Liberal Debutante

The intern (who I think from this point on can be called “john”… as cute as the name “the intern” is, it’s a little inpersonal, or something) and I went to see WALL-E. I loved it to death, it was super cute (like the intern..err john. i think i might stick to the intern…for now) but I couldn’t stop trying to think about what the other movie I had recently seen was… that I loved because it also had an environmental tone to it.

The cool think about WALL-E is not only did it cater to the crazy environmental degradation that’s happening around us, but also had this huge anti-captialistic “look how disgusting consumption and laziness can get” idea behind it - which I totally dug. Woo! Lets turn all the kids into Marxist eco-lobbiests!

Anyway - I FINALLY thought of the movie but not after thinking of the wrong one many times. Other good kids environment movies:

1. Furn Gully… cutest thing ever “i’ve been brain fried electrified!” aaah hahaha. Cutest.
2. Free Willy … sort of, the whale is all captivated and stuff. You know.
3. The Lorax … by far my second favorite Dr. Seuss book - the first obviously being Oh The Places You’ll Go, generally when you have a book literally memorized from front to back it’s because you love it to pieces. The Lorax is pretty much just as good as Oh The Places, though. Mostly because of it’s meaning.
4. Ice Age 2 … the place melts and shit
5. Once Upon A Forest
6. HootAND finally …the one I was thinking of:
7. Happy Feet! … I can’t believe I couldn’t think of it for THAT long, and it only came to me JUST now… literally weeks later.

And you know what should really be brought back for kids enjoyment? Captian Planet. (he’s the hero! gotta take pollution down to zero!) Fo’ realz.

1/2 of America’s land…80% of it’s fresh water… 17% of fossil fules go to what? Producing food. The most energy intensive product? Meat, yo. The higher up you go from plant to beast, the worse it gets. Cows eat seven times more grain than Americans do - … seven times MORE people could eat, if the cows weren’t eating it…. and its all for those $50 steaks.

HOW MUCH ENERGY (IN CALORIES) IS REQUIRED TO MAKE A SINGLE CALORIE OF MEAT?
(from the September 2003 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition)
Lamb: 57 calories (~ 29 if pasture fed only)
Beef: 40 calories (~20 if pasture fed only)
Pigs: 14 calories
Turkeys: 10 calories
Broiler chickens: 4 calories

…So I don’t really eat a lot of meat.

I got telling someone about this today. …Then I started to rant a little bit, and my rant veered a little bit more than usual into the actual production of all processed foods. … Anything that’s been processed, sugar filled, packaged and shipped is just as bad for the environment as the aforementioned meat products. … So really, if I’m going to get all “environmental” not only do I need to not eat meat, but I need to eat local… unpackaged… organic food. … wtf.

I have issues with the organic food chains though. I think it’s all a disgusting scam to get hippies to spend too much money on something that helps so little that it doesn’t even matter. So we won’t be doing that. And local foods? Really the only time you can get “local” food in Guelph is Saturday morning. So if I don’t stock up, I’ve got issues. And if it’s a bad weekend at the farmer’s market, or if I …ya know, go to Toronto like I do every weekend, then I don’t get any. So there’s issues with that too.

So how do people eat, and ruin the environment less? …Americans and Canadians eat something like 3800 calories a day. What do people actually need? If I remember correctly something like 2000 - 2600 depending on your body type and gender. Which brings me to my real issue.

Beer.

I like it. A lot. but it’s processed, and full of calories. To brew a single liter of beer takes:

around 8 litres of water, huge amounts of mains power and gas, vast stores of barley and, mostly, the importation of packaging materials like glass bottles and labels from overseas

eek!

What’s my solution? I’ll continue to not eat meat, that’s fine. I can handle that. …I’ll try not to buy too much of the packaged and processed crap, but I can’t promise anything too drastic changing there. I’ll even cut back on like cheese or something. As for beer? I’ll stick with steam whistle! Local and delicious and environmentally aware. Although it will be hard to steer away from strongbow. so. stupidly. delicious. >< mmm.

But you know, this only furthers my argument that we should stop serving so much alcohol in bars. It would be better for the environment. And we could turn all the bars into the new one that is fuled by people dancing. …And just sell XTC. Then they’ll dance more! And won’t drink beer! And won’t eat meat because they won’t want to eat anything! Then, not only will everyone stop eating meat so that we can stop doing horribley embarassing things to cows (like collecting all their farts on their backs) but everyone in the world will be SO happy. And we’ll all love each other and listen to techno.

And then everyone would sparkle and shine various colors like this:

Ian wrote a post recently claiming that those of us who want to talk with religious folks might just be hypocrites. I can most definitely see his point - but I think his point is wrong and that comparing religious people to child molestors is a pretty disgusting and unfair way to make a point.

I agree that the loud and proud atheists have done a great job at getting atheism on the front lines. Dawkins at al have been very effective in making atheism more “main stream” and well known. However, this is where mine and Ian’s opinions differ - greatly.

In my eyes, if anyone is a hypocrite it are those who are like Dawkins et al. So many flaming atheists claim that religion is closed minded and detrimental to the well being of individuals. However - a lot of these atheists are just as closed minded as the christians/jews/muslims/whatever that they’re attempting to stand up against. It’s hypocritcal to stand so firmly against something because you think it’s haulting people’s lives and ability to live their lives in the way you think they should be living it.

Ian says this

If you call yourself an atheist and believe that many religious beliefs are down right wacky

I do think religion is pretty wacky. I think it’s pretty silly to believe in most religious things. However - I also see that not everyone thinks like that. I see that my mom finds comfort and love in her religion, and I’m curious about it. What makes her believe? What does she cling onto? What would make her stop believing? Is she upset that I don’t believe?

How else am I supposed to fill my curiosity about something like religion without talking to those who are religious. The difference between this and a child molestor is that a child molester is breaking the law and doing something that I know is fundamentally unethical and disgusting. Being religious isn’t fundamentally unethical and disgusting. If a particular religion did advocate child molesting, or killing people, or something cultish - then yeah, I absolutely 100% wouldn’t give them my time of day - that’s why you’ll pretty much never see anything about scientology on my blog.

I think Ian is looking at it from a very narrow view. Not all atheists think that religious people are a waste of space or “wacky”. Some of us are genuinely curious about the sociology behind religion. I want to know everything about what they’re thinking. I don’t think it’s fair to mock their religious ideologies or to tell them that they’re “wrong” or “stupid” for believing what they do.

So yes, I do love what Hemant is doing over Dawkins et al. I would rather listent to Hemant speak about looking for more - than Dawkins talkabout already knowing everything.

So apparently I’m a huge douche bag and bought tickets for the WEMF when it’s the same weekend as the CFI - Transnational Student Leadership Conference. *sobs* …So I have to pick one.

Originally it was a no brainer! I mean, this is the LAST WEMF… How could I miss it? I love electronic music, I have plans to go with AMAZING people and the festival always delivers 800xs more fun than promised. So my first inclination was to say “ta ta!” so the atheists and jump onto the music snob train.

However, after further consideration about what would actually be more beneficial to my life in general… and the fact that I’ve volunteered myself for more responsibility than I should have at the conference… and that I forced Kate to go so that I wouldn’t be alone… and that I wouldn’t mind spending the weekend with the intern… I decided I should probably go to the conference. *huge sob*

Sooo if you wanted to go to the WEMF, but didn’t get tickets in time, I have 2 totally up for grabs. Best offer gets them, really. Although I’d prefer to sell them at the original price… not any higher, … I know they’re going for like $300 some places, and I’m not ready to do that to people who just want to enjoy some music and connect with their inner… … …whatever, you know.. drop acid.

Lemme know if you’re interested! AND if you do go - you must give me a 100% fully loaded run down about how amazing it was. Because seriously, I’m really sad I’ll miss this.

Apparently, based on this (sort of) clever weave of semantics “The logical conclusion of atheism is that it’s illogical.” … If you abuse logic enough you can twist pretty much anything into a “truth” statement. You could very well, in mathematical and formal logic, make a statement claiming blue is red and still have it manage to actually equate to be “true”… that is if you do enough twisty bullshit in the middle.

Reading that post even someone how has never taken a logic course can see the problems, there are assumptions, jumps and irrational conclusions (mostly due to the fact that he had a predetermined statement in mind). It the atheist’s turn to play! yay!:

1. An extensional analytic sentence is one that, through substitution of synonyms for synonyms, results in a narrowly logical truth, e.g., a truth in “standard” propositional logic.

2. The sentence-scheme “c causes e” analytically entails (but is not synonymous with) “c and e exist; e’s existence stands to c in the relation of being the result of c’s existence, such that this relation is not that of e being narrowly, logically necessitated by c.” The reason there is no synonymy is that there are other features of the causal relation, features not mentioned in the entailed sentence.

3. The sentence-schema “x is omnipotent” analytically implies “for any possible existent y, necessarily, if x wills that y exist, y exists.”

4. The relation expressed by “x wills that y exist and y exists as a consequence of this willing” is a species of the relation expressed by “x causes y to exist.”

5. If God exists, God is omnipotent and the cause of the universe that exists.

6. If the universe is willed to exist by God and the universe does not exist, then it is the case that [by (3), (4) and (5)]

• (a) God wills the universe to exist and the universe exists and
• (b) God wills the universe to exist and the universe does not exist.

7. The proposition expressed by the sentence, “God wills the universe to exist and the universe exists, and God wills the universe to exist and the universe does not exist,” is a negation of a theorem of standard propositional logic, namely, that it is not the case that both p and not-p.

8. Therefore, God narrowly logically necessitates whatever possibility he causes to exist.

9. Therefore, it is not the case that the universe is caused to exist by God [from (2)].

10. Therefore, God does not exist [from (5) and (9)].

=D LoLz