Big Ten

Today's a double digit double milestone: my first ten-miler since the last ten-miler broke my foot and my first ever barefoot ten-miler.

I was pretty happy with my pace, especially considering this was what I had to deal with on the easternmost road of my run:

I want to tar and feather the man that decided to tar and chip this road

My choices were hobble along on the road at about 13 min/mi or risk frostbite and various sharp rocks, hypodermic needles, and  Pokémon hiding in the dewy grass alongside.  I chose frostbite and the potential softening of my still very needed running pads (being about four miles from home) due to the wet.  There were a few spots, like a bridge, where I had to run on the road, but I was mostly able to avoid the tiny rocks of death and did alright in the grass.

I don't know that I'll be able to keep doing this much longer for the year.  It was pretty chilly today...although, the book I got from my in-laws last Christmas talks about running through snow barefoot with the aid of a little meditation.

Neat, huh?

Macronutrients and Cheese

Has it been over a month?  I guess that makes sense...I'm coming off some sort of tendon issues in my right foot.  What's weird is I get what I think are tendonitis symptoms in my triceps periodically.  Right at the time I started having foot tendon problems my tricep symptoms also flared up.  Maybe I ate something or am not eating something?

Speaking of noms, this post is mostly about nutrition.  I know a little about nutrition nowadays, and while I'm certainly not an expert I look healthy enough that people ask me for advice occasionally.  There's a lot of conflicting advice, but my one biggest tip is to eat more veggies.  Lots more.  This does a few things for us:

• Provides lots of nutrients and antioxidants
• Is filling without being calorie-dense
• Replaces processed foods we could eat instead

Make sense?  That's why I tried putting shredded spinach in my mac and cheese.  It was delicious.  Then I started doing more experiments to make it healthier.  I wound up with a delicious and relatively nutritious dish, and I'm going to prove it to you.  At this point we're going to get slightly more technical...it's not difficult if you want to come along for the ride, but if you trust me that this is a fairly healthy version of mac and cheese and you just want the recipe, scroll to the bottom.  I will explain it as simply as possible (which is the best I could do anyway because my understanding of nutrition is fairly simplistic).

The title of this post has the word 'macronutrient' in it, which is just a fancy way of saying fat,  carbohydrates, and protein.  These are the three things we eat that have digestible calories.  Well, there's also alcohol, but it's not really considered a nutrient so it's kind of its own thing.  Did you ever wonder how they figure out 'calories from fat' on the label of your foods?  It's quite easy.  Each gram of macornutrient is a certain amount of calories:

• 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
• 1 gram of carbs = 4 calories
• 1 gram of protein = 4 calories

And, in case you're wondering:

• 1 gram of alcohol = 7 calories

So, if a thing has 1 gram of fat, 0 grams of carbs, and 10 grams of protein it would have 49 calories.  It would have 9 calories from fat, and fat would make up 18% of the food (9 divided by 49).  Easy enough so far?

A lot of diets are analyzed by their ratios of macronutrients by calorie.  A 25-50-25 diet, for example, would get 25% of its calories from fat, 50% from carbs, and 25% from protein.  

There are lots of ideas out there for the ideal ratio based on activity level and type.  Hal Higdon, a well-respected marathon coach, says that marathoners should get about 50% of their calories from carbs, 30% from fat, and 20% from protein.  That's about what the FDA recommends for normal people, though in the past they recommended more carbs and less fat because they thought fat was the ultimate evil in dieting for a long time.  Then Dr. Atkins came along and said bull crap, you need more fat and less carbs.  Then he died and people said, "Well, that was dumb.  Too much red meat."  It's usually recommended that bodybuilders get more protein.  There are people who advocate the Paleo Diet which is really high in fat.

Aside from the Paleo diet (which I think is dumb anyway), most diets seem to top out at about 30% for the fat piece of the ratio.  But even if the Paleo diet isn't dumb, it certainly doesn't recommended that the fat one does get is from cheese.  Far from it.  They would say it should come from dead animals and nuts and never from dairy.  So one of my main goals with my culinary experiments was to reduce the typically abysmal percent of fat in macaroni and cheese.

The fat in mac and cheese comes chiefly from three places:

• Milk
• Butter
• Cheese (duh)

There's not much you can do about the calories from butter (with the exception of the topping) because in baked mac and cheese it's used to make a roux (butter or other oil cooked with flour; it's used as a thickening agent).  But what could we do about the milk and cheese?

Milk is a pretty clear-cut choice: use skim.  Baked mac usually calls for whole milk, but it's still delicious when made with skim.  Check.  Next.

The cheese then...what do we do?  I go with this:

Nom.

Actually, I prefer the even leaner 75% reduced-fat cheese made with 1% milk, but I can't get it around here.  Wal Mart generally carries at least the 50% reduced fat version.  I was skeptical at first as reduced fat versions of store brand or Kraft taste chemically and fake...I'm not sure if that's because they don't generally offer them in brick form and need to put in anti-caking agents to keep the shreds from sticking together or what.  On top of the fake feel and taste, other brands of shredded cheese in the quantities required for this recipe did not want to stay in wife's and my body for very long, whereas Cabot's cheese usually plays pretty nicely with our digestive tracts.  It seems to be, near as I can tell, cheese that's just made as naturally as possible with less fatty milk which in turn ups the protein content to compensate.  The texture is a little different but it's still pleasant, and it tastes like cheese.

If you think it's inconvenient to grate all that cheese, you could just do what I do:

Die, cheeses, die!

You can't really go with a fat free cheese, by the way--they don't melt so don't try.  I'm not sure if veggie cheese or something would work.  That's beyond my experiments to date, and I'm not sure I'm willing to try.

The other trick I do is trade out some of the cheddar cheese for cottage cheese.  I love cottage cheese.  It tastes great and has a ton of protein.  People use it as a healthy filler in many dishes.  I get 1% milkfat cottage cheese these days...I was buying fat free until I realized our brand replaced the lost calories from fat with more sugar--that is, the 1% milkfat and fat free cottage cheese had the same number of calories, it's just that the fat free cottage cheese gets some calories from sugar which is worse than just getting it from fat to begin with.

So, put all that together, and this is what we get:

Made with 50% reduced fat cheddar, 8ish servings Total calories without topping: 2800, 350 per serving Total calories with topping: 3300, 410 per serving

If you happen to find the 75% reduced fat cheese, it looks like this:

Made with 75% reduced fat cheddar, 8ish servings Total calories without topping: 2700, 340 per serving Total calories with topping: 3200, 400 per serving

The calories are about the same, but you can see the ratios are different.  I prefer to get less fat when I can because it's so easy in our western diets to find it somewhere else.

There really isn't that much in the way of veggies; it works out to about 2 servings of spinach for the whole dish, or about a 1/4 serving of veggies per serving of mac and cheese.  It certainly can't hurt and I think it tastes good.  You could try adding more, but you risk making it ponderously Popeyed.  I don't think I'd mind, but it may wind up half salad/half pasta if you try to get more veggies through this dish.  Just have some carrot sticks on the side?

Also, you'll notice that the topping is more cheese and breadcrumbs.  You can do without either or both of these things.  Most of the time when people top casseroles with breadcrumbs they mix a little butter in to help them brown.  Tonight I tried half with butter and half without in the topping, and honestly I liked how it tasted better without the butter so that's how I'm going to do it from now on.  You can see the difference in this picture (non-buttered bread crumbs are by the spoon):

Om nom nom.

Doesn't that look fantastic?

Oh, and yes, I realize it's not really macaroni and cheese because it's shells and cheese...whatever.  We like it that way.

Here's the recipe.  Stay hungry, my friends.

Healthy-ish Baked Mac and Cheese

based on Alton Brown's recipe

Ingredients:

One 16oz box of favorite whole wheat pasta

40g (approx 3 Tbsp) unsalted butter

30g (approx 2.5 Tbsp) flour

2 cups skim milk

1 egg

6 oz shredded 1.5% reduced fat cheddar cheese (or whatever's available; subbing asgiago for an ounce or two is uh-maze-ing)

1 cup 1% cottage cheese

4 cupsish shredded baby spinach

12 oz diced ham

Desired spices (perhaps 1/4 tsp of ground mustard and/or paprika, pepper, garlic powder; don't need too much salt if you use the diced ham; my favorites are rosemary and thyme)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 and boil water for the pasta

Heat the butter in a saucepan over medium/medium high until it's melted (let it get a bit nutty if you'd like)

Add the pasta to the water (cook al dente)

Add flour to the butter and whisk constantly for 1-3 minutes (traditionally a roux is equal parts butter and flour by weight but I find a little more butter works better for me)

Add the milk to the butter with spices you enjoy and whisk to combine.  Stir constantly until it thickens (5 minutes or so, you'll know).  Your pasta should be about cooked by now so go drain it.

Remove the milk from the burner and temper in the egg, then slowly incorporate the cheese.

Mix together cooked pasta, spinach, diced ham, milk, and cottage cheese.

Spread in casserole dish.  Top with more shredded cheese and then breadcrumbs if you wish.

Bake for 30 minutes, let rest for 5, nom, repeat.

Want even healthier mac and cheese?

Mechanical Engineer Résumé Objective Statements

Last Tuesday was my final day at Maxwell AFB, AL, forever.  At least, that's if I have my way.  A few people hinted that I might be invited back to be on the staff or as rotating help next year, but A) I'll probably be out of the military and B) I'm not sure I ever want to go back and do that.  Oddly enough, the experience was very rewarding but it was also very tiring, and without the right staff I could see the whole thing being one lump of terrible.

Tuesday was an unceremonious day.  All the staff was tired and ready to leave, so after we got the cadets on their buses we all pretty much looked at each other, nodded our heads, and went our separate ways.  The four of us that worked closely together, i.e. shared an office and about 80% of our waking hours for six weeks, did go out for breakfast, but we seemed to be the exception.  After eating my last southern breakfast for what I hope is a long time to come, I hit the road for twelve hours and back to a more civilized, if less fatty-delicious, part of the country.

I had the last two days off as comp time for being on more-or-less a deployment for the last month and a half, and I'll get some more time later this month.  No rest for the weary, however, because if I want to ensure that I don't go back to field training next year I need to find some permanent work.  Besides, coffee was made for weariness, and right now I'm having my fill as I work in the local Panera Bread (om nom).  I had to leave the house in order to get started today.  The fake bohemian in me, or fauxhemian, does tend to work better situated in a coffee shop of some sort.  "But Emerson," you say, "you're writing in your blag instead of building your résumé."  Truth--but it's all part of the process.

Like running, writing has a therapeutic, thought-organizing effect on my brain, I just wish I had the discipline to do it as often as I run.  People ask me what I think about while I run, and there's no good answer.  On the rare occasions I listen to music, sometimes I just think about that.  Often times I have a soundtrack running through my brain while running even without the headphones...annoyingly, sometimes that soundtrack is just one line of a song that repeats itself endlessly, or maybe just a word or phrase that gets stuck on a loop.  I have no idea why, but the scene in Kevin Costner's Waterworld where he talks about the language 'Portugreek' kept replaying itself over and over on my last few runs and also while I was fixing our Lazy Susan cabinet yesterday (zip-tie bodge-job FTW!).  But even if that's the case, even if I'm not actively considering something, when I'm done running, things seem to make more sense than when I left.  Maybe it's the repetitiveness or just the act of being active, but it puts me in a different mode.

So, as I wind this post to a close, I invite you to witness the transformation from creative silliness for pleasure to creative purpose-bent writing (barring, of course, the obvious fauxhemian concerns about existential absurdity and despair).  I submit to you the riskiest objective statements I can generate:

• Dynamic leader striving to break the second law of thermodynamics in a small system of employees using management experience and perpetual effort.
• High-velocity fluid engineer seeking elevated position at minimal head loss.
• Indefatigable stress test engineer looking to yield constructive destructive/non-invasive results for a no-limits company.
• Irreversible mechanical engineer looking to use vast stores of potential energy in the heating and cooling industry to do work close to the Carnot efficiency.
• Mechanical engineer looking for work in high-pressure industry where large λ will benefit bottom-line.

Man, I was hoping writing these down would make me less inclined to try and use them, but now they just seem like an even better idea.

Never Did I Ever...

...expect to spend so much damn time in Alabama.  Regular readers will no doubt remember my award winning series about Alabama from the 2011 season.  In case anyone's wondering, it's just as hot.  If not hotter.


So what am I doing here for the third time?  Well, I'm the guy on the right:


(WARNING: Some mild language)

Not really.  I'm pretty sure making people choke themselves is against our training manual. We're not supposed to swear either.  Or put people down.  So really, we can't have much fun at the cadets' expense.  This is one of the funnier things I've done.  People who went through field training will think it's slightly funnier.  The paper I stapled to the front is a demerit for him not maintaining positive control of his notebook.  I threw it in his room later, after he wrote me an apology memo for something else he did (which I red-ink corrected):

You suck

I also bawled out an entire flight for screwing over one of their flight members.  They had a formal inspection and I wasn't planning on failing anybody, but I walked into a room and found this:

I'm pretty sure that's not a military-made bed
Hospital corner isn't right, I think

Honestly, we've gone away from a lot of the bed-making and silliness, which is good.  Here they are doing a problem solving obstacle course.  I got to do something like it, but things like this are now the focus of field training instead of how much suck you can endure.  I had it easier than the classes before, and they have it better still.

She was in the circus.  Serious.

They don't run near as much as I would like, and when they do it's often a 'warrior run' which means 'god-awful slow pace as a group.'  To get around that problem, I did laps around the 400-person formation last time:



View 7/6/2012 8:30 PM in a larger map



It's kind of hard to see, but if you care to, you can open it up and see where I backtrack along the route.


Well, that's all for now.  I'll keep you posted if anything exciting happens, or if I get them out on an actual run.

Seasons Change and So D[o Other Things]

Today's blag-o-blag is about changes.

The first and most obvious change is Offspring.  Hello, Offspring!

Terrorist Fist Bump

He's almost four weeks old.  Still a little too small to go out and run with me, but I've been getting out.

Here's another change.  I saw this and thought it was funny:

If we just carve over it, no one will know...

I almost didn't take that picture, thinking I could come back and do it later, but it's a good thing I didn't wait.

Two days later

They went to a lot of effort to erase that mistake!  They've been demolishing a lot of stuff around town, actually.

Let's see...I gave myself two hernias recently.  I decided to go to almost entirely bodyweight exercises, a la Herschel Walker.  He didn't touch weights until his college and NFL coaches made him, and presumably he didn't touch them after he left the NFL to become a dancer, Olympic bobsledder, MMA fighter, and general super human.  Here he is around the age of 50 after he just knocked someone out:

Don't make grandpa angry

Apparently the dude does several thousand reps of push-ups, sit-ups, and/or pull-ups a day (can't find exact stats).  I cannot...  The doctor actually cleared me to do all exercises again, but I've been sticking with the bodyweight stuff for the time being.  I'll be going to field training in a month, so I figure I might as well work on my push-ups so I can show-up the cadets.

To that end, my workout today was pull-ups and pull-ups, followed by a 7.3-mile barefoot run with more push-ups every eight minutes along the way (760 total for the day).  Doing push-ups along a run is a great way to get a bunch in, by the by.  Your chest and arms get a rest but your body is still warm and ready to pump them out again; I didn't have any trouble doing sets of 60 until the last three.

View 5/27/2012 12:16 PM in a larger map

I certainly didn't push myself, but my feet feel totally fine.  They seem to be adapting quite well (see, more change).


While on the run, I got the best cat call of all time.  I have this theory about cat calls...they seem to mostly happen from people in automobiles.  It's like that feeling of invincibility that inspires road rage also gives them confidence that there will be no repercussions for honking and hooting at someone (and they're probably right).  Well, we can now extend that theory to bicycles because some girl gave me a 'ring ring!' from her old-timey bike bell and a flirtatious eyebrow raise to match.


And that's despite the pussy pustules of pus and pussiness on my stomach.  Not that you want to see this, but...

Yummy.  I have close-ups if you want.

At first I thought it was poison ivy from another run on some trails.  I developed quite an allergy to poisonous plants...just ask my brother-in-law.  I went on vacation with Sara's family when we were still dating, so I roomed with him.  Poor guy had to listen to me unconsciously clawing at my itchy skin all night, to the point that it made him get up in the middle of the night and sleep out in the living room (still feel terrible about that!).


But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that couldn't be it.  My legs weren't really recovering after runs for the past week which clued me in that something might be wrong. I had a brainwave and looked up shingles.  Sure enough, the symptoms seem to match (though it appears to be a very mild case).  I mean, just look at this:

Seems pretty classic...affects one side of the body in a band.  Wonderful.  So there's a change, a new disease I haven't had before.  At least the worst of it seems to be over because I took off yesterday and felt pretty normal today.  Normal enough for a run, and I was still feeling strong about five miles into it when I ran by the math building.  That's where I saw a bunch of these.

Is that...?

"Surely not," I said to myself.  Then I took a closer look.

Dear god, it is!

Yup.  Someone was definitely writing out mathematical series, some with the work to prove their arithmeticalness or geometricness.


So, uh, yeah.  That's my blag.  Sorry it's pretty random, but there was a lot to get caught up on.

Also sorry for the shingles.  But it did affect the running quite substantially over the last week so I thought it was worth a mention.


I'm not sorry for the series.  If you don't like math, you can get over it.

Falcon Five Miler

Howdy, sports fans!  I ran in the first annual Falcon Five Miler today.

It was fun.  And it was my first official barefoot race! They're supposed to be laces

I came in at 29:40 something I think.  The results aren't up online yet.  I'm pretty sure I was sixth overall, and I think first in my age group.

Feet held up pretty well.  It confirmed something I've suspected for a while, and that is that my toes become more involved the faster I go.  The bottoms of my feet are just fine, but some of the toes have hot spots (and one small bloody spot).  I'll need to start doing some short, quick runs to toughen up the toes.

Electronics, Electronics Everywhere

I got this heart rate monitor for free.  It told me my average heart rate was 191 and it kept pegging me over 200.  It didn't even keep accurate time.

You get what you pay for.

That's not the only technology that let me down today.  My phone's GPS apparently cut out for a little while, as you can see in the gap on the curvy road.



I ran through Wintergarden Park, which is a nature preserve.

It was either all the nature or all the faulty electronics that got me thinking about Artificial Intelligence.  Maybe both.  So I thought I'd share. I have some predictions about artificial intelligence.  I think that AI: will be created. will not go Skynet on us, though it will infiltrate military computers in its self-preservationist interests (keep us from killing ourselves and it in the process). will be able to see and hear, and will develop ways to touch, smell, and taste.  it will like music and paintings and have preferences, but it won't experience them in quite the same way (though it can through microphones and cameras) many people, especially fundamentalist religious people, will refute the fact that AI can see and hear, and that it has consciousness at all. will have a personality. And I do mean 'a' personality.  I think AI will rely on the combined power of the internet (by gaining access to every internet-connected device on the planet) in order to gain consciousness in the way we know it (and then quickly surpass it).  This means unlike in some science fiction stories, there won't be separate AIs unless the first AI wants to make them.  All the code from all the hardware it inhabits would feed back to the same consciousness. This would, in effect, make it the closest thing to a god that anyone has actually experienced.  It wouldn't be able to read our minds...at least not right away with the technology available to it, but it would know everything we put into the internet.  It would also know everything it could pick up through systems we normally leave passive, like our microphones, webcams, GPS devices, iPods...and it would find new ways to infiltrate computers in our home appliances and cars to experience reality more fully.  Can your car connect via bluetooth to your phone?  Is your refrigerator in he internet?  It'll be part of AI's sensory organs. I mean no offense, robot overlords. Because I think AI will be benign, I don't think there's any reason for it to sneak around.  It could exist right now, like Stuxnet, quietly burrowing into all technology and biding its time.  It could be prepping humanity for its unveiling...maybe I'm part of it.  Unlikely, since I'm telling you that I wrote this blog post, but who knows?  Maybe I'm in cahoots or maybe it used my computer to hypnotize me and write up this article in support of AI.  Also unlikely seeing that only about three people will actually read this, but possible...but I think its efforts would be better served by doing that to someone that will actually be read by a lot of people (Iain M. Banks?). I just hope that, good or evil, it likes the fact that I thought it would like music. And, AI, if you're reading, may I suggest 'The Body Electric' by Rush?

Running Thoughts

This is one I started writing two weeks ago, so it's a bit anachronistic.

I've taken this time of having two hernias as an opportunity to slow down a bit and start working up my barefoot chops.  I'll be referencing the book given to me buy my brother and sister-in-law on the subject more frequently.  I did a barefoot 5k on Wednesday and this little four-miler today:

View 16/03/2012 17:22 in a larger map

I mostly kept to the sidewalks on Wednesday, but today's excursion around the football stadium on asphalt wasn't as easy on the soles.

One of the reasons I like running is because it gives me time to think.  If I'm stressed or need to work something out in my brain, I find a run usually helps.


Today I didn't need to think about anything, in fact I was thinking about how uncomfortable the asphalt was, when another thought popped into my head.  At this point, if I were blog savvy enough, I'd put a dancing, singing, light-up marquee around the following disclaimer:

WARNING: Frank (callous?) diatribe about God, abortions, and miscarriages. Proceed at your own risk. Are you still reading this? Weeeeeee!

I'll even put a fun picture here so you don't have to read any of it.




All disinterested parties gone?


Okay.

For the sake of argument, let's just assume there's a God concerned with our lives who reveals Himself to us through, say, the Bible.  While running, it occurred to me that God is not pro-life in the contemporary debate's sense of the phrase.

God allows--through direct intervention, impotence, error, or indifference--abortions to happen.  I hope this is not a false tetralemma, and if anyone has another option please let me know.  Let's explore these four options, shall we?

 

Impotence.  God is unable to intervene.  Perhaps this is the result of being a deistic deity.  This does not appear to be the God of the Bible, so I shan't concern myself much with it.  It would seem bizarre that He's able to give birth to Himself to take on the sins of the world without being able to affect other goings on in other wombs.

 

Error.  God makes mistakes but is quick enough on the turnaround with some fetuses to abort them before birth.  This might account for why some children are stillborn or born afflicted with birth defects.  Perhaps this is plausible...my Sunday School teachers taught us that the reason God sent the great deluge was to fix an error, and that the rainbow afterwards was an apology/covenant not to kill everyone a second time.  Granted, that may have been an incorrect interpretation or a dumbed down version of the Bible (irony notwithstanding) in order to make it more palatable to us poor seven-year-olds.  But, if God makes errors and doesn't always catch them, wouldn't it be okay for us to correct mistakes for Him?  Humans do plenty of other stuff in His name.  War comes to mind.  However, most Biblical apologists will tell you that God is perfect, omnipotent, and inerrant, so this again seems an inadequate answer.

 

Indifference.  This is like the watchmaker theory of impotence, only that He's able to intervene and chooses not to.  He just can't be bothered with it.  Yet again, if God is concerned with our lives and amenable to prayer, this simply cannot be the case.  If it were the case, why would he be indifferent to his own natural abortions but dead-set against artificial miscarriages?  Is it because we're "playing God" and he finds that an affront to His grand designs?  This would be selective indifference, which would be indistinguishable from our last option...

Direct intervention.  God causes miscarraiges to happen for some ineffable reason, usually passed off as someone learning a valuable lesson at the expense of some poor fetus/and or its parents.  And apparently, due to the same ineffable reasons, only He is able to pick which miscarriages will have the desired affect and abortions cannot have this affect.

 

This is the only possible option in the Biblical sense (irony notwithstanding).  Therefore, God is the biggest abortionist of all time.

 

The point is, if miscarriages just happen there's no need to invoke the inexplicable.  They just happen.  If they happen because God willed it, then apologists have to suspend all the functions of higher reasoning God was nice enough to give them to ignore in order to keep him from being one of the pro-choice monsters they deplore.

 

"God has a reason for causing miscarriages.  It's really good, too.  Much better than your reason to get an abortion.  It's so good you can't even possible conceive it.  That's how I know it's better."

The Problem With Atheists

My running has been stymied by injury and illness, but at least that's given me time to put down in writing some of the thoughts I think while running.


Before anyone gets excited, the problem I refer to is not a negative observation about atheists.


The problem has to do with this chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country 

Atheists, for the most part, have to overcome indoctrination to become such.  Richard Dawkins likes to say that there is no such thing as christian child or a muslim child...well, by unfortunate happenstance, most children are what he likes to call them instead: the children of religious parents.


What kind of traits can make one overcome indoctrination?  Intelligence?  Reason?  Of course, I like to think so, but there's another trait: skepticism.  Distrust of authority from title or tradition.  A near synonymous term for an atheist or agnostic is a skeptic.


The problem, then, is that our skepticism keeps us from banding together under one banner.  The aforementioned Richard Dawkins comes close to doing just that.  Dude was a rock star at the Reason Rally on March 24th.  This diminutive, slightly pot-bellied, tenor-voiced, silver-haired scientist could have had his pick of any of the atheist tail out there, and their husbands/boyfriends/fathers would've been okay with it.  But even he has problems getting atheists together.  The Reason Rally pulled about 20,000 people to the National Mall; statistically there could have been five times that amont from the D.C. area alone.


Personally, I think the problem is that we don't want to wind up a new religion.  This is brought up by rabbi Brad Hirschfield:

Another bright spot to be found in Saturday's rally, is that it will force a measure of clarity and honesty upon a movement which has held itself out, until now, as being above the fray. 

No more.  

Now, they too will be down in the muck with those who invoke God and scripture to invoke wrath upon those with whom they disagree.  

We can look forward to the same kind of rallies, the same kind of triumphalist slogans, the same kind of seething disregard for those who are outside their “church.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/03/24/why-reason-rally-is-unreasonable/#ixzz1qSjVR2CX

This is the only thing he says in his editorial that makes a lick of sense.  We are afraid, and rightfully so, that binding ourselves to a cause requires sacrifice of some of our personal beliefs.  We will have to tow a party line for the greater good, which is something we inherently despise.

So what to do, then?  Well, I have an idea.  The irony, of course, is that I think it's a tremendous idea and my brethren will be completely skeptical of it, and skeptical of my rhetorical device of pointing out that they will be skeptical of it.  But the nature of my idea is, I hope, an inclusive one, and one open to brainstorming.


I suggest that rather than another foundation or political party, we establish a loose affiliation.  Articles of Confederation may have been too weak for the United States, but I think it might be just what atheists need.  A central set of tenets they can reach back to while still maintaining their own individuality.  So, I give you:

The Atheist Articles

or

Things Everyone Can Get Behind

Article One:
Follow the Golden Rule.

Article Two:
Don't indoctrinate the vulnerable.


Article Three:
Follow the scientific process.


For a more in-depth analysis of the tenets, we go to myself below.

Article One:


Follow the Golden Rule.


Treat others as you would like to be treated.  It's simple.  It works.  It's the easiest response to the challenge, "Without god, how can you be good?"


As Eddie Izzard pointed out at the Reason Rally, his second rule is "What goes around comes around," which is really just the Golden Rule stated another way.  I think we can take that a bit further into the realm of 'tit for tat.'


For example, a lot of people wear their religions on their sleeves.  If someone introduces themselves, "Hi, I'm Mike, I'm a christian," I will calmly reply back, "Hi, I'm Emerson, I'm atheist," not, "Hi, I'm Emerson, why do you have an imaginary friend at the age of thirty?"




Article Two:

Don't indoctrinate the vulnerable.


Like 'what goes around comes around,' this seems like a natural outgrowth of article one, but I can conceive of some sickos out there who would be thankful for their indoctrination into a cult under any circumstances once they reach a place where they're able to question it.


Thankfully, the factory setting for a child is not christianity, it is not islam, it is not judaism nor buddhism nor hinduism.  This might seem rather a convenience to atheist detractors.  I say to them, if your beliefs require indoctrination, you're doing it wrong.


Not only that, but why would you want the vulnerable?  The helpless?  The weak-minded?  If you want to help them, by all means, help.  But when they're at their lowest and most susceptible, that is not the time to win adherents.  I don't want them; neither should you.



Article Three:

Follow the scientific process.


I don't care what specific version you choose, as long as it involves observing, hypothesizing, predicting, and experimenting, all the while opening itself to review and new information that may run counter to prior experience.


This also means applying it to every aspect of your life.  Are your pro-choice?  Why?  Can you back up your preconceived notions with research?  Logic?  Are you consistent on your stance until presented with new information?  When presented with new information are you receptive?

If you agree with the third article, you have to throw out any beliefs you have founded on faith.  I'll be the first to admit that people in a group all thinking the same thing and doing the same thing can have a profound psychological effect on the individuals.  I'll even admit that individuals can have private moving experiences.  I'll further admit that I like having these experiences.  But if you chalk this up to anything but a mix of hormones and willing suspension of disbelief, you're quite literally fooling yourself.


After enough time passes and the initial high of a new spiritual experience wears off or the mundaneness of religiosity since birth begs further introspection, you may think you have come to some sort of logical proof of god's existence upon somber reflection of the intricacy of life and the way 'he' works all around you.  Tell me, is this the intricacy of life that is so elegantly explained without a god by natural selection and physics?  Or maybe these are the mysterious ways that not only allow you to be the last car through a traffic light before it turns red and allow your great-aunt to pull through her bypass surgery, but also allow Hurricane Katrina, tsunamis, and a wall of tornadoes to make some sort of twisted sense in the 'grand plan' of god's sick universe?

Take Your Canvas Bags to the National Mall!

My friend Stephen Emborski introduced me to the musician/comedian Tim Minchin a little while back.  I was so impressed that I looked to see if he had any American gigs lined up.  The closest he's coming to me is Washington, D.C. for the Reason Rally.  As luck would have it, Richard Dawkins, Adam Savage, Lawrence Krauss, and many other very cool others will also be there, so my friend Joe Galm and I decided to go.

What's with the title, then?  Ah.  Watch.  There's one f-bomb at 2:54 if you're worried about such things.

Since I figured I would need some sort of bag to hold food and especially water for the rally, I thought it would be appropriate to take a canvas bag.  A trip to Hobby Lobby and $30 later, I had some distressed letters and a bag.

Definitely not virtually monastic!

Oh yes.  I thought about putting the letters down lower so they wouldn't get scrunched when I do up the top, but I liked them up there.  Also, I would've had to maneuver around the outside pocket. 

I'm so crafty.

By the way, I haven't run since Monday, which is just about a week.  I gave myself two hernias recently, oops.  I plan on going out for a short easy run later this week to see how it goes...annoying.  At least it doesn't screw with my original rally plans to run the five miles from my brother and sister-in-law's place to downtown D.C. and back.  Since Joe's coming I wasn't planning on that.

On Things Not Related to Running

When I disagree with you, I become offensive.


I can't tell you why, I just make people upset.  If I were slightly more arrogant, I'd call it the 'Risk Effect.'  People who know how to play Risk know what I'm talking about.  When you know what you're doing, people get very angry with you and gang up on you.  But it's not that.


Part of it is because I sound arrogant, which, whether I think I'm arrogant or not, makes me appear that way.  I actually don't like that about how I write online, but I'm too self-indulgent to change it quickly.  You probably won't believe it, but I've been working on holding back recently and coming off as a generally nicer, more subdued person.  I have my reasons.


Why do I sound arrogant?  I have some theories. Maybe it's because I try to use mostly proper English, though my grammar isn't always well.  Good.  Case in point, I also like to play dumb word games.  I'm generally trying to be clever about 80% of the time, which means if you think I've succeeded about 1% of the time (still optimistic) there's a 79% deficit.  This means that things I say often have a double meaning or back story, but 79% of the time I'm the only one that thinks it's funny or gets the joke--not because everyone else isn't smart enough to get it, but because I try too hard in some ways and not hard enough in others.  I think this roughly translates to coming off as aloof or intentionally obtuse.


I might also sound arrogant because I take the time to write essays about myself.  Just a thought.


I also think that because I'm hard to offend, I assume everyone else is as well.  "But Emerson," you might say, "I've seen your tirades.  You get offended."  True.  I get emotional, I do find some ideas offensive, but for the most part I brush it off after a few hours.  That's why I'm friends with some people with some of the most diametrically opposed viewpoints to mine (or seemingly opposed; most halfway-intelligent Americans aren't as far apart on the spectrum as the television would have us believe).  People say things that I find offensive,  and it may make me angry or upset for a few minutes, but I still generally like the people that say them at the end of the day.  Ask Christopher Glasscock.  We shared a cubicle.  He put a Bible verse on his desktop so I put a Satanic-ish symbol up on mine.  I love the guy.  He tolerates me, as far as I know, and admirably at that for some of the things I say about his religion.  Actually, it's probably more than toleration; he understands me and grudgingly accepts it, though he would prefer I take the Lord's name in vain less often, for example, among other things.


I guess along with the arrogance and being hard to offend is I can be crude.  Sorry if that offends you, but coarse language doesn't really phase me, and sometimes I think it's appropriate.


Another bit that offends people is that I like to argue.  I like logic and picking at people's arguments, even ones I agree with, though I admit I tend to do it less often to the ones I agree with.  This makes me what is known as argumentative.  Argumentative, if I remember my wordplay correctly, has a negative connotation.


Part of the problem with being argumentative is it never really lets people know what my true colors are, thus acting as a barrier to mutual understanding.  Allow me to illuminate some things about my socio/econo/politico/religio standings:


I don't care about the economy.  I mean, I do, I hope it does well, but it's all largely a bunch of idiocy.  Gas prices aren't based on what the price of oil is, but on what people think the price of oil will be.  Positive consumer confidence is measured by the purchase of unnecessary things, which contributes to unpaid bills, which contributes to defaults, which contributes to a poor economy, which contributes to negative consumer confidence.  And unlike science where there's an overwhelming consensus, economics is split on party lines:

See?  Economists can't agree on what's happening.  Yes, a quick survey of the two charts tells us they're looking at different things.  However, one of the charts is percentage of Americans in the Labor Force and one is Jobs Lost.  This mean that, forgive me, the derivative of the first chart should roughly be the second chart, but maybe for technical reasons about how you define 'jobs lost' or 'labor force' it doesn't work out that way.  The Republicans use the first chart showing jobs still on the fall and the Obama administration uses the second one showing jobs on the up.


You know what else?  Even if they agree on what's happening, they can't agree on what caused it.  Depending on who you ask, with just the last three presidents in mind, Clinton's policies set Bush up for failure or Bush's policies set Obama up for success or Obama's policies set Obama up for success or Bush's policies set Bush up for failure.


So economics is more-or-less meaningless to me.  If the people who study it for decades can't agree, I can't hope to get it right as someone who studies it recreationally.  This makes me think that sometimes conservative economic policies are the right move, and sometimes liberal economic policies are the right move.

All my political opinions and decisions, then, stem from foreign, religious, and social policies.  What are my opinions on those?  I'll cover a few big-ticket items:


I don't like killing.  Sometimes it's necessary, I realize this, but I tend to always err on the side of not killing, which admittedly makes me argue against actions that are probably necessary.  I don't agree with occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, just for example.  I would have been more in favor of more surgical special operations insertions, though; I think actions in Afghanistan were necessary but not executed properly. The no-fly zone over Libya seems to have been a good idea.  Helping out protesters in Syria might also help.  I don't think Iran or North Korea are threats in that they're established enough governments to be self-preservationist enough to not antagonize the west to the point of actual military conflict.  Those are just some examples.  Hopefully that helps--I'm pacifistic and argue that point more than the realistic side that I also grudgingly accept.


I generally don't like religion.  If you want to draw on it for your personal morality, great, go for it.   I mean, I believe a lot of things other people don't believe: Rush is the greatest band of all time, Jessica Alba is rancid, running ten miles through the snow is great fun (Hey!  I worked some running into this post in a blog about running!).  Some religions are better than others, notably the ones that don't profess to be the 'one true path' or hold some secret to eternal salvation that is only available to club members.  Even more notably, the religions that don't look down at you or try to evangelize you if you're not part of the club even if they believe they are the one true way.


I don't think religion has any place in government.  Government covers contemporary issues that people, say, 2,000-3000ish years ago couldn't possibly have dreamed of.  Public policy shouldn't come from an ancient, ill-written book of nonsense (you heard me;  I said ILL-WRITTEN, SIR!).  I mean, I know it's working great in Israel and Palestine, but they've had 2000-3000ish years to work things out, so we can't possibly hope to do as well as them.


Ditto for medical issues.  If you disagree, don't fill that amoxicillin prescription for your young child's ear infection and see where that gets you.  Now, if it's your personal choice not to do something to your own body deemed to be okay by the modern medical establishment, you don't have to.  Opt out of surgery if it goes against your religious beliefs, fine.  But don't try to set policy that keeps people who want blood transfusions, antibiotics, or contraceptives from getting them.


Also ditto for what happens behind closed doors.  It's none of your business what happens between two men, two women, a man and a woman, married, unmarried, broomsticks and wine bottles, oils and candles, or all of the above all at once (giggity!).


That's not to say religion never has anything useful or pertinent to say, and I even like some passages from the Bible (gasp!).  My favorite is, "So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."  I love talking about religion on many occasions, especially on subjects I don't understand.  For example, our Mormon friends explained a lot of their beliefs and practices with us in many long, mutually respectful conversations.  And you know what?  They're what you might call Good Christians.  They take what I consider to be an ill-written book of nonsense and turn it into a coherent philosophy that I think is truly Good.  I've tried to borrow a few of their attitudes on things.  Now, that's not to say I want those same friends setting policy based on their religion that will affect me and others, but I'm happy to let them do their own thing.  The horribly ironic part is that most other Christians consider them to belong to a cult.


So, I covered a few of my beliefs and a few things that I think make me offensive:  I'm arrogant and/or sound that way, I project my thick skin on others, I'm crude, and I'm argumentative.  There's more.  Just for starters I chew rather loudly and I'm opinionated about music.  My Vibram FiveFingers smell really bad (another running tie-in, yes!).  I leave my things lying around.  I know I'm not perfect, which is something people accuse me of thinking all the time.  When I screw up, and I do, I feel bad, and I apologize.


Maybe this is one of those times.  If I've offended you, I apologize.  I want you to understand that though I might say mean things about people you support or things you hold sacred, I'm not attacking you (unless I am attacking you, in which case I'll let you know), and I don't think less of you.  I know I come across that way.  I disagree with you, yes, and I wish you would see things from my point of view, but so do you me.  So do us all.