The Skeptic Movement

I've been doing a fair amount of reading about skeptics lately.  In a nutshell, this is a group of people who advocate using scientific methods to decide what is true and not true in this world.  They commit themselves to a method of thinking that does not groove 100% with our own psychologies.  As people, we automatically give anecdotes a similar level of consideration to what we give actual data.  Many many people believe in alien-driven UFOs because we've all heard stories from someone -- second hand, third hand, or on TV -- who saw something they couldn't explain, even though these people never have evidence.  Same thing with ghosts -- almost everyone knows someone who had, or has had themselves, something freaky happen in their presence at some point, and had no way to know what caused it; yet, the cause is always the same: it was ghosts.  I digress.

Aside from attempting to ask questions and use science to decide what is true and real, Skeptics also expend a fair amount of energy trying to convince others to do the same.  They see organizations like the Flat Earth Society, Creationists, Hollow Earth believers, and much like me, just want to scream at them and somehow drill into their heads how wrong and stupid they are.  And some of them do just that.

This got me thinking: If they're running around proselytizing all these people with their non-faith message, telling them how terribly stupid they are... how are they any better (read: less annoying) than any other group that runs around telling people how lost and dumb they are?  On one hand, at least they're not trying to take over the country or anything...  BUT I DIGRESS AGAIN.

So anyone who is trying to change people's minds when they don't feel like they really need to is probably not going to make much headway.  Who has time to change their worldviews just because some asshat walks up and starts talking, right?  By chance, I came across a nice little talk by a guy named Phil Plait -- the Bad Universe guy -- entitled Don't be a Dick -- that talks about just this.  It's about 30 minutes long, but it's worth listening to if you are a proselytizer in any right.  It also talks just a little bit about skepticism and what that movement is all about too, which I found interesting.

The basic message of the movement as I understand it goes something like "Hey, why don't we try actually thinking about stuff and not just believing things because we want to?  How about asking for some proof, or evidence, or real data, before we make up our minds?"  I mean, that makes sense, right?

TO DO LIST

Hi Everyone!  Because you care, here is my to do list.  Like my "stuff to check out" list, I'll be crossing stuff off as I go. Bwong!

To Do

• Send I Wish I Were a Real Alaskan Girl to Brandon.
• http://gulf.refresheverything.com/gulfmodestneeds - vote for this project once a day until the 31st.
• Check out www.brainbell.com. Lots of free IT training, programming languages, other software stuff.

To Done

Things to Check Out

Here I'll just be posting a list of things that I want to look into, and I'll try and cross things off as I go rather than deleting them.

Newish

• http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20080603.html
• Games to Try: - These are games I will be buying on XBLA very soon!
  
• Solar
• Castle Crashers
• TrialsHD - maybe worth it, check out the trial first.
• Evolution in 120 Seconds - This video very quickly explains the Theory of Evolution as well as why the "it's just a theory" folks are displaying an unfortunate ignorance about what theory means in the scientific community.
• CDC U.S. Obesity Trends - Granted, BMI has been out-of-date as a measure of individual fatitude for some time now, but it probably does okay for most people. I mean, the government gets our heights and weights when we sign up for our driver's licenses, not our body fat percentages.  Maybe they could get some rough data doing double-chin and face fat analyses on our photos though. Maybe.
  
• Demetri Martin - He's a comedian, a very funny dude.
  
• Bad Universe - A new show on Discovery, debunking all kinds of junk science. Related to the Bad Astronomy blog. Both are run by Phil Plait, a skeptic and astronomer.  It premiers on Sunday night, August 29th!
• Mitchell and Webb - Skeptic comedians
• Geek a Week - Highlighting and interviewing with cool people. A podcast with each new geek and playing cards.
• w00tStock - Clever, right?  It's a nerdy convention that travels around a bit.  The soonest one is mid-September, around the same time as the Great American Beer Fest.  It's hosted by Adam Savage and some other dudes like Wil Wheaton and Paul and Storm.
• http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20080324.html - Just a fun comic about jesus.  Check it out!
• Dr. Bronner's Magic All-One! - It's soap!  And some other things, but overall just crazy.

Oldish

• Marian Call- Geeky musician. I listened through her catalog and didn't find anything that really stuck with me, except I Wish I Were a Real Alaskan Girl, which I'll be showing my brother Brandon for the novelty of it, just because he's living in Alaska.  She's not bad though.
• Compasskirt - This is neat, and if I were a girl, maybe I'd make one.  It lights up on the north side always!
• Pareidolia - It's just a word for when people see faces in random objects.
• Life is nature's way of keeping the meat fresh. A quote from Overcompensating.
• Skepchick - Just another blog from a girl who is both female and a skeptic.

Mornings

Today was one of the few days I had coffee first thing in the morning. I added way too much sugar, but it is still pretty tasty. Oh man. Generally, after snoozing between three and 10 times I stretch and do some push-ups and/or pull-ups while the hot water makes its way into my shower, and then I hop in. Once out, every four days or so I shave with my electric clippers. I lost my actual razor a number of weeks ago, and let me tell you I am much happier since I did. The upshot of not shaving my neck down to the skin is that I don't get razor burn.

Every day when I enter my work building, I badge open the sliding door, open the glass doors on the other side of what I like to call the "airlock," and walk straight past the elevators. I always take the stairs up to the 2nd floor, which is actually two floors above the ground floor, like this:

P for Parking
3
2
1
G for Ground
A for Appetite

Yes, there is a parking floor on the top of the building, which I never go up to. About once a year, heavy winds knock some heavy object onto someone's car. Plus as fun as the swirly ramp sounds, I am positive that if I used it every day I would eventually run into the wall. Also it gets icy in the winter.

When someone is waiting for an elevator ahead of me, I turn right and go the back way to the stairs, so they know I don't want to ride the elevator and there is no reason to hold the door. I take two stairs at a time (because walking up one stair/step kills me, it's as stupid as a side order of pancakes) and breath just slightly harder when I reach my floor 4 flights up. As I walk, I try to put the weight on the heels of my feet to work out my butt, though any benefits are surely minimal since once I hit my desk I probably walk less than 1/2 mile for the rest of the day.

I could probably make this a lot shorter, but I'm not a very interesting writer and I don't expect any readers anyway, so guess what! I'm not going to.

:P