real world. Hilarious!



Thanks to DeC for the link.