Of the many things in life

I have found oh so sweet

None chimes  more sympathetically

Than that of which I seek.

First, to the journey

That of exuberant bounds

For it is the freedom and isolation of rare pathways

Where I feel drawn to round

Second, to the knowledge

With all its solemn grace

I seek to understand its majesty and wonder

And it is there I make my place.

Last, to the act of living

Which I do in will.

I embrace the mindful ecstasy

After all its’ all I can fulfill.

This is one of the rare few exceptions where I can use a word the one the same day I learn it: banalization.  I banalize, you banalize, we all banalize. In fact, I’m banalizing right now. To shed some light on just what exactly I mean, observe the following video.

Banalization is the process of taking an issue that one is presented and saying that the issue is a certain way, and that to say that any other view is to be daft of the surrounding world. Textbooks couldn’t have offered a better example than the one presented by Obama. Instead of taking the question seriously, Obama, simply says, in effect, “Of course we can’t legalize cannabis” – thus making the issue banal.

It would be a different issue entirely if Obama had given some reasons for not supporting legalization, but, like all members of the government-industrial complex, he refuses to deal with anything anyone might disagree with.

Banalization is a serious issue. It is under the radars of most people’s ability to critically think. I encourage everyone to look out for cases of banalization in their day to day lives.

]]> http://terryphi.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/banalization/feed/ 0 atlabs http://terryphi.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/cognitive-surplus/ http://terryphi.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/cognitive-surplus/#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 01:44:11 +0000 atlabs http://terryphi.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/cognitive-surplus/ ]]>

I suggest you all take a look at this talk by Clay Shirky.

For those who can’t be bothered to sit through the whole 17 minutes, here is the tl;dr version.

• With the time the US spends watching TV yearly, we could create 2000 wikipedia projects.
• This massive waste of time, currently mostly occupied by TV, is called the cognitive surplus.
  • The cognitive surplus was a response to the free-time created by the 8 hour work day.
• The use of this surplus is changing from passive to active media.
• The future businesses and movements will figure out how to mobilize this surplus, web 2 is doing this in particular.

Now then, this brings up some questions for me

• Is this cognitive surplus enough to decentralize manufacturing?
• Can we create a relative scale of how much of this surplus different projects (reddit, youtube, etc) use? Eg. Xyz.com uses 0.7wiki of the surplus.
• Can we now view the primary purpose of old media as a way to consume the surplus? (puts the consume in consumerism
• Isn’t it a good idea to identify uses of the surplus that don’t produce anything (Solitare, TV, etc)

I found this cute little anecdote while studying French. It reinforces my view that the human ass should become swollen and red when looking for a mate; unfortunately, that only happens in S&M clubs.

I suggest you all check out the Operation Reconnect video; it’s quite inspiring.

The CDRH Sexuality Symposium went well. I’d say we had 30-40 people in attendance. Videos follow.

Intro – Mark Robinson

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=4589836264859033213&hl=en-CA

Changing Gender Roles – Terry Price (me)

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1917650878329946192&hl=en-CA

Animal Sexuality – Mark Robinson

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-7519262397743175130&hl=en-CA

Psychology of Religious and Sexual Conflicts: Part1 – Dr. Khalid Sohail

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-8547988086342854982&hl=en-CA

Psychology of Religious and Sexual Conflicts: Part 2 – Dr. Khalid Sohail

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=9120101453366190122&hl=en-CA

And, of course more info can be found at cdrh.humanists.ca

I think, it makes you age a year whenever one of your child-hood role models dies.

I wish I could find that short story about the guy living in the computer program that think’s he’s still alive, but this’ll do for now.

“God said, ‘Cancel Program GENESIS.’ The universe ceased to exist.”

-Clarke

My Fellow Humanists and Freethinkers:

I would like to address our community on the events that transpired at the debates on the 23^rd.

Friday night I went to speak to the event organizer on behalf of the CFI to find out what the situation was with our setting up. From my understanding, we (the CFI) were supposed to be given a table on which we could promote ourselves; however, this did not happen – we were informed that we would have to pay $150 if we wanted a table or bring our own. From my understanding (and perhaps Justin can clarify here) we were to be given a table at no charge.

On the Friday I started to give out flyers (after asking if I could do so), but after 20 minutes I was stopped and told I could not hand out flyers without a table. I asked if I could move elsewhere, but I was told the only way I could give out flyers was if I had a table. This was a fair request (even if prior permission had be granted), for I was the only one handing out flyers and everyone else did have tables.

The debate for Friday night was appalling. Mr. Hunt proceed to systematically ad-hom attack the Hindu religion: demonizing Kali (A goddess representation of the Hindu god-force) implying she was evil and was a deceiver because she wears skulls (representations of ego), and is often portrayed with snakes; and stated that the Gurus promote self-worship. The moderator, Micheal Coren did nothing about these blatant ad-hom attacks.

The debates for that night as well as Saturday consisted of mainly what appeared to be Dave Hunt supporters (but the only evidence I have is overhearing several people saying that they were from his church) – who were there to (seemingly) support him rather than listen with an open mind. Please keep in mind this is a subjective observation with no empirical support.

Dr. DiCarlo put forth (in my opinion) an outstanding argument, but Dave Hunt did not respond to his arguments at all, he could not stay on topic constantly digressing into ‘proof’ of creationism rather than offering data for god’s existence. At one point he even spoke about Israel. I felt like I was at more of sermon then a debate. For those of you not there, I think Dr. DiCarlo got the best line of the night: when asked what he thinks god would say if he dies and it turns out there is a god; to this, he responded “Welcome home dude! Congratulations, you used your brain instead of being a SHEEP”.

After the debate is when the trouble started. Our table was immediately swamped with fundamentalists whose only goal was to argue with us, not debate or find out information but argue. I have great respect for Dr. DiCarlo’s , Mark’s, and Justin’s patience in dealing with these people. After some time a person approached the table and began with methodically argue with everyone who approached our table and distribute creationist pamphlets (and littering our table with them). With my experience distributing flyers without a table last night in mind, I got the event organizer. I explained to him that last night I was not allowed to distribute flyers without a table, and this man is standing here distributing pamphlets without a table and being nuisance. He said that I was standing infront of people, but I reminded him that I offered to move. To this he replied “as far as I’m concerned it’s his business cards”. I had to take a walk after that. Justin suggested we take off a get some coffee.

I think it’s interesting to note that if you look up the domain registration information (through WHOIS) on decideforyourself.net you will find that it is registered to Thomas Fairfull whose email is hosted on fairfull.com which states that they are a foundation formed to “support Christian beliefs and values around the world starting in our own back yard”, and “win lost souls for the kingdom of god” (there is also some nonsense about a Christian Zionist alliance). I think it’s a bit of a contradiction to advertise “free thinking” and “decide for yourself” when you so blatantly promote the opposite.

Just a little extra. If you look back at the archive for fairfull.com (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://fairfull.com/) it appears that the domain has been home to a number of different businesses including “hydrogen power” (under Dynamic Fuel Systems) and weight loss suplements(under unicity networks). But an investigation into all this is beyond the scope of this letter.

I know that many of us feel animosity about the debate. I know I personally feel like we were deceived into coming to provide ‘entertainment’ for the Christians. As we were packing up a person from the documentary filming beside us came up to apologize (quite profusely I might add) about how his fellow Christians treated us. Justin said “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life”. I guess I’m still in shock.

It is very important for us to recognize that we did gain from this. We handed out quite a few flyers and pamphlets , and many people were exposed to Free-Thinking that hadn’t even known about it before. We stood up, with our little table with the shaky leg and said “Hey! Here’s something different! Just take a look!” And in the end, it brought a smile to my face to see Free-Thinkers, Atheists, and Humanists from all walks of life sit down at a little Tim Horton’s in a suburb outside Toronto and share their minds. I don’t think I could be a Free-Thinker without the CDRH and people like them.

Love, Peace and Freedom to you all

-Terry Price

Terry {dot] price (at} gmail [dot) com

Photos: here

Here is a slightly biased, but decent documentary about Kosovo by Russia Today.

All though in principle I support a state’s right to secede, but the KLA is using nationalism to do so, and they have lsot any resemblance to their original nature.

The ghost of Clinton still lives.

Why should you care:

If Canada recognizes Kosovo they will have a harder time holding onto Quebec. Like Kosovo they are an oppressed ethnic minority. How can we recognize one state’s right to secede  without recognizing another.

Someone inside of Anon has declared war on Scientology.  Anon is more known for messing around with individual lives, not whole organizations. It’ll be interesting to watch what comes of this. /i has already posted some ‘top secret’ documents.