Brian & my paper presentation at DESRIST went really well. I made a video of it, and posted it with the powerpoint show. It’s fairly short, only 20 minutes. We had a really big audience, as we were presenting to the entire conference. There were a number of good questions, the audience seemed pretty interesting.

As per Trudi’s request, some pictures…





He is definitely the cutest little baby in the world…

Also, since we’ve been looking at sports, my only real athletic activities include Kenpo Karate (a little over 12 years) and running.  Some negative people would say that the latter could replace the former, but I like to think that I just enjoy the cardio activity. Of course, I haven’t done anything seriously for about 4 years, which oddly enough is the same amount of time I’ve been a grad student…  We’ve got a jogging stroller for Silas, which I’m planning breaking out as soon as he meets the whole ‘hold up your own head’ requirement.

Nathan

Hello All;

I’d like to annouce the birth of Silas Edward Garrett. After a 38 hour labor, he was born in N. Hollywood CA at 5:13pm. He & mom are doing great…

Nathan

I just found an interesting researcher

:: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

She has some interesting things to say about online social communities, and appears to approach the technology in a way very compatible with our school’s range of methodologies. In any case, it’s another blog to subscribe to…

I just found an interesting researcher

:: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

She has some interesting things to say about online social communities, and appears to approach the technology in a way very compatible with our school’s range of methodologies. In any case, it’s another blog to subscribe to…

Woho!  Just got off an abstract for the JCMC special issue on social networks. I’ll hear back by the end of December if we made it to the next round.

Woho!  Just got off an abstract for the JCMC special issue on social networks. I’ll hear back by the end of December if we made it to the next round.

Okay, this is just too cool.

http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester

Tell it a book that you have read, and instead of showing similar ones (aka Amazon) it will display ones very much different. Ironically enough, showing it Starship Troopers displays a couple of books that I have read.  I guess that I’m more random than I thought…

There’s a very interesting article in Wired about “the new atheism.”  Essentially, the movement says that society needs to treat the religious fanatics as the loons that they are, instead of doing the world a disservice by recognizing them as holding ‘real’ position.

As a fanatical loon myself, I find the movement strikingly honest.  I suspect that their adherents would probably wish me to be more perturbed than I actually am, but I find myself empty of concern that the movement will accomplish anything.

I think that the movement towards pure reason and a categorical denial of anything above the physical realms is ultimately unsupportable.  Even in reading the Wired article, and a few of the cited proponent’s other writings, we find not a total rejection of the spiritual but its replacement.  Rather than the Jewish temple or Southern Baptist church, we find that they want a ‘temple of reason.’ Sounds like shades of the French Revolution to me, and we all know how that turned out.

If the prime movers of the movement can not support a world without religion, then I sincerely doubt that people with actual lives outside of navel gazing will adopt it in droves.  However, I do have to applaud the movers & shakers as at least being honest about what they want to accomplish. They say a lot of things that many atheists probably think, but don’t want to be put on the record as supporting.

In the end, I think that the “new atheism” is simply the movement taken to its logical end.  As a Christian, I have no fear of this; the movement just makes the contrasts between our points of view more apparent.  Modern muddy-headed thinking and sentimental clap-trap does no one any good; honest & clearly delineated disagreement between philosophies provides at least enough clash that we can see who is on what side.

I think that waking from a dream illustrating retention trends with different sized hot dogs is a pretty good indication of my (over?) involvement in Woodbury’s reaccreditation process.