For those of you who haven't heard, Occupy Des Moines has held the People's Caucus to prepare for the first in the nation Occupy the caucuses. I'm not in town this week, but I've been checking in on them with the help of the interwebs. If you want to participate, the event runs through January 3rd, the date of the actual caucus vote. The events are non-violent, complete with training, and people from across the nation have shown up to support the cause. Obama's office and the Democratic National headquarters were the 1st place (done prior to Christmas) for people to gather and demand answers to their questions and complaints. Arrests have been made; Des Moines PD and the occupiers have a good relationship and they will let protesters who wish not to be arrested leave, while those wishing to make a statement are cuffed and taken in peacefully. Apparently some were able to give interviewed before heading to jail. Appropriate links are below (I haven't had enough internet access to look at everything, but I've read comments on all of these):

CSPAN covered the People's caucus and put the video here.

The Occupy Des Moines homepage is here. The Occupy the caucuses page will take you to the need to know info for the event. I've been trying to locate the url for their live feed, and can't find it at the moment. Sometimes it surfaces on the facebook page (Occupy DSM), but I'm limited time-wise to hunt for it today - maybe when i return to join them this weekend.

There was an interview with Ed Fallon, a local ex-politician but current community activist on the Rachel Maddow show Wednesday. He appears toward the dn, so if you read through the transcript, you'll need to click on show more text. I found the video on bing. The focus on Occupy Des Moines starts at approximately 2'43" in the clip.

Norm, i hope you don't mind the off-topic (for me) thread. Happy New Year!

Posted by gypsy sister at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

• How Smart Is This Bird? Let It Count the Ways

By now, the intelligence of birds is well known. Alex the African gray parrot had great verbal skills. Scrub jays, which hide caches of seeds and other food, have remarkable memories. And New Caledonian crows make and use tools in ways that would put the average home plumber to shame.

• I Was An Atheist Raising Fundamentalist Kids Then I Broke The Cycle Of Religion And So Can You

I have been an atheist since I was 13 but shortly after having kids I spent 5 years pretending to be a christian - a fundamentalist christian. The kids were going to church and Sunday school every week, sometimes more than once a week. I was a methodist as a kid and was not worried. I thought that it would be nice for them to know about religion and never thought that it would take over their minds. Everyone told them that the crazy was true and I kept silent. I was an atheist raising fundamentalist kids. Just a few short years after I stopped pretending they have both come out as atheists.

• Time magazine gets everything wrong about atheism (and a lot wrong about religion, too)

• North Korea locals claim birds are mourning Kim Jong-il

• Gingrich says he'd arrest judges who go against 'Christian' views

• FINAL PROOF THAT FASTER-THAN-LIGHT NEUTRINOS ARE IMPOSSIBLE?

Posted by Norm at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Norm at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the spirit of longer days:

Happy Winter Solstice to all! For those of you who see this shortest day as the gateway to Spring...where the world is puddle wonderful, and the goat-footed policeman whistles far and wee...this music is especially for you.

Here's a lovely recording of Prelude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Debussy. Debussy considered himself much more of a Symbolist, like the poem's creator, Stephane Mallarmé. The text in french can be found here. There are 2 translations: A.S. Kline and Roger Fry, accompanied by illustrations. I have a paper back of C.F. McIntyre's translations, but these fit the bill.

Best wishes this season. Hopefully I'll be back to more regular posts in late spring. cheers!

Posted by gypsy sister at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I'm holding all comments for approval for a couple of days while I investigate some possible malware on the site. If you get redirected or encounter other suspicious activity send me an email letting me know exactly what you were doing when it happened.

Dawkins-Josh Timmon Lawsuit

I never heard the outcome of the case until now. Josh sent me an update . The case was dismissed with prejudice which if I recall correctly means it can't be refiled. Okay, I'll look it up, yep, A dismissal with prejudice is dismissal of a case on merits after adjudication.The plaintiff is barred from bringing an action on the same claim. In short Dawkins made the accusation, but couldn't prove his case.

• ESP Special Pleading

We all do it. In fact, we are generally very good at it. Smart and educated people are better at it.

• Skepticism vs Cynicism

Joe Nickell has been a working skeptic for a long time, and I am very happy to call him a friend. In writing this post I am reminded of something he said to me that struck me as particularly insightful - (paraphrasing) cynicism is a cheap form of skeptical one-upsmanship. In other words, it's easy to seem more skeptical than then next guy just be being more cynical. True skepticism, however, is hard intellectual work.

Posted by Norm at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

To quote Ricky Gervais,"Saying atheism is a belief system is like saying not going skiing is a hobby." But if it were or if you think New Atheism has become something akin to a movement then Christopher Hitchens would have been our most charismatic and well spoken leader. He combined wit and reason in such a way, that he was an unbeatable debater and an unstoppable advocate. He took what is perhaps the ultimate human intellectual truth, that nothing can be known with absolute certainty, and used it to show that any person selling certainty will inevitably make a complete fool of themselves.

I will no doubt spend part of my holiday looking through his final words, his exchanges with Andrew Sullivan and some of his messages to friends to see what wisdom he left us in his final days and weeks. Death is inevitably the hardest thing to face in the human experience and in the face of it many don't stay true to themselves. Hitchens never showed that fear publicly, and hopefully he left us some of what gave him his strength. I almost wished for an "I have seen the mountaintop" sort of speech were he gave us his best advice about where the public debate on religion and so many other topics needed to go and how he would have proceeded in that direction, but I don't know that he ever saw himself as that sort of a leader.

If abandoning faith is a trend verging on a movement, then its pretty regrettable that the hitch won't be there to keep the whole business entertaining. In my opinion, his humor and writing make him as enjoyable to read as Mark Twain. He was Arrogant, erudite, and quite often an asshole, but he embraced those things in his humor and used it to make his arguments against faith, and for reason all the more powerful.

He exposed Mother Theresa as a fraud and Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. Both of those acts were great scandalous reporting, but I think they were also socially relevant acts. The idea that we can't simple trust churches to be a force of good is one he helped forge and you don't have to go to many anti-war rallies, or occupy protests to see that people now think that US officials can be war criminals and are often Hippocrates in regards to international law. He didn't change those things alone, but he made great strides.

I never met him, and clearly my words will be very far from the most profound recollections of his life and work, but I thought is was worth a moment to recognize someone that inspired me, and inspired my father. I recently heard Hitchens recount what he said to someone that introduced himself to Hitchens as a "Fan" Hitchens responded, "Don't be a fan, I don't need fans, what I need is critical readers."

Its a respectable aspiration.

• Reed

Here are some Great remembrances popping up around the net:

Andrew Sullian: The Dish

Christopher Hitchens obituaries collected and Dawkins.net

Stephen Fry & friends on the life, loves and hates of Christopher Hitchens

Posted by RedSeven at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

• Texas approves Jesus license plate

• NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God

WASHINGTON--After more than five decades of tireless work, brave exploration, and technological innovation aimed at a single objective, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Wednesday that it had finally completed its mission to find and kill God.

• Getting out of the way tip to David

A 2009 story about a 12-year-old musical prodigy caught my eye today. His name is Jay Greenberg. He composes in his mind. It comes to him naturally. When we think of musical prodigies we imagine a child on a piano bench, or playing a violin. Not many compose. Greenburg has written five symphonies.

• Weekly Ezine for Democrats

Posted by Norm at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)