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The BIG Reason

Music, opinions, and portfolio of Mark Eagleton, musician and web developer in Northern CA.

Link List

Comentary about things I have found around the web.

  1. 32 Percent of Americans Are Nonreligious

    Gallop State of the State poll results for 2011:

    Gallup classifies 40% of Americans nationwide as very religious -- based on their statement that religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week. Another 32% of Americans are nonreligious, based on their statement that religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services. The remaining 28% of Americans are moderately religious, because they say religion is important but that they do not attend services regularly or because they say religion is not important but still attend services.

    The 2008 Gallop State of the States poll found that 65% of Americans identified as very religious.

  2. Who would rally against reason?

    Richard Dawkins in the Washington Post

    How have we come to the point where reason needs a rally to defend it? To base your life on reason means to base it on evidence and logic. Evidence is the only way we know to discover what’s true about the real world. Logic is how we deduce the consequences that follow from evidence. Who could be against either? Alas, plenty of people, which is why we need the Reason Rally.

  3. So cute ... They think they’re people

    Jessica Winter in the TIMES Ideas opinion section:

    You see, like most women, I was born with the chromosome abnormality known as “XX,” a deviation of the normative “XY” pattern. Symptoms of XX, which affects slightly more than half of the American population, include breasts, ovaries, a uterus, a menstrual cycle, and the potential to bear and nurse children. Now, many would argue even today that the lack of a Y chromosome should not affect my ability to make informed choices about what health care options and lunchtime cat videos are right for me. But others have posited, with increasing volume and intensity, that XX is a disability, even a roadblock on the evolutionary highway.

    Brilliant. Infuriating. Inspiring.

    UPDATE: Yes, my title is intended to be taken sarcastically like the article to which it links. I apologize if that wasn’t clear.

  4. I do it this way because I am in space, and I can.

    Don Pettit from low earth orbit:

    The fatalist in me accepts the inevitable Zero-G result of landing jelly side “down,” so I decided to make sure the probability would always be 100%. Realizing that the bread is merely a vehicle for conveying peanut butter and honey, I decided to spread it on both sides. In weightlessness, it’s easy to balance your slice on its edge so that it can be parked on the galley table without any fuss.

  5. Rally to Defend Free Expression

    A two-hour podcast of the Rally to Defend Free Expression, put on by the One Law for All campaign is available for download. Speakers include Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling, and Maryam Namazie reading a statement by the Jesus and Mo creator, among many others.

    One Law for All is an effort to stop Sharia law from being enforced in Britain and the greater UK by the growing Muslim population. If you value free speech, and are not male and/or Muslim, you might enjoy listening to these speeches.

  6. The Fireplace Meta Delusion

    Sam Harris is incredibly good with analogies. So good that it may be difficult for his audience to get to the actual point of his piece, which is how to better empathize with followers of religious dogma for a better understanding of the difficulty instilling rational thought, and not a public service message about how bad campfires are for you.

    This seems to be the case at The Friendly Atheist, anyhow.

  7. My emailGrid

    I’ve been professionally creating and sending email newsletters for years, and I decided to share my grid template on Github. It’s intended to act as a starting point upon which you can build your own beautiful email templates, and integrate them with your favorite mailinglist management service.

    While it’s in a usable state now, watch for updates in the following weeks. I will be doing lots of testing with it.

  8. Has Obama Waged A War On Religion?

    Barbara Bradley Hagerty for NPR:

    Religious conservatives see an escalating war with the Obama White House. One Catholic bishop called it “the most secularist administration in history.” Another bishop says it is an “a-theocracy.”

    As far as I can tell, the Obama administration may very well be the most secularist administration in the history of the United States. And yes, it better damn well be an “a-theocracy.” Anything but is a direct violation of the United States Constitution — specifically, Amendment 1 (emphasis on the relivant portion):

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    That means the United States government cannot establish an official religion for the nation, be it any sect of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology, or anything else. A Theocracy not only establishes an official religion, it’s governance is wholly dictated by the chosen religion. Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Somalia are examples of Islamic theocracies today.

    Barbara Bradley Hagerty:

    Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, believes the First Amendment is clear: The government cannot make people choose between obeying the law and following their faith.

    This is clearly an exaggeration of what the first amendment says. Yes, the government cannot prevent the free exercise of your religion, but there are limitations. The biblical scriptures that call for the execution of homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13) and stoning to death of women who are not virgins on their wedding day (Deuteronomy 22:20-21), for instance, violate US law. These parts of the Christian religion cannot be freely practiced in the United States.

    These points aren’t the real issues here, though. The actual situation is that the theocrats here don’t want religious based entities to have to cover contraception, sterilization, and abortion in their benefits packages. They also don’t want religious entities to have to provide their services to people in homosexual relationships. Many of them also want to continue to receive federal dollars to help fund their organizations.

    I personally don’t have a problem not forcing religious organizations to provide services that go against their teachings, provided they also do not accept public dollars to run their organizations. To my understanding, this is exactly what the current deal is.

    We secular folks find many fundimental religious beliefs to be as horrifyingly immoral as religious folks find our beliefs to be, but we have a secular constitution. If you don’t like it, maybe the United States isn’t for you.

  9. 14 Of The Year’s Best Ideas In Interface Design

    Fast Company’s round-up of gadgets and applications with creative interfaces. My favorites are the devices that show just how lame the status quo is in an established industry. Namely the Peel, and the Nest thermostat. I’m also partial to the Planetary music app, through.

  10. The Phil Plait Perspective On Abell 2744

    Phil Plait on Abell 2744:

    … by taking the data from a fleet of telescopes on and above the Earth, telescopes that see across the electromagnetic spectrum well beyond what the eye can perceive, we can piece together a history of an object with hundreds of trillions of stars spanning quintillions of kilometers of space and hundreds of millions of years in time.

    And that, my friends, is what scientists do. And that’s pretty cool.

  11. Greta Christina Destroys William Lane Craig and his Defense of Biblical Genocide

    William Lane Craig wrote a piece that attempts to justify the slaughter of the Canaanites in the Pentateuch. Greta Christina calls him on his terrifying logic and in doing so, beautifully illustrates a favorite bit of religious hypocrisy among us apostates:

    And atheists are commonly accused of moral relativism: of thinking that there are no fundamental moral principles, and that all morality can be adapted to suit the needs of the moment.

    But it isn’t atheists who are saying, “Well, sure, genocide seems wrong... but under some circumstances, it actually makes a certain amount of sense.” It isn’t atheists who are saying, “Well, sure, infanticide seems wrong... but looked at in a certain light, it really isn’t all that bad.” It isn’t atheists who are prioritizing an attachment to an ancient ideology over the clearest moral principles one can imagine: the principle that entire races ought not to be systematically exterminated, and the principle that children ought not to be slaughtered.

    Justifying genocide and/or child murder based on an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife is not reasonable behavior. Please be reasonable.

  12. The Cicada Principle for Web Designers

    Alex Walker demonstrates how to use prime numbers to generate non-repeating patterns from repeating images.

    Keeping the ‘cicada principle’ in mind, I’ve made three square, semi-​​transparent PNGs of 29px, 37px, and 53px respectively, and set them up as multiple backgrounds on the HTML element of a test page.

    As you can see, the tiles overlap and interact to generate new patterns and colors. And as we’re using magical prime numbers, this pattern will not repeat for a long, long time.

    Exactly how long? 29px × 37px × 53px… or 56,869px!

    This article optimizes everything I love about front-end web design; Math-powerd design patters for calculating artistic randomness. Simply badicle. I think I will be applying the Cicada Principle on a refresh of the Glee Tour site I have in my queue next week.

  13. U.N. Finally Defeats Anti-blasphemy Measure

    Your deep appreciation is due to those survived by Salman Taseer, Shahbaz Bhatti and others who recently gave their lives in the name of free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

    It is your right to believe in invisible sky monsters. It is not your right to murder those who criticize your extraordinary beliefs. The truth is important. Only by freely exchanging our ideas can we find it.

  14. Robbie Fulks Responds To His Critics About His Criticism Of Ryan Adams

    I linked to a piece earlier this month where Robbie Fulks spoke candidly about his feelings toward Ryan Adams. Today, he applies reason and critical thought to critics of his criticisms.

    Non-extraordinary claims don't need much evidence. And, in matters of taste, the formal protocols of dispute, as the Latins pronounced in one of their all-too-typical maxims that somehow manage to be both perfectly concise and utterly incomprehensible, don't apply.

    Or do they?

    It’s peppered with nuggets of free thought fundamentals you find in skeptic and atheist literature. I may need to finally get around to booking him for a private party this year.

  15. Jacob Nielsen On Hated Web Design Techniques

    Jacob Nielsen:

    Once users reject a design technique due to repeated bad experiences it's almost impossible to use it for good because people will avoid it every time.

    The first example is our beloved spash screen. This time used in a positive way but with poor results due to general hatred of the technique. The study shows people don’t read splash screens even when they contain relevant information.