I’m an atheist.
One should not make that statement without defining one’s terms because there is some disagreement about what atheism means. In my book, and I think most books that bear the word “dictionary” on their covers as well, atheism doesn’t require that you know there is no god, only that you believe there is no god.
This contrast with agnostics, who have no opinion one way or the other about whether there is a god, and theists, who believe there is one or more gods that intervenes in the universe that She, He, It or They created and sustains a relationship with His, Her, Its, or Their creations. (Yes, I know that atheists, theists and agnostics aren’t the universal set. But let’s leave deists—and any other spiritual classifications I might have forgotten about—out of it. For the purposes of this particular conversation, they are irrelevant. And for the purposes of advancing the state humanity, this blog post is irrelevant, as you shall soon see.)
That definition of—believing, not knowing—makes sense. I can’t prove conclusively that there is no god any more than anyone has been able to prove conclusively that there is one. The god hypothesis has been cleverly designed to make it impossible to disprove. God, many believers claim, is omnipotent and, therefore, He (they typically refer to God as a He) could alter the laws of physics to make it look as if He doesn’t exist even if He does exist. Why He would do such a thing is generally left unsaid, but never mind.
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A few minutes ago I saw a picture tweeted by a reporter covering an anti-abortion protest in Ottawa, Canada (my nation’s capital). The picture showed someone who appeared to be well beyond her child-bearing years. She was carrying a sign that had a picture of a fetus and the words “PLEASE LET ME LIVE.”
Considering that nobody was trying to kill the protester and she didn’t seem to be in imminent danger of dying, I’m assuming that “please let me live” were supposed to be the words of the fetus. Um, this is just a guess on my part, but I’m thinking that that’s not a direct quote from the fetus.
How do they know that’s what it is thinking? Maybe the fetus is suicidal and would welcome death. Maybe it’s thinking, “I don’t want to live in a world with people like you in it.” Or maybe it’s thinking, “Please don’t put words in my mouth. I don’t appreciate it at all.”
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I turned 60 today.
You know what they say, “60 is the new 40.” This just goes to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are incurable freaking imbeciles, because that’s a heaping pile of warm crap. (Although, that having been said, I’m approaching the age when staying regular is often an important health objective, so there’s that.)
Besides, even if it were true on some deeply esoteric ontological level, I seriously doubt that the 60-is-the-new-40 sentiment will win me as much as a single potential-sex-partner point with any eligible, voluptuous women under the chronological age of 40. And, if not, how the hell much is it really worth? Not much. Not much at all.
Furthermore, the way I feel now, I’m thinking that 60 is the new 80. Maybe 79, but that’s my final offer.
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I recently bought some socks.
In and of itself, that is not what one might normally, or even under exceptional circumstances, label “an extraordinary event.” In fact, nothing even vaguely related to anything I’m going to write about today is something that anyone at all would normally, or even under exceptional circumstances, in any way whatsoever label “an extraordinary event.” I don’t know why I mentioned it at all. Please ignore my opening sentence. Let’s move on, shall we?
Oh, wait. I just remembered why I mentioned it. We can’t move on because the socks and my purchase of them, uninteresting though they be in and of themselves, are the things I want to talk about. Therefore, please ignore that I asked you to ignore my first sentence and let’s move on, shall we?
I bought a set of three socks that came on one of those triple-sock-pair hangers that someone probably spent a lifetime designing and then retired or checked into a looney bin (or, if he or she was more politically correct, possibly a mental health facility).
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I hate housework, absolutely hate it. Holding world-championship medals for both indolence and procrastination doesn’t help to get domestic chores done either. What’s more, even if I were a raving male chauvinist, which I’m not, because I’m single I still wouldn’t have a wife or live-in girlfriend to try to slough them off to. Besides, not being a raving male chauvinist, I’d feel horribly guilty trying to convince my wife or girlfriend—if I had one, which, as I said, I don’t—that it was “women’s work.” I’d still try because, did I mention, I hate housework, but I’d feel guilty about it.
To make matters worse, what little housework I do, I invariably do abysmally. That’s not by intent, but out of inability or, possibly, because the universe hates me.
For example, when I try to iron clothes they end up more disheveled than when I started. For that reason, I usually buy “permanent-pressed” clothes made from the most artificial of polyesters. In the interest of fashion, NASA approved this material to be left on the moon should NASA or anyone else ever go back there. NASA also recommended that moon landings be abandoned after that mercy mission.
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On September 4, 2012, when the results came in after the last provincial election in Québec, a man went to the Parti Québecois victory party, shot two people, killed one person, and set a fire before leaving the scene. He was charged with murder, three attempted murders, arson and a few other things. There might have also been a jaywalking charge, but I’m probably wrong about that.
After his arrest, the accused said that he did it because Jesus Christ told him to solve the Québec separation problem. According to him, his actions were part of what Jesus wanted him to do. He has been sent for a court-imposed psychiatric evaluation to see if he is fit to stand trial. There is some thought that he might be insane. Gee, I don’t know. D’ya think?
I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent here. Stay with me. It won’t take long. For the benefit of those of my American friends who nodded off during the nanosecond when Canada was mentioned in geography class at their high schools, I should pause to fill them in on a few facts.
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I often wonder who was the first person to think of performing certain activities or, rather, not so much who thought of them, but why they did. I also wonder who first thought of some products, but I’ll save that discussion for another day.
I’m not thinking of activities that make perfect sense now and that would always have made perfect sense even to people exposed to them for the first time. I’m thinking of stuff that have come to be accepted as normal, but if intelligent space aliens with a perfect command of the English language visited our planet and watched us carrying out these practices they’d immediately shriek, “Are you out of your fucking minds?” But on further reflection they pensively ask, “Are you out of your fucking minds?”
The following are some of the things I had in mind. I’ll talk about only five because this post will be long with even just that few. Maybe I’ll do another post later with more. Or maybe not. You never can tell.
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For a period of about two years, which ended five or six years ago, I wrote a weekly column of allegedly humorous rants about the use and abuse of digital technologies. Some people say that I wrote the columns weakly, not weekly, but ignore them. Only literate people say that.
The publisher of the online information technology trade publication where the columns appeared also had a book division that published the first year’s worth of columns in a book, BYTE-ing Satire, which is still available (or at least it was at time of writing). Here’s a shameless plug:
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