SemiConscious Dot Org

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Reference Librarian
2. Carpenter
3. Gates Foundation computer trainer
4. Unloading fishing boats at 4am

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Harold and Maude
2. Dr. Strangelove
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
4. Blade Runner

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Kennebunkport, Maine
2. Portsmouth, New Hampshire
3. Kingston, Rhode Island
4. Seattle, Washington

Four TV shows I love:
1. Family Guy
2. Futurama
3. Battlestar Galactica
4. The O’Reilly Factor – It’s hilarious! (Unintentionally so, of course.)

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Acadia National Park, Maine
2. Budapest, Hungary
3. The Oregon coast
4. San Francisco
(I’ve visited every major national park in the country while travelling for the Gates Foundation job, but technically that’s not a vacation)

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Lobster
2. Turkey & stuffing
3. Sandwiches PIE!!!
4. Is beer a food?

Four sites I visit daily:
1. The Soxaholix
2. Fafblog!
3. Jesus’ General
4. Ananova’s Quirkies
(The Onion would’ve been on this list not too long ago, but they’ve been going steadily downhill.)

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Home in bed
2. At Safeco Field (otherwise known as “Fenway West”) watching the Red Sox kicking the mortal shit out of the Seattle Mariners
3. At a pub
4. At a punk show

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1. Max Power
2. WFTFT
3. Notorious BCK
4. Katie (maybe this will finally goad her lazy ass into posting something)

Meme found on Tangognat.

So, it appears that when I changed the format of the permalinks in this blog to display clean URLs, it had the unintended side effect of also changing the address of the RSS feed. So if you are one of the people who grabbed the feed, you should delete it and grab the new one, since the one you have doesn’t work.

Of course, if you are using the old feed, you will never see this message in the first place. Never mind.

Alright, let’s just get all this silliness out of the way right now. The first link comes courtesy of everyone’s favorite Information Literacy Superhero (and my former roommate and coworker), Libraryman:

Next, courtesy of yet another former coworker, the mighty Max Power, we have the Library Quiz. The results are not promising:

Aspiring Librarian You scored 48% on knowledge of librarianship.

You’re getting there – you know more than most people about libraries. Maybe you’re starting Library School and getting yourself ready to take over the profession. Or maybe you already work in a library but just don’t know some of the history and details. But, you’re more of an aspiring librarian than a full-fledged librarian.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 81% on knowledge

Link: The Are You a Librarian Test written by attention on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

It’s nice to know that the quiz pegged me as first year grad school student, when I actually received my MLS seven years ago and have worked in or visited dozens of libraries since. I guess this shows just how useful an MLS (otherwise known as “The $30,000 Union Card”) really is.

I knew I should’ve been a roadie for Motorhead.

It is our great pleasure to name Pat Robertson the 2005 Craaaziest Christian of the Year™. Our favorite nutjob really stepped up to the plate in the past 12 months, blaming Hurricane Katrina on abortion, calling for Divine Vengeance on the town in Pennsylvania that voted to teach science in science class, and blaming Ariel Sharon’s stroke on God’s anger over Israeli foreign policy. Truly inspiring, Reverend!

For those reasons, as well as his earlier branding of activist judges as a worse threat to America than Al Qaeda and his fatwa on Hugo Chavez, Pat Robertson runs away with the title. He’s so crazy, he managed to beat out the entire state of Kansas singlehandedly! Glory!

It is worth noting that Reverend Robertson’s year-long tirade was so inspiring that we were not the only person to take notice and honor him. For literally the first time in our life, we agree on something with godless secular humanists! Such is the power of Robertson to bring people together!

Well! Now that we’ve settled 2005’s winner, we might as well begin introducing nominees for the 2006 award. Our first an old favorite, Rev. Fred Phelps, who has lately been protesting the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq because he claims the casualties are God’s vengeance on America for tolerating The Gays! Our second nominee, Dr. Henry Makow, continues in a similar vein, claiming that “Brokeback Mountain” is an Illuminati plot to destroy the traditional family and impose New World Order! Truly, this year is off to a rousing start. Feel free to let us know which of these Godly headcases you would like to see move on to the next round, and nominate any other Craaazy Christians™ we may have missed or overlooked. Glory!

Recently, I began a Quixotic attempt to hack through the pile of books I received for Christmas. Most of the new titles are nonfiction, many befitting the generally pessimistic light in which I hold most of the human race. For instance, I just finished The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris. This book posits that the primary problem facing our survival as a species today is not just religion, but faith itself. Harris defines “Faith” roughly as belief in concepts which have no supporting evidence to back them up, and asserts that once people sever that link between what they believe and what the available evidence will support, they are capable of believing anything, and capable of committing the most heinous acts in furtherance of that faith.

Harris further avers that, once you are convinced that there is an Afterlife, that it is presided over an omnipotent being, and that your particular interpretation of the wants and commands of this being is the correct one, you are far less likely to care about the suffering of others in this life, and especially not if they are of a different faith. After all, this life is only temporary, and the Afterlife is forever, right? And if those whom you oppose believe in the wrong faith, they are probably damned anyway, so why should any mercy be accorded them? As an example of the horrors that this kind of thinking can unleash, Harris points to the example of the 9/11 hijackers. These men were not crazy, in the clinical sense; they merely believed, absolutely and unequivocally, in the correctness of their faith. They were utterly convinced that they were going to Paradise as a result of their actions, that this heinous act of barbarity was exactly what God wanted, and that no sympathy should be wasted on the thousands of civilians whom they were slaughtering, since they were not of the One True Faith and were thus damned to Hell by definition. Harris then points out passages in the Koran that, quite unambiguously, allow and even command this type of treatment of unbelievers, and concludes that the 9/11 hijacker’s behavior is nothing less than what one should expect of a Muslim who believes in the literal truth of his holy book. Mohammed Atta, in other words, was a man of perfect faith.

Harris points out that, lest anyone think this kind of ruthless treatment of nonbelievers is the exclusive province of Islam, the holy books of practically all organized religion feature passages commanding such behavior, and generally quite plainly. The Old Testament, for instance, contains an entire litany of offenses for which the penalty, without fail, is death: serving gods other than Yahweh (Deuteronomy 13:7-11); taking the Lord’s name in vain (Leviticus 24:16); working on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:15), cursing one’s father or mother (Exodus 21:17), and adultery (Leviticus 20:10). That Christians are rarely killed or even punished for such offenses anymore is less a tribute to Christanity’s “mercy” than to the ability of Christians to selectively ignore the more violent passages of the Bible, as well as two centuries of post-Enlightenment government in Western countries which forcefully separated religion and government. Since church-state separation has never occurred in the Islamic world (with the exception of oppressive secular dictatorships such as Saddam’s Iraq) this selective interpretation is not allowed of practicing Muslims.

While I agree with Harris’ primary thesis (that religious faith is a major cause of human barbarity, and that faith is increasingly dangerous in a world where technology will allow one to kill millions on the basis of one’s beliefs) I have a problem with some of his proposed solutions to this dilemna. Since Harris believes that Muslims are prevented from ignoring the more violent passages of their holy book, he concludes that we are at war with all of Islam, and openly endorses several of the Bush administration’s current policies, including further preemptive wars against Muslim states and the use of torture to obtain information in the furtherance of this conflict. While he longs for a future in which humanity can move past the irrationalities of religious faith, his proposed methods of doing so (a confusing mishmash of Eastern “no ego” philosophy and meditation) are unsatisfying. So, in conclusion, The End of Faith is a great read if one wishes to diagnose the disease, but not so great about prescribing the medicine.

Next up: The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, an extended treatise on the disasters that await humanity as we move past Peak Oil and begin our long, inevitable decline towards total world fossil fuel depletion.

Yep, I’m in a cheerful mood these days.

For lo these many years, this website has been dogged in its attempts to root out that insidious Fifth Column which never ceases in its tireless efforts to bring down America from within. In this endeavor, we owe a profound debt of gratitude to David Horowitz, whose handy traitor database has done wonders to illuminate the natural alliance that exists between secular, liberal Western intellectual agnostics and fanatical, right wing Middle Eastern religious extremists.

If resurrecting the sainted spirit of Tailgunner Joe were the only service to America Horowitz had performed, he would still be a hero to us. But nay, he has done much more than just pointing out the heretofore unseen but undeniable similarities between Katie Couric and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman! He is also engaged in a heroic campaign to force public universities to adopt his Academic Bill of Rights, a document which seeks to root out political bias in college faculties by imposing a political bias litmus test as a condition of hiring. Brilliant!

In pursuit of this worthy-and-not-at-all-Orwellian-so-shut-up document, Horowitz has testified before several legislative bodies, relating stories told to him by conservative students on the rude treatment they received at the hands of big mean nasty liberal college professors. But alas, disaster has struck! It turns out that many of Horowitz’s most blood-chilling “When Liberals Attack” stories turned out to have no supporting evidence, forcing this recent tearful retraction and heartfelt apology from Horowitz:

Horowitz has said several times that a biology professor at Pennsylvania State University used a class session just before the 2004 election to show the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, but he acknowledged Tuesday that he didn’t have any proof that this took place.

(snip)

“These are nit picking, irrelevant attacks,” he said.

(snip)

In the interview, he said that he didn’t have the resources to look into all the complaints that he publicizes. “I can’t investigate every story,” he said.

One naturally wonders what effect this shocking news will have on the patriotic ranks of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, that fearless group of conservative bloggers and pundits who make up for their lack of interest in actually fighting a war they loudly support by denouncing the war’s opponents as traitors to America. As Horowitz was a veritable Living God to this brigade, one might think that his unfortunate humiliation would be a grievous blow to their morale. In response, we link to this stirring Keyboarder battle anthem, a song which reminds us that supporting Dear Leader means that, if you don’t have any evidence to back up your claims, just make shit up! After all, it’s always worked for Dear Leader!

Type on, brave Keyboarders! General Horowitz would want you to, and The War On Terra needs you as never before. May your parents’ basement remain warm and your Cheeto-stained fingers free of Carpal Tunnel. Glory!

And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
– Kent Brockman

Giant jellyfish invade Japan!

Marauding monkeys attack Indian government!

Whale invades central London!

Crack addict squirrels! Drunken elephants! Protesting baboons! Alcoholic foxes! Pickpocket monkeys!

It is clear that The Furry Ones are rising against us. No doubt they are responding to the siren call of their risen master, Great Cthulhu. By the end of this year, the tattered remnants of humanity will be huddled in bomb shelters, desperately trying to avoid detection from the strike teams sent out by our simian, elephantine, and rodent overlords.

Best start getting acquainted with cannibalism now! It’ll save time later.

Last year, over Memorial Day weekend, I attended The Sasquatch Festival at the Gorge Ampitheatre in the central Washington desert. I prefer to call it by its alternate name: “The Worst Concert Of My Entire Adult Life.” Much as the victim of childhood trauma will suppress the memories as a coping mechanism, so had I mercifully managed to forget much of that dark, dark time.

That is, until Tom rehashed the entire, wretched weekend in minute detail.

Thanks ever so much, Tom.

“Awww yeahhh, baby. Let Smoove love you up reaaalllll good.”

No sense playing coy with the title, eh?

Yesterday, roughly an hour before school ended, there was a drive-by shooting right across the street from the building. I was sitting at my desk in a library full of kids, when I heard a very distinct “pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!” in the distance. Being from Maine, my first thought was, naturally, “Hmm, sounds like someone just got back from a trip to New Hampshire to buy fireworks!” Needless to say, I was a bit taken aback when the teacher’s aide started shrieking “GET DOWN!” at all the kindergarteners who had immediately run to the window to see what was going on outside. (We were on the second floor, at the opposite end of the building from the street on which the shooting occurred, and thus in little danger of actually being shot at. But still, that’s a bad trait for kids to have.)

Within minutes, there were multiple Seattle PD cruisers on the scene, blocking off the streets while they sorted out what had happened. Apparently, a carful of guys had driven past and shot some dude (luckily, only in the leg) in front of his house. One of our staff members had been walking out the front door of the school at the time, and had seen the incident, but the car had been too far away to read the plate. After a forty minute delay while the cops searched the surrounding blocks, the schoolbuses pulled up, and the cops stood guard as the kids boarded the buses. One kindergartener, mightily impressed by the flashing lights and guns, was heard to exclaim, “Man, this is tight!”

Reading this might give one the idea that I work in the middle of a violent slum, but that’s really not the case. The Central District is definitely one of the poorer sections of Seattle, but it’s not even remotely on the level with “bad” neighborhoods in most other cities its size. I suppose I should be thankful that I live in a city where a drive-by is still such a rare occurence that it makes the news. Murders are still rare enough around here to be the lead story on the local newscasts for days afterwards.

Still, I grew up in the state with the lowest population density east of the Mississippi. The idea that someone would be firing anything other than a shotgun, at anything other than a deer (or possibly a moose) is bizarre to me.