Going, Going Gone!

My Halloween Alter-Ego

This Halloween was the second Halloween ever that I dressed up as.  The last was ten years ago.  So, what did I come as?

A baby seal poacher.

It won "The Creepiest Costume" award from the Archaeology Society.  Did I even have competition?  Nope.

A REALLY Bad Reason For Baptizing Your Kid

So today I finally asked my mother, because the conversation was going that way, why she and my father baptized me in exchange for me finally telling her why I cried during it (the old man in pompous regalia was scary).  I always found it strange that I was baptised since my mother is a “nothing,” which is kind of like an atheist basically.  Well, do you want to know her reason?

“Just in case.”

To that I laughed, and I’m sorry mother, I’m not apologizing.  That’s a really crappy reason to baptize someone and a kind of funny one that at that.  Well, if it’s just in case, why wasn’t I also baptized as a Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Muslim, and Jew (for Jew, she said I’d have to get a circumcision, so alright, thank you for that mother).  But why not also baptize me into every other of the world’s religions; get me indoctrinated into the Cult of Cthulhu even, why single out Russian Orthodox?

“Just in case?” and “Because we don’t really know?”  Honestly, I thought a Masters in Chemistry would do much more than get one following tradition that one themselves does not believe in with hopes that if a god or a supernatural power of some sorts exists, it is such a legalistic god or supernatural power that it would simply say “Oh, yeah, you’re baptised (and into a relative obscure branch of Christianity too), you can go ahead and live in heaven.”  Never mind what you believed in, never mind what you did in your life, never mind... anything at all.  “Just in case.”  Ha!

Dearest future parents, if you’re going to baptize your kids, please do it in a religion that you actually believe in and not in hopes of an afterlife that’s as equally stuffed with a legalistic bureaucracy as this one.

Ahhh, the Follies of Rabid Libertarianism

As most know or suspect, I'm a proud pinko-commie - or somewhere in that political region.  By my place on the political table however, you would expect that I would find at least some common ground with libertarians and no ground with the conservatives.  While that is the case, there is something about the hardcore libertarian philosophy that I dislike more than the ideals of any staunch conservative.  I mean, staunch conservatives are just stupid - usually without empathy (human rights?) or a decent grasp of reality to boot (global warming and evolution denial anyone?).  Libertarians however are a bit more, troubling.  They're smaller in number, yes, but their persistance toward a free market and paranoia of the state is simply cultish, intellectually immature, and at times unrealistically utopian (and when a pinko-commie says that, there's something wrong).  While certainly not applicable to all libertarians (as are my comments toward all conservatives), here's a fun article on follies of rabid libertarianism:  www.inthesetimes.com/article/3328/floating_utopias.

"Libertarianism is by no means a unified movement. As many of its advocates proudly stress, it comprises a taxonomy of bickering branches—minarchists, objectivists, paleo- and neolibertarians, agorists, et various al.—just like a real social theory. Claiming a lineage with post-Enlightenment classical liberalism, as well as in some cases with the resoundingly portentous blatherings of Ayn Rand, all of its variants are characterized, to differing degrees, by fervent, even cultish, faith in what is quaintly termed the “free” market, and extreme antipathy to that vaguely conceived bogeyman, “the state,” with its regulatory and fiscal powers."

Double Donation Day

Mother forgive me (she pays my credit card bill), but I joined two organizations today as a paying, card carrying member.  I've long been wanting to do this and finally got around to it, I began a student member of Amnesty International Canada and the Jane Goodall Institute (a chimpanzee conservation organization).  This was on top of my previous joining of Center for Inquiry:  Ontario earlier last month.  My total bill for organizations is... pretty high.  But at least I'm donating money into things I believe in now.  I'm also a member of the Skeptic Society (also paid from last year) and Society of Ontario Freethinkers (free for students), and yes this entire entry was about shameless advertisement of the groups I support.

EDIT:  (Let's not forget my presidency of the Mohammed Drawing Association and the membership of The Church of Google.)