Grammatically Poor, Semi-Chronological, but Hilarious Review of New Moon

Note: Contains run-on sentences and general grammatical confusion which I have no desire to fix.

The redeeming feature of the Twilight Saga is that it’s so bad that it’s a satire of itself. Thus, it actually does make it worth it to go see it and laugh at it, and what’s the most hilarious night to go watch the latest installment of the series? Opening night when all the fangirls scream every time Robert Pattinson takes his shirt off!

So here’s a list of my favourite moments from New Moon and if you can make sense of what I’ve written here then perhaps there is hope yet for stuff that I write under sleep deprivation.

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

Well, actually it’s Monday, but in honour of it coming up and the lectures done in Florida today about him, I’mma leave this old Johnny Carson clip here…

European History, Science, and Eternal Life

So I’m taking European history this year in school and I have this teacher whom I’m rather fond of. She’s not exactly a fundamentalist Christian, but she is at least moderately Christian. Today we mentioned the scientific revolution while studying about the witch trials and she goes on a small tangent that goes something along the lines of…

So are you going to put your faith in the scientific revolution? Tell that to a dying cancer patient! Science isn’t going to get you eternal anything.

So it’s not exactly standing up and preaching, but it is sort of clear that she’s trying to convince her audience (public school students) that they need to worry about how they’re getting eternal life and science is useless because of that.

Of course, I disagree with her argument. Epistemology does not get chucked out the window as soon as you’re uncomfortable with what it says because that would be beside the point of having an epistemology (unless you’re of the truth-is-whatever-makes-me-feel-comfortable-with-death-ists). I’m more concerned with how I live the life I know that I have than with another life which can be verified about as convincingly as Invisible Pink Unicorns.

But here’s the thing… for the most part this teacher does not talk about her personal dislike of science, but this is not an isolated incident. It’s happened once or twice before. Do I…

1. Let it drop
2. Just speak out in class the next time
3. Start recording and call the ACLU (I list this in jest… sort of)
4. Do something else?

Oh, and why the bloody hell do people like to bandy about the word “faith” to people who happen to like science and reason? The most faith involved in science is that this isn’t all some giant hallucination that we’re all sharing, or that we’re hallucinating that people are sharing the same reality. It’s a small amount of faith, yes, but I think of it more as agnostic disbelief. I can’t prove that I’m hallucinating and I can’t prove that I’m not… but if this is a hallucination, it sure is an elaborate one and no harm is done in carrying on with 99.9% certainty.

Lunacy

Ah, humanity…

A few of the tweets from people who read “NASA launches rocket into the moon” and react foolishly…

Dear Nasa, you are the spawns of Satan who wants to blast the Moon JUST FOR SOME DAMN WATER!! WHAT THE HELL??!!!

From @TimelessEssence

This person describes themself as:

Gorgeous, Intelligent, Silly, Random, Proclaimed Buddhist, Dreamer, Writer, Activist, Loves to laugh, Future Archaelogist, Nerdy, and the FUTURE!

OH SHI-!

They might fuck up the tides if NASA fucks the moon up. I’m not trying to see that blow up. NASA always plotting something.

From @JesseLetson

Okay. Nasa blows a hole in the moon today, to see if there is water on it. If we REALLY went there in 69, this wouldnt even be an issue.

From @Alisonsscrescendo

Before we lose faith in humanity, from @Submanic

Call me a nerd, but I kinda like finding more information about our universe. #NASA

And just for the record, I think the moon’s still up. You can check to see if it’s still there before smearing your idiocy across the Internet and making fools of humanity.

Also, this is not the first time America has crashed something into the moon. It happened in the 1960’s when we were still working on getting there and before figuring out how to land. See here.

Facebook Friend Stats and Gender Ratios of Skeptics

Only a cold-hearted scientist can take their friends and turn them into numbers. Courtesy of the Friend Facts Facebook app, I have the following statistics regarding my Facebook friends:

Gender breakdown: 33% female / 67% male
Relationship status: 57% single / 43% taken
Political breakdown: 97% democrats / 3% republicans
Geographic distribution: 12 countries, 24 states
Most common zodiac sign: Aries (20 friends)
Favorite music: Pink Floyd (16 friends)
Favorite TV show: House (17 friends)
Favorite movie: Fight Club (12 friends)
Favorite book: The God Delusion (21 friends)
Favorite activity: Reading (23 friends)

Now, my Facebook friends are pretty much entirely comprised of skeptical people because they come seeking me because I’m mildly Internet-”famous”. Of course, these are mostly skeptics who like me (there are some who don’t) so it’s biased in that way, but humor me for a little bit.

I’m unsurprised but highly amused by the most common activity, book, and TV show. I’m mildly surprised by the political distribution although I’d have suspected it. However, since this app does not take into account the Libertarians I must be friends with, I’m going to go ahead and assume I generally only piss off the socially conservative of the fiscally conservative population.

But I suspected all along that you shifty Aries were more disposed towards skepticism of astrology!

What’s really bothering me, though, is the gender ratio. From what I’ve heard, TAM 7 (or was it 6? I’ve forgotten already) also had a similar ratio. Most skeptics were saying that was only because women aren’t as inclined towards going to conferences and that outside of the conference the ratio was more balanced, but I didn’t meet all these people at TAM.

Seeing that I’m a blogger, however, perhaps it is true that the number of skeptics in general has a balanced gender ratio but women are less interested in skeptical activism.

But, of course, this is just my Facebook and I’m but one person. I can only speculate a little.

Now, this isn’t very scientific, but I’m just a little bit curious. I’d like anybody reading this with a Facebook to use this app and post your stats in the comments.

The Future of Elles?

I suppose in making this post my purpose here is to simply mark a time of ambiguity in my blogging career.

In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t blog very often any more. At least, not as much as I used to.

Most of this I attribute to the fact that school keeps me increasingly busy nowadays so I don’t keep up with stuff as much, anymore. Part of it I attribute to my Twitter account. Instead of posting articles I find and my commentary here, I usually just put it up on my Twitter and sum up my likes  or dislikes in less than 140 characters. And, there’s also the matter of Teen Skepchick, which I know I can cross-post stuff from there onto here, but I try to keep content rather separate, so when I do have something to write about it usually goes there.

But sometimes I wonder if it’s just because I’m sick of repeating myself. How many times can you refute the same tired old creationist question of “if humans came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys”?

Yesterday, I realized that I have been posting slightly more regularly on Teen Skepchick than on this blog, and I kind of feel like the reason I’m doing that is it seems a more important project to me. So what if I stopped posting here altogether? Well, I dunno.

Apparently, I’ve also just changed my blog name from Splendid Elles to Plain and Simple Elles on a whim. The “plain and simple” bit is a reference from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which I’ve been watching a lot of, but I won’t go into a description of the particular scene because it’s not that important. I think it’s because I, Elles, am many things, not just “splendid”, and I want people to think about me as a complex whole that is Elles, and not just “The Splendid One”. I may change the name back, we’ll see.

Advice is welcome, but I promise you that when I do have time, and when I do see misinformation in the media, in creationist propaganda, or anywhere from an Internet chatroom to a lunchtime discussion, I’ll be here to call “them” out on it.

Where’s My Cookie Dough?

This is the sort of thing I do in history when we’re talking about people like Aquinas:

Given…

1. I can conceive in my mind of the tastiest batch of cookie dough.
2. Existence is tastier than non-existence.

Therefore, the Tastiest Batch of Cookie Dough must exist.

I think I’ve said that on Twitter in one form or another before, but I was just going over my notes and noticed it… along with some rant about Star Trek. I think that means I need to pay more attention in class?

In Which I Use Foul Non-Age-Appropriate Language at the Prompting of Other Youth

But maintain enough decency to stick a “more” tag in…

ABC Article on Creation Museum Visit Misrepresents Atheist Bus Slogan

The recent Creation Museum visit taken by 300 secularists has been getting lots of attention and even an article from ABC. While overall I found the article to be pretty fair and balanced, I couldn’t help noticing that there was an error. You may have heard the story of Derek Rodgers (namedrop: I knew him personally before he became famous!) who got kicked out for wearing a shirt that said “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” In the article, the shirt, and the bus campaign slogan, is quoted as saying “There’s probably no God, so get over it.”

Now, a quick Google image search, and the above photo (although you still can’t really see the shirt all that clearly) are evidence that that’s not what the slogan actually says.

Minor error? You might say that, but there’s also some cheesy saying about the devil being in the details.

I would say that there is a big difference between saying that the shirt said “stop worrying and enjoy your life” and “get over it.” The devoutly religious will probably still be offended either way, but the average passerby who reads “get over it” probably thinks to himself or herself “humph, those rude Atheists are at it again being rude” whereas they’d be less likely to react negatively to the former.

So what did I do about it besides hash out a blog post? I sent ABCNews.com an e-mail using this comment form with the category of “Inaccurate Information”, told them I was an acquaintance of Derek Rodgers and happened to know what the shirt said, and politely suggested that they Google-image searched the Atheist Bus Campaign.

What I’d like to know is why more people don’t seem to get worked up about this sort of thing. My experience with a few non-atheism-related errors in articles in the past is that they get fixed. The BBC once did a sloppy job of changing an article that said the Columbine shootings occured “in Denver, Colorado” by saying they occured “near Denver” but these people pay attention to these things nonetheless. They do have reputations at stake.

And Atheists have reputations too.

News sources usually do have means of contact for tips like these from the general population and they’re not hard to find. What I don’t understand is why more people don’t do that. If you can write a letter to a senator, or, hell, if you can get worked up because somebody once spread a nasty rumor about you at school, you can find the motivation to fix errors in widely read news sources where people get their information from.

And again, here’s a link to that small little contact form.

Adventures from “East” of the Pacific

So… yeah… I’m in China.

Thought I’d just share a few adventures that I’ve had in this foreign land.

Not only does China block all of WordPress, but these days I also can’t access Facebook, Twitter or Skepchick without a proxy. Apparently these three websites have the power to overthrow the Chinese government and give Taiwan and Tibet independence and we’re just not using them to their full potential. I wonder if Rebecca Watson knows she’s that capable.

Ironically, I’ve been able to access pleaseblock.us without a hitch.

The twelve hour plane ride across the Pacific was spent reading Bonk by Mary Roach, which I’ve truly been enjoying a lot. At one point the kid sitting next to me (also going to the summer language camp in China I’m at) looked over and the first word he saw was “vulva” which made him freak out. Upon reading the cover he said “I have nothing to say about that book.”

Upon arrival in China health officials made us wait on the plane to individually check the temperatures of everybody on the plane. They were actually quite speedy about it and we didn’t have to wait more than five minutes, but it just goes to show that the Chinese government is more paranoid about swine flu than anybody in the US I know. When I got to the Chinese language camp they would also check our temperatures daily, and take anybody with a fever to the hospital. I still find it kind of weird seeing nurses stationed at the doorway every morning.

By not getting any sleep on the plane but still managing to stay up ’til 10:00 pm China time I was able to avoid jet lag entirely for the first time in my life. The sleep deprivation, however, made everything all the more interesting.

The next two days were spent going out of the campus we were staying on and visiting sights around Beijing. We visited the lovely Summer Palace, the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven, and pandas in the Beijing Zoo.

Theoretically we would have gone to Tinanmen Square and the Forbidden City on the third day had it not been confirmed that 8 kids in the camp had swine flu. They quarantined the campus for the whole day which made me LOL.

The next day the camp dispersed in subgroups to other provinces and I’m currently writing from a hotel near the Shaolin Temple.

In fact, we just got back from visiting the Shaolin Temple which was overall awesome. They also let us pray to the “God of Wisdom.” It was interesting learning the Buddhist way of praying involving incense and such, but I walked away thinking how ironic it was to be praying for intelligence.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. Hopefully I’ll be back to skeptical blogging soon… maybe… actually I probably won’t have time… But whatever.

Also, screw you Great Firewall of China! I should not have to go through a proxy to read my own blog.

Update: Partial fail on my part. This is what happens when you don’t write posts all in one sitting. Halfway through writing I cam up with the above title and I was going to go back to the beginning and link to this so that it would all be “funny” or some sort of subjective value like that. Of course, I was pulled away temporarily before I could move my cursor up and forgot completely about it before returning to my computer.

Still can’t believe Wazza’s the only one that commented on that thus far.

Also, for those that asked, I was in Shanghai for the eclipse and was able to see the sun for the first quarter of it… and then it started raining because Shanghai is the Seattle of China. I was able to see the whole city plunged into darkness.

The next day I heard two women chatting about the eclipse in Chinese. Their conversation went something like this:

Woman 1: What did you think of that eclipse?

Woman 2: I don’t think it was that great. All that happened was the sky went black.

Yup. All that happened was the sky went black as night in the middle of the day for five whole minutes. Let’s continue going about our daily lives, shall we?