I ordered my nook back on November 21.  I spent a day or two too many agonizing about the price, and the warranty, and which device to buy…  And I missed out on the “guaranteed by Christmas” ship date.

They told me it would ship on January 4th, with three-day delivery.

So I really wasn’t expecting to see it until the middle of next week.

But today I received an email informing me that my nook was packaged and ready for shipment.  There’s a UPS tracking number too.  So It looks like I may have my nook by this weekend.  Very impressive.

It isn’t often that something you order shows up before it is supposed to…  Especially with a brand new electronic device like this…

Everyone seems to be talking about the latest bombing attempt…  And the new security measures being taken to prevent such a thing happening in the future.

And it just makes me sad.

We’re going to put in more backscatter x-ray machines, to make sure nobody is concealing explosives in their underwear…  And we’re going to make people take off their shoes in case they might be explosive…  And we can’t bring more than 3 ounces of liquid on a plane because it might be a binary explosive…  And we’re going to be confined to our seats an hour before landing…

All of which, we’re told, is going to make us safer.

But it doesn’t.

It inconveniences us…  It gives the illusion of safety…  And it primes us to put up with further indignities in the name of safety.

So we don’t complain too much when our government tortures people to keep us safe.  And we don’t get outraged when our government spies on its own citizens to keep us safe.  And we accept an endless war overseas to keep us safe.

The reality of the situation is that this most recent bomber could have been foiled very easily if everyone had been doing their jobs.  He was already on watch lists.  He shouldn’t have been able to get on the plane.

And if we had more backscatter x-rays in place to catch his underwear bomb…  He wouldn’t have used an underwear bomb.

We’re told that the world changed on 9/11/2001.  That it is no longer a safe place.  That the oceans no longer protect us.  That we must be ever vigilant, and put up with these inconveniences…

But the fact of the matter is that the world was never a safe place.  And the oceans never protected us.

The only thing that happened on 9/11 is that we became scared.  Something that both the media and our government have been only too happy to use to their advantage.

The media sells us story after story about tragedy and terror.  Constantly giving us more reasons to be afraid.  Constantly suggesting that we dare not change the channel, or we might not see the next attack coming.

And the government uses our fear to push through increasingly draconian laws.

What will happen after the next bombing attempt?  Mandatory cavity searches?  Surveillance cameras in every house?  Checkpoints every few miles, complete with armed guards asking to see your travel papers?

It’s all security theater…  Full of sound and noise, signifying nothing…

Which would be bad enough, if it wasn’t also terribly useful.

Looks like Aliens vs Predator will be released on February 16, 2010.

And it will be available on Steam.

Very cool.

As if we needed any more proof that religion causes people to do stupid things…

Columbian farmer, Luis Alfonso Sanchez, removed his testicles to avoid cheating on his wife, who no longer wanted to have sex with him. This painful and unsafe procedure has landed him in the hospital where he is now recovering.

In the ITN News video below, he explains that he no longer wanted to bother his wife and needed to ensure that he could respect his Christian values. He erroneously assumed that he would heal quickly within a matter of days, as he had observed animals that recovered from castration within three days of the procedure.

“I thought that’s what it was going to be like with me,” he explains. “I had practice with animals, so I went ahead, put some pressure on it, and cut them to remove them by force.”

There’s an interesting story over on Salon.com, by a Christian who’s a bit embarrassed by her beliefs.  It’s a truly interesting article…  But, of course, I have to disagree with some of it.

The idea of an eternal community brings me comfort: I like the image of a long table extending backward and forward in time, and everyone who’s ever taken Communion is sitting at it. The Bible at the 1920s stone church where my husband and I were married was filled with the names of people in the community who’d married, been born and died.

I’ve seen this sense of community given as a reason for religion more than once.  It kind of falls into the whole it’s comforting argument.  And I can certainly agree – it is comforting to feel like you’re part of a community.

That’s why we’ve got LGBT communities, and atheist organizations, and political movements…  That’s why we group ourselves into families, and nations…  That’s why we’re constantly drawing lines between us and them…

But, in the face of all that, I don’t understand why you would need yet another way to categorize yourself.  It isn’t enough to be part of your family?  Your city?  Your state?  Your nation?  You need something bigger?  What about the community of primates who’ve been eking out existence on this tiny ball of mud in a vast and uncaring universe?

And yet, atheists are at least as fundamentalist and zealous as any religious people I know

Let’s take a look at the definition of fundamentalist…

1.

(sometimes initial capital letter) a movement in American Protestantism that arose in the early part of the 20th century in reaction to modernism and that stresses the infallibility of the Bible not only in matters of faith and morals but also as a literal historical record, holding as essential to Christian faith belief in such doctrines as the creation of the world, the virgin birth, physical resurrection, atonement by the sacrificial death of Christ, and the Second Coming.

2.	the beliefs held by those in this movement.

3.	strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles: the fundamentalism of the extreme conservatives.

I’m really not sure what basic ideas or principles atheists are supposed to adhere to…

There’s the basic idea that there are no gods.  And most atheists think the scientific method works pretty well.  But that’s really about it.

Some atheists are still very “spiritual” even though they don’t believe in a god…  Some think that religions are OK…  Others feel religion should be abolished outright…

Frankly, if you think all atheists believe the same stuff, you haven’t been paying much attention.

and they have nothing good to show for it: no stained glass, no great literature, no great art

There’s plenty of non-theistic stained glass out there.  And it looks just as pretty as the theistic stuff.

As far as literature goes…  Well, there’s always Mark Twain.  Most folks agree that he wrote pretty good stuff.

I have to admit that I’m not a big art buff…  So I really couldn’t tell you which artist believed in what…  But I’m fairly certain atheists are capable of making art.

no comfort in the face of death

Personally, I find more comfort in the face of death from atheism than from any theism I’ve ever looked into.  I mean, how comforting can it possibly be to know that your ultimate fate is in the hands of a capricious deity who, in the author’s own words, suggests things like stoning people for using the wrong salad fork.

I don’t really want to spend eternity burning in hell because I ate some shellfish…  Nor does spending the rest of eternity singing about how great some god is sound terribly appealing.

I told a priest at my church that my friends equated religion with horrible things. I expected her to tell me I had some obligation to stop hiding my faith, but she said, pulling a scarf around her neck to hide her priest’s collar, “Those preachers on the subways make me cringe.” She said she prefers Saint Francis: “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”

A truly novel idea…  Actually walking the walk, instead of just talking the talk.

I think if more “Christians”  followed their own doctrine – no killing, no coveting, loving your neighbor, etc. – they could be a real force for good in the world.

Unfortunately, most “Christians” seem more interested in the dogma and pageantry surrounding their religion, than the actual guidelines for good living that it gives.

Maybe, though, apolitical Christianity is on the rise. The Obamas are now in office — a good Christian family in the truest sense of the term — and the right wing is more marginalized than it was a year ago. My friend, the young (and kind of ridiculously hot) priest the Rev. Astrid Storm, whom I used to edit at Nerve.com, says she’s sensing more acceptance:

“When I said I was a priest, it was always a conversation stopper,” she says. “Recently someone asked what I did, and when I told him he said, ‘How interesting. There are a lot of exciting things happening right now in the Episcopal Church, aren’t there?’ The diversity of opinion people are reading about in the news — about gay marriage, female priests, poverty issues — are showing how Christianity isn’t monolithic.”

It’s always interesting to see religions folks act like they’re the oppressed minority.  Here this priest is talking about it being more acceptable to be religious…

While here in the real world we’ve got an atheist being barred from office in North Carolina.  We’ve got atheist billboards being defaced all over the place.  We just got rid of a president who stated that atheists were neither citizens nor patriots.  And that’s just here in the US…  If you look abroad you’ll find all sorts of examples of atheists being treated like second-class citizens.

But also, increasingly, I wonder: When I’m getting a ride from some friends and they start talking about how stupid religious people are and quoting lines from “Religulous,” do I have an obligation to point out how reductive and bigoted they’re being, the way I would if they were talking about a particular race? Increasingly I wonder if I should pipe up from the back seat and say, “Excuse me, but these fools you’re talking about? I’m one of them.”

Well, first of all, if they’re friends worth having there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to tell them you’re religious.  The author of this article mentions how she’s literally hiding her religion from her friends because she’s embarrassed…  Which suggests to me that her friends are a bunch of intolerant assholes.

Sure, I think theism is wrong.  I might very well tell someone that.  But, unlike some Christians, I’m not going to go around trying to convert people.  Should a discussion head in that way I’m sure I’d have plenty of things to say…  But I’m not going to foist my beliefs on someone who doesn’t want to hear them.

So it kind of sounds like the author needs some new friends.

But equating religious belief to racial identity is just plain wrong.

Religion is a statement about how the world works.  Religions claim, for example, that some omnipotent deity created the universe and everything in it.  And that we need to live our lives according to this deity’s rules.

That’s a statement about how the world works just as much as the laws of thermodynamics are.

Such statements can, and should, be evaluated for truth.

I can go around proclaiming that I can fly…  But that doesn’t make it true.  And it’d probably be a good idea for me to run some small-scale tests before I try leaping off a building.

Choosing to believe a statement about how the world works, despite the fact that it doesn’t match up with reality, is just that – a choice.

And while you’re certainly free to make that choice…  You shouldn’t be too terribly surprised to find yourself lumped in with other folks who choose to ignore reality – like the moon landing hoax folks, or the people who insist that the Illuminati are secretly controlling the world by putting fluoride in our drinking water.