Tales of Ordinary Madness

Tim Zewe shuffled off this mortal coil yesterday, May 2nd 2009. I had only recently been back in contact with Tim again through Facebook. I had hoped to see him and his soon-to-be-wife Christina on one of my trips to Erie in the near future. We had some catching up to do. I found this post on his blog called “Why I Suck at Baseball” and I think it sums Tim up better than I ever could (at least the Tim I knew from so many years ago), and it seems like a fitting tribute:

6 zero days (one of them remotely exploitable).

http://digit-labs.org/

Apple has yet to release a patch for any of them. Come on Apple.

Okay, when you put it that way, I guess they just might be. Great job Redditors!

http://blog.reddit.com/2009/04/redditors-receive-homo-heros-honor-for.html

I knew I missed something when I was in the UK. I missed an opportunity to purchase a Certificate of Debaptism from the National Secular Society.

Debaptism Certificate

Afghan women pelted with stones during rape law protest

Afghan women protesting against a new law that severely undermines women’s rights were pelted with stones in the country’s capital Wednesday, say reports.

About 300 mostly young women gathered in Kabul to show their opposition to a recently passed law that forbids women from refusing to have sex with their husbands and requires them to get a male relative’s permission to leave the house.

My good friend Sunil asked me the other day why I was so harsh on religion. If I remember the timing correctly he was responding primarliy to the “Crazy vs Religious” cartoon I posted below. Sam Harris summed it up for me very well in the video below, but I’d like to paraphrase. If I came to you and insisted that there was inside of me a giant invisible machine powered by invisible winged monkeys that generated the very energy that kept all of life going, you would dismiss me a crazy person. This is a totally rational response to what I have claimed. Unless I can provide some shred of evidence, I should be dismissed as a kook. However, religion is given a pass when it comes to rational thought. Challenge religion to produce any evidence of its claims and suddenly you are guilty of oppression and religious intolerance. Claiming that a man walked on water, or rose from the dead, or flew off into the sky on a winged horse, or parted the sea is no less crazy than my winged monkeys whodrive the giant love engine. As I’ve said before, how can we as an rational animal be expected to advance, when we insist on bringing the boogey man from the past along with us.

As long as religion continues to attempt to change laws or prevent archaic laws from being changed (like preventing two consenting adults from legally marrying), I will speak harshly of religion. As long as religion keeps attmepting to prevent birth control from being taught in schools or preventing condoms from being distributed to a contintent whose population is being decimated by AIDs, I will continue to speak harshly of religion.