Frivology

I’m heading out here, to Death Valley for a few days for another little photo safari. The last time I went, it was the beginning of June and scorching hot. This time around is a little better planned for the weather, and hopefully we’ll get to see some wildflowers. I just got a killer set of new extension tubes that I’m just dying to try out on something other than the plants outside my apartment door. The second picture above is a preview of what I can do with my new macro goodies.

It’s really great stuff and a ton of fun. I’ll be returning home Sunday night, but likely not really around until Monday. Until then, I’ve added another blogger to Frivology who goes by the name of ‘Articulett’. I met her on the Richard Dawkins forum and I’ll let her introduce herself, but I find her to be absolutely brilliant.

Until Monday!

I’ve been learning how to use my D300 and how to take better shots.  Yesterday, I went for a walk with my camera and left it on manual the whole time.  I’m starting to feel more and more comfortable with my photography, especially with this complex of a camera, and, not surprising, the more I learn the less complex it is.  I’ll be heading to Death Valley in a week and a half for one of my photo vacations, my first with the D300.   Hopefully it’ll turn out well!

I wish I got weird-assed emails like these.  Surely, it would make my days more entertaining: 

Also if you have kids. when you lay your baby on the side, you crush the ears.The head is the heaviest part of the body at that stage. So you need to put a hole in the pillow or something, so the ears do not get crushed. You will have a much happier baby.

All comes from the ALMIGHTY FATHER,OUR LORD JESUS Christ and THE HOLY SPIRIT. i am just a worker.

Please look at the physic’s in all of this. To have a strong foundation,your structure has to be rectified.

If this could get out to the world. It will solve so many problem’s we face on this planet.

A program needs to be set up.

The problems are inside us. And here is the solution.

PS: Once you complete the seven week’s,look to the light, any light. Because evil will come after you. Safe journey.

via Pharyngula: I get email.

It sounds like someone had a lucid dream and decided it was real.

Snapped a few pictures with my Coolpix for fun today of some free flowers I got at work for Valentine’s Day, then I played with them a bit in Picasa just for the fun of it.

I just got a subscription to elegant themes, which has some really nice themes at really good prices.  I usually like to make my own themes, but with this particular blog this time around, I’m trying to limit my time messing with web design so that I can maximize the amount of time I can spend actually blogging.  That said, you’ll probably see some weirdness around here while I work out the bugs and get this just the wya that I want it.  It’s got a nice start, though.

When I first started to learn about natural selection in middle school, no one had to convince me that it existed.  I’d already heard some about evolution and had made the decision, based upon what I saw in the world around me, to believe that it was true.  In fact, at the time I still believed in God (as much as I ever have), and I still didn’t find that belief in God and belief in natural selection (so much as a scientific theory can be “believed”) were at odds.  I believed that Genesis was not literal and “7 days” could well have been 7 billion years or 70 billion years, or however long it would take to evolve humans. 

Evolution and natural selection seemed so obvious and clear that I had a hard time believing that anyone else would find them not obvious and clear, or even find them at odds with religion.  It became more difficult for me to understand this the older a got.  Thus, when my best friend (who isn’t even a Christian) told me that she couldn’t believe that we evolved from monkeys, I was shocked.  I was in my 20s, then, she in her 30s.  We spent a few nights with me trying to convince her and her just not listening to me, and then I dropped the subject.  That was ten years ago, and even though she and I have remained incredibly close friends who lean on each other for all kinds of support, evolution still remains a topic that’s forbidden. 

She went with me through a large chunk of my religious exploration.  Wicca, run-of-the-mill Paganism, Pantheism, then something sort of close to Pantheism, but more like Humanism in the form of watered-down Pantheism.  But, when I heard Julia Sweeney’s “Letting Go of God” and felt like Julia was very nearly describing my own journey with her experiences, and I completely let go of any form of “mystical being”, the journey together ceased.  I don’t remember how we got on the subject, as it was one I’d been avoiding, but she told me that she felt sad that I’d chosen this route.  It immediately raised my shackles - I don’t want to be pitied.  It was that sort of pity that had me stumbling in the dark for so many years, afraid to call myself an atheist for sure.  When I finally took the leap and embraced the fact that I don’t believe in God or Goddess or “The Great All” or any of that junk, I was sure I’d feel some sort of sense of being alone, of being orphaned… but, I didn’t.  Rather, I felt an extreme sense of relief.  I could suddenly be myself.  Yet here I was, sitting in my car, and my best friend, the one to whom I felt I could tell anything, was telling me that she felt “sad” for me because I no longer believed at all that anything would happen to me when I died other than just … dying. 

I tried to explain it to her, to tell her just that.  I don’t feel sad, so she shouldn’t feel sad, either.  I don’t feel lonely, orphaned, abandoned or left behind.  I don’t feel like my lack of belief has suddenly made my life less meaningful.  In fact, I explained, I feel the opposite.  I have one chance in my life to do the things I want to do.  One chance before it’s all over and I cease to exist… so damn it, I’m going to make that chance matter.  She got defensive within a few moments, then started to tune me out.  It was the same thing as happened when we talked about evolution.  I knew, then, that this would be a topic I just don’t bring up.  That conversation was partially why I decided I really needed to make Frivology.  I wanted somewhere that I could talk about these things without getting that questioning, raised-eyebrow look that made me feel as if I’d done or said something wrong. 

I bring all of this up because something happened with her yesterday that really put me on edge.  It isn’t something that just she did - lots of people do it - but it’s something that I think really does a disservice to all of humanity. 

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I took stock of what I read over the weekend, and a vast majority of it comes from either Google News search on a few topics (atheism, atheist, prayer, christianity, etc…) and from a handful of mostly big-name Atheist blogs.  I realized that if I want to truly stretch my legs, so to speak, I was going to have to connect to more… so here’s my first step. 

I signed up to join both Planet Atheism and The Atheist Blogroll.  I’m not sure if there are other lists out there that I don’t know about yet, or other sources to branch myself out, but I’m hoping that this will be a good start to both putting myself out there more and to learning about different blogs to read.  I’m new enough at this that I don’t even really know where to look, and there are so very many Atheist blogs that I tend to get lost if I just start surfing. 

So welcome if you’re coming by for the first time.  Drop me a line if you know of something you think I might like reading!

“To believe in God is impossible - to not believe in Him is absurd”
- Voltaire

Have you ever wanted something so badly that you believe if you try hard enough it’ll just be a reality?  I’d heard of kids who could talk to spirits or who would have those that were dead to them come back to them, and I desperately wanted my Grandfather to do this - but he didn’t.  Ever.  God didn’t send him my messages, I didn’t get any from Him, and there was never a chance where I felt like anything I ever said laying in my bed and staring at the ceiling every really mattered. 

Disconnecting wasn’t somthing that I did on purpose or with a lot of thought.  I still believed in god - as much as a budding teenager really could - but my belief started to get more and more amorphous.  I took on my mother’s belief that all gods were really one god, and that God, himself, didn’t really need an organized religion to be followed.  In Middle School, Tina and I maintained our close friendship, but as we weren’t in the same classes most of the time, we each developed our own circles.  I spent a lot of time with my nose buried in books or writing, and Tina… well, I never really knew what she did. 

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Jesus loves me, this I know.
For the Bible tells me so.

After grandpa died, my family moved to NW Washington from Southern California. It was a pretty big no-brainer for my parents.  Mom was having trouble finding work and dad was about to get laid off.  Grandpa had just died, removing our ties there for his reasons, and NW Washington had friends of ours.

I was eight and starting the third grade.  I  did a lot of living in my head back then, for a variety of reasons.  My school in California consisted of a lot of rich kids, and I came from a family that had hardly anything.  This was a reality I was constantly reminded of, so I tended to avoid the other kids.  In Washington, the kids came from a more diverse selection of households, but they were still mean.  So, I stuck to myself most of the time.

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