Atheism+, an admission, and my thoughts on cynical attacks on the former

Yesterday, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag wrote an amazing post entitled How I Unwittingly Infiltrated the Boy's Club & Why It's Time for a New Wave of Atheism, and it's pretty freaking brilliant. Like a lot of important pieces of writing, I saw myself a bit in what Jen had written:

What's the price of a mile?

Thousands of feet march to the beat, it's an army on the march
Long way from home, paying the price with young men's life
Thousands of feet march to the beat, it's an army in despair
Knee deep in mud, stuck in a trench with no way out
-The Price of a Mile, Sabaton

What's the price of a mile?

On June 18th, 1815, the price of a Belgian mile was 48,000 men.

In July 1863, the price of a Pennsylvanian mile was 35,087 men.

On July 1, 1916, the price of a French mile was 65,470 men.

In 1941, the price of a Soviet mile was 5,622 men.

On June 6th, 1944, the price of a mile at Omaha Beach was 4,200 men.

In March and April 2003, the price of an Iraqi mile was 151 people.

It's always far too much.

A white road into the green

I was driving to Port Hawkesbury today, and there is a stretch of road where the pavement has faded, and looks almost white, a straight line for about a mile into rolling green countryside. As I entered this stretch, I let my eyes drift out of focus for a second, and I pondered. I pondered a white road into the green.

Could you imagine what that represents? Two thousand years ago, white-topped roads stretched across the Roman Empire. A young man from settled Gaul or Hispania might see, upon leaving his deployment, a white road into rolling, green, otherwise untouched hills. What does that mean? Power. Civilization. Strength.

I could imagine walking that road, a soldier in sandals with mail and a spear, moving along the sole line of civilization in all directions. Being a trader, entering the Empire, knowing that road will take me to a city, a place of coin and corruption. Being a raider, using the road as a line to the heart of my hated enemy. And I pondered that it was not just Rome that benefited from these roads.

Roman roads gave the empires of Charlemagne and Napoleon a place to march. Major highways are still built along them. They have controlled for two thousand years the fates of empires and civilizations and strength. Roads are what make our society, today, possible, the idea of rapid communication and movement of goods. Without roads, we are small hamlets, afraid and alone. With roads, we're a short drive away from our family and friends - or even a long drive, which would once have been two years' dangerous journey and is now a few days' safe drive.

And I wondered, as those roads of Rome still move peoples that are so far removed from the Eagles that paraded the smooth-topped streets in the Pax Romana, who will move on our roads in two thousand years? And I was struck by the fact that our untamed wilderness is little and spare, and we are lucky when we can drive into the rolling green.

Problems with #FirstWorldProblems

Your "First World Problems" are actually just "World Problems".

A bit of an older link, I know, but this hashtag has been bothering me for a damn long time, and I finally found something to say about it.

The term "Third World" has dropped out of use by real geographers and economists who study the differences in economies and social power between the modernized developed world and the still-developing world. Sadly, the views of the average North American are skewed by commercials like these:

Yuri's Night

We can shed our skins and swim into the darkened void beyond
We will dance among the worlds that orbit stars that aren't our sun
All the oxygen that trapped us in a carbon spider's web
Solar winds are whispering, you may hear the sirens of the dead

-Starblind, from the Iron Maiden album The Final Frontier

April 12th, 1961, we took our first small baby steps towards shedding ourselves of this earthly skin and learning to swim in the vast emptiness that is space, the final frontier. A Soviet pilot, Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, rode his Vostok-K modified ICBM from Baikonur Cosmodrome to make one single lap around the earth. He went faster than anyone had ever gone. He went higher than anyone had ever gone. And Yuri Gagarin proved that we, as a species; that our advanced breed of chimpanzees on a boring world orbiting a star considered smaller and less impressive than average; that we have a chance, an opportunity, a real capability to leave this pale blue speck and step into the cosmos beyond.

The Earth is infinitely small in a vast and awesome universe, to steal a phrase from Carl Sagan, and we are infinitely small beings upon it, yet we have found a way to leave this tiny spot of safety and refuge, and in it, we have become greater beings. It is entirely possible that no intelligent species flourish in this universe, but it is more possible that some do, and manage to find only their destruction as they harness new power and abilities. We have split the atom and not found total failure, despite possessing for over fifty years the ability to strike our civilization asunder and damn it to failure. Gagarin rode a rocket into space and proved that we can take a weapon of war and make it into a mission of science and peace.

The true battles of the Cold War were not won in the hills of Korea and the jungles of Vietnam but in the minds of people who watched how the West rose above the USSR's space challenge and conquered the moon, but instead of sticking a star-spangled banner into the Earth and claiming it for the United States and capitalism, the Americans who went chose the words "In peace and hope for all mankind" to leave behind. Gagarin was a Soviet pilot, trained to kill other men in aerial combat, yes, but that doesn't lessen his impact to peace and greatness, and indeed, our ability to survive beyond our fragile Earth.

This man was brave. He was heroic. He looked at something designed to explode and kill thousands and sat atop it, pointed it high, and rode it where it was never designed to go: into a future where Russians, Americans, Europeans and Asians and all the good folk on this blue dot can communicate peaceful, exchange information, friendships, and work a little more towards not being Chinese and Australian and Mexican and Egyptian, but being humans.

When Gagarin was in orbit, he wasn't just the Soviet Union's representative in space; he was humanity's representative. He was one lonely man in a small capsule that represented our hopes and dreams. He was a hero back then, but is more forgotten today, thanks to his sad, premature death in 1968, the inherit politics surrounding his launch, and the supercession of his legacy in 1969 by three other brave explorers named Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins.

I urge you to remember him. Remember Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepherd and the other early explorers of the Final Frontier; and I dare you to find ways to emulate his bravery and accomplishments.

In which @ZOMGitsCriss gets me to blog again.

I think Cristina Rad is awesome. Her YouTube channel is fantastic (I'd link to it, but I'm at work currently, and can't get on YouTube from here), and she has a lot of really awesome things to say on her Twitter feed. But comments like this one just make me riled up:

Kinda hard to maintain a positive attitude when the entire world is falling apart.

No.

I don't know how much more emphatically I can say this. No. The entire world is not falling apart. Now, this might be in reference to some personal issues, and I can appreciate that. When your entire personal world is falling apart, life is pretty horrible.

But the world? The wide world, the grandiose world of humanity?

Let's be honest: we're doing okay. In fact, I would argue that the human condition is, today, better than it has ever been.

Sure, we have horrific campaigns of slaughter, torture, death and disease going on throughout the world. People are being murdered, raped, bombed. Riots are tearing apart Kabul over a book getting burned. And if you look at things on the outside, the world is a pretty shitty place. I won't deny that.

But the fact of the matter is that it was a shittier place yesterday. And an even shittier place ten years ago. And 10,000 years ago, it was absolutely undeniably horrific. Life used to be short, brutish, and violent, and the human condition was often plagued by terrifying diseases that left you dead at best and horrifically maimed at worst. Wars were frequent, and civilian casualties as a percentage of populace were much higher. Entire cities were systematically slaughtered with only a handful of survivors. Disease was a prevalent weapon.

So ask yourself this: when was the last time an entire city was destroyed by Christian crusaders, with over 90% of the people killed and the rest remaining mostly raped girls between the ages 12-16, forced into becoming wives (aka: slaves) for the conquerors?

When was the last time someone you knew died of polio, cholera, bubonic plague, or the measles?

When was the last time an entire race of people was systematically eliminated and the world didn't find some way to care?

Sure, some of these horrors are recent and still terrifying, your chance of dying in a violent or diseased manner is low. Much lower than it was a hundred years ago; a thousand years ago, dying of old age was almost unheard of. The quality of life everywhere in the world is getting better and better. Slowly, a crawl, in some places, such as sub-Saharan Africa, but a crawl is better than nothing.

The world's not falling apart. It's got a lot of horrible things that we see on a daily basis due to the nature of information exchange. But we have lived at relative peace for the last 65 years, thanks to the Pax Americana; my generation, and my parents' generation, hasn't known a sustained, violent war that has truly destroyed nations.

Things still suck, but they aren't falling apart. They are getting better. Even the fact that we know more about how terrible the human species can be is in itself a victory, because the only real way to getting away from the things that make us sad is information exchange and education: two things easier to find now, than ever before. Maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel...

Collectivization of culture in the West

I was having a conversation with Joé McKen from Preliator pro Causa on the Twitter regarding the nature of the Internet and the exposure of war crimes, and I said, and I quote:

Amazing how the Internet forces us to confront our own demons.

Of course, I'm referring to today's exposure by Wikileaks of the brutal and unprovoked murder of two Reuters cameramen, and two unarmed Iraqi civilians by the US forces in Iraq. Although I am not an American, I am sickened to my stomach to learn that people who are supposedly from the "First World" can chuckle about cold-blooded murder, especially when they bear an supposedly august flag, like the Stars and Stripes, on their shoulder.

Of course, the war in Iraq has nothing to do with being Canadian, as we have remained (except for the briefest of involvement by JTF-2) completely apart from the conflict, and it's made me think about why I feel so compelled to see the people who committed this crime punished. And I now think I know the answer - because I feel like we should know better. The we isn't "Canadian" or "American", but instead, it is "Westerner".

Since World War II, there's been a collectivization of interest in a manner we haven't seen since the days of Rome. NATO countries now contain at least a tenth of the world's population but most of its industrial production, economic power, and military might, and they share a series of common governments with common protections. From the disunity of the Second World War, an overarching common culture is developing in the West.

This change from nationalism to collective interest has been formalized by the European Union and the NAFTA treaty, among others, and has seen the death of many old hatreds that lasted for centuries - the Irish and the English, the French and the Germans, the Dutch and the Germans, the Belgians and the Germans, the Polish and the Germans (it's like the Germans did some bad stuff). Sure, they don't like each other, but they work together, economically, militarily, and to an extent, culturally. I have European friends from the UK, Holland, France, Germany, something that was impossible a hundred years ago. We're at the beginning of seeing a new strong country arise from two dozen nations who were at each others' throats like 10 times in the last two hundred and ten years.

Similarly, the United States and Canada have gotten progressively closer, though less governmentally and certainly more culturally. Canadians and Americans watch the same television and movies, they go to the same universities, and they have the same opinions on many things. Of course, Americans tend to be more politically conservative, but we have teabaggers here, just as there are people who are rather favourable to the Canadian political or social systems in the States. I'm not saying we're inseparable, but we are closer than ever.

The thing that made me start pondering the concept of collective Western citizenship was when the Middle East went apeshit over the infamous Mohammed cartoons published in Denmark in 2005. Denmark, a particularly small and progressive nation in Europe, mobilized everyone in the West when we considered the concept of freedom of speech versus insult of religion (AKA, blasphemy), and weighed how we felt about the subject. Most of the Middle East was united - blasphemous images of the Prophet should be punished, preferably by death, as the sanctity of the Qu'ran is considered to be more important than any other considerations, whereas in our society - Danish, Canadian, American - our central tenement is the freedom of speech, which, in this case, created two values at a complete impasse.

The fact that seven hundred million people would agree on a political point of view without religious encouragement is completely, totally unheard of in human history. We haven't seen Europe agree on one single point since the Crusades! But in this case, they agreed that freedom of speech is more important than the possibility of blasphemy (except for the Irish, but that's another story).

So I feel now like I am a citizen of something in its infancy, but growing: the concept of the West as the overarching cultural ideal. I feel like we have a certain collectivization of cultural values that we can all rely upon - freedom of belief, of religion, of assembly, the freedom to vote for who we wish and to seek political office, and we recognize this in each other, respect it, and most importantly, we are willing to support and fight for these values in each others' cultures, which is why I think I care about foreign politics as much as I care about my own.

When I see something that violates these concepts, such as the brutal murder of four innocents by people who swore to defend our values, even if those murderers aren't Canadians, I feel betrayed. I feel...soiled that I share these basic concepts. I feel cheated. And I feel like the only way we can grow past this is to bring these offenders to justice. Our justice: innocent until proven guilty, with due process of law.

The same protections all of the West offers to even its worst criminals. Guantanamo Bay excepting.

Mr. Obama and his first year.

Once again, Andrew Sullivan seems to sum up my points. I recommend everyone read his excellent blog post on the subject.

I am still enamoured with Barack Obama. He's done everything I hoped he would do in office, and his hand has been ever so steady on the tiller. Through bank failures and tea parties and exploding briefs, he's kept the US on a straight, sensible course. He's issued a withdrawal from Iraq. He's kept his promise on giving Afghanistan one last kick at the can, and not hanging his NATO allies out to dry. He's made some small steps forward on LGBT rights, if not all of them (I have faith he will eventually repeal DADT, I still do, yes I do!).

He's slowed and probably ended the global recession. Not just with his stimulus, but by coordinating the largest international spending plan ever with the G20 nations. He's won the Nobel Peace Prize - not because he was a leader of a peace conference or a great icon for decades, but because his very inauguration crept us away from the brink of eternal war with the Islamic world. Al Qaeda's reputation in that world is soiled and damaged, thanks to Obama's careful handling of many situations.

Yes, there have been some failures, and many difficulties, but Obama inherited a difficult job from an inept leader who had been unable to handle the situations he was so misfortunately handed. Overall, I think President Obama has been quite a good one, certainly better than George W. Bush, probably better than Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush as well. We shall now see how his second year fares.

Good luck, sir.

On Sarah Palin.

Today, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire reported that Sarah Palin is considering a run for President on a third party ticket. This is huge news, as there hasn't been a serious run for President on a third party ticket since 1992 with Ross Perot, and no third party candidate has won votes from the Electoral College since 1968, when George Wallace ran as the Southern Rights' candidate as a reaction to the newly pro-black Democratic party. Palin, as a result, stands astride the possibility of causing a split similar to that which occurred in 1968 - or 1912.

Let me explain. Former Governor Sarah Palin is generally considered to be the apex of the neo-conservative movement in the United States. She espouses a low level of education combined with a high level of religious pandering, combining the two into an experience that few consider eligible for higher office (unless, of course, you're a Republican sycophant). I wish it known that I'm not attacking Palin because she's a conservative - the simple fact is that she has much less time in politics than, say, President Obama, who's 4 years as Senator are a full 1.5 years longer than her term as Governor, and who's time in the Illinois State Senate involved responsibility for more constituents than Palin's governorship. There are many candidates with much more experience - Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-Minnesota), former Governor Mitt Romney (R-Massachusetts), and former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-Arkansas). All of whom I dislike for different reasons than experience.

Indeed, my distaste for Palin runs even deeper. But that's neither here nor there. If you remember the special election in NY-23 this year, we saw a three party race between the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the Conservative Party of New York. What occurred was an ambush of the Republican candidate from the Conservative candidate, a man named Hoffman who was endorsed by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and, indeed, Sarah Palin. The embattled Republican, Dede Scozzafava, withdrew and endorsed the Democrat, who eventually won a squeaker. Palin is now discussing bringing this split to the national level.

There are many possibilities that could occur if Palin decided to run as a third party candidate, depending on when she makes the decision to run. If she did so before the Republican primary, many candidates would follow her, leading to a serious possible split. If she entered the primary and lost, then quickly announced her split, some could. If she fights a drawn-out primary and loses, then she would just be a Presidential candidate, to start with. A bevy of success could encourage her to continue in the next Congressional cycle with the third party.

If one of the continuing options happens, you'd immediately see several Congressfolk, and even a few Senators, consider switching parties - especially if some successes were rapidly had with similar electorates. A valid third party could emerge. This would be wonderful - the ideologically pure fools would join the Palin Party, whilst many Blue Dog Democrats would move to the now-centre right Republicans. It just might allow real business to get done.

Or, it could simply lead to the Republicans slamming hard-right as a response, countering the Palin move in a self-destructive manner pleasing to Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh but absolutely foolhardy and election-losing in general. This is okay, but I would prefer a real Republican party with real fiscal conservatives.

All of this assumes Palin would have the narcissism needed to run as a third party candidate. When she loses (and she will lose), she'll likely blame everyone but herself, and continue the cult of personality she's slowly building around herself. She's a sad force in politics. I hope she splits the parties; but I also hope she self-destructs as soon as possible.

Gah. What a load of fuck.

On historical movies.

On the way back from Weymouth, I stopped to see an old friend, Krista, shortly. We discussed many things, including movies, and I had to explain how I simply cannot watch any movie that pretends at historical accuracy and fails. We, for instance, talked about the 2004 flick King Arthur. Yes, Clive Owen is a dreamboat, ladies, but the movie infuriated me to the point where I angrily ruined the film for others.

Another movie you might be familiar with that angered me similarly (though not to the same degree) was Gladiator. Yes, I dislike Gladiator. I've seen it once, and that's more than enough, thank you very much.

Here's how it goes - you can set a movie in history as long as you don't mess with history. Some of my favourite films are set in history, films like Paths of Glory. I don't mean a historical biography, like Patton and such, but I mean to say that you can make a good movie about history without pissing on it - if you try.

Take Gladiator, for example. They took a fictional character (Maximus) and threw him into a possible situation against a historical figure (Commodus). The problem is that Commodus was not a bad emperor. He wasn't anything like his portrayal in the film. He did not die quickly after taking the throne, nor did he die in the gladiatorial arena. The movie *could* have worked with another villain. But now everyone thinks that Commodus was some guy who loved to get into the ring and eventually died there, and good, he deserved it, when in reality, Commodus was assassinated because he ignored the Mob.

And don't even get me started on King Arthur.

History is a great tool for making movies, because history does the job for the filmmaker. You don't need to invent a character where one already exists, a realistic human with realistic personality traits, strengths and flaws. I wish more filmmakers would use history accurately. The next time someone tells me The Last Samurai is a great historical film, I'm gonna fucking scream.

As an aside, I am going to go see the Kingdom of Heaven Director's Cut soon, and I'm really looking forward to it. Apparently it's significantly better than the theatrical release, which I firmly panned as utter trash.

Thought From Canada, November 23rd, 2009

Dear United States;

Hi there, been following your goings-on for awhile, and I'd like to toss in my few cents about a couple things. First of all, I gotta confess - I'm generally a big fan of what you've done. World War II, Eisenhower, the Moon Landing, and Obama, that's pretty cool stuff. But obviously, there's some things that a Canadian like me just doesn't get right away. It takes some time to ponder the character of America and really understand it.

So, let's talk about the big political to-do of the month: Former Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. Everyone knows about this lady - she's a dynamic, charismatic, and polarizing figure in American politics. I'd love to do a review of her, but why bother? Everyone already has an opinion on the lady. Let me just say that my opinion of Governor Palin is not very flattering, nor am I fond of her.

But I do not think she is an idiot, as many have said.

There's a lot of people who dismiss Palin out of hand, calling her a half-term governor of a backwards state. Some use the term "Caribou Barbie" (admittedly, so have I, as offensive as the term truly is). And others just laugh about how she "can see Russia from [her] house".

This needs to stop. Governor Palin is one of the scariest people in politics today. I spent some time yesterday considering other American political figures to whom she is analogous, and discarded many possibilities. She's certainly not George W. Bush - Bush only paid lip service to the base which Palin clearly adores and revels in. By the same manner, she's not George H. W. Bush, nor is she Ronald Reagan, both of whom were closer to centre than the second Bush. I don't think she resembles Barry Goldwater, nor do I think she is similar to Nixon.

She reminds me most of George Wallace. Like George Wallace, Palin is the embodiment of a section of American society that has been largely and loudly informed are now out of date, unwanted by the public in general. There's a lot of anger about that sort of thing, and it shows. George Wallace was a pro-segregation candidate during the 1960s; Sarah Palin is a pro-religious right, pro-life, small government, no tax, less educated white candidate, and as a result, reflects the demographics of around 30% of Americans, much as Governor Wallace did. This is a vocal, loud, and frankly vicious group of people who are demanding to be heard and considered as the majority, when they are, in fact, not.

The existence of Sarah Palin as a political force is indicative of an upcoming difficult decade of American politics. The upcoming presidential election is likely to be a divisive force on the Republican Party, much as the 1968 was divisive to the Democratic Party. This is because internal infighting over the future soul of the Republican Party will rend the GOP heavily, and Palin is going to be front and centre.

Face facts: nobody has mobilized the Republican base like Sarah Palin since Ronald Reagan. Nobody. But when she is rejected by Republican voters in the primaries (as she surely will be), how will she react? It is unlikely that the winner of the primary will offer her a place on the ticket. It is even less likely that she would accept if offered. Would she consider a run as a third party candidate, dooming the GOP to another four years of Barack Obama?

These are questions we won't know the answer to until 2012. But they are worth pondering. We can, however, guess some things by looking at the former Governor's record. We know the woman quits when the going gets tough. Don't give me that bullshit about how she quit to protect Alaska; she quit because people were watching her like a hawk after the election, and it turns out she's not a particularly good governor who was overloaded with ethics complaints. As a private citizen, she's able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars per appearance, "write" a best-selling book, and avoid the close scrutiny of her activities that must go along with public office.

I don't think the scrutiny bothers here when she's working towards a goal. Certainly it didn't dissuade her during the campaign, when she made wild and factually incorrect accusations against her opponents. I think what bothered here is that she might get bogged down and her image tarnished by her term as governor. Quitting only harms her brand in the eyes of those who already dislike her - those who appreciate her agree that what she did was for the good of Alaska.

However, one has to wonder whether, if her race towards the Republican nomination falters, she will deem the ongoing scrutiny of her brand to be worth it as the surely vicious campaign drags on. As a result, I think that unless she is an early frontrunner, she will bow out quickly - even if she is in second place, unless it is an extremely close second. Whether or not she quits the Republican Party (much as Wallace quit the Democratic Party) will be determined by how bad the damage to her is; if she was severely lambasted, I wouldn't expect to see her at the convention, especially if the person whom handled her worst wins. Sarah Palin holds grudges; one only needs to hear the excerpts from her books to realize that. She holds grudges publicly, and I am quite sure she would refuse her support to a particularly distasteful candidate.

Would she split the party?

This one I can't even guess at. She likes to portray herself as a rogue. But how far is she willing to go? I don't know. A split might destroy the GOP permanently; it would certainly guarantee a Barack Obama victory in 2012, and it would harm the GOP brand for a long time. But I don't know if she's audacious enough to do it, nor if she believes in herself enough to try. That question will stay up in the air.

Favourite RPGs.

I love RPGs, completely honestly and truly. There's something to be said for essentially playing through a story, and most modern RPGs (SNES and later) are as complex as a good novel, with characters you can feel empathy for. To me, it's an interactive reading experience with sometimes neat effects and graphics, a truly rewarding feeling. So, perhaps it's time I list some of my favourite RPGs of them all.

**Warning. Spoilers may follow.**

Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong.

In order to pretend that it is still relevant in the summer off season, NHL.com has been posting as many pointless articles as they can find, showing that the best hockey editors work for an organization other than NHL.com. So far, my least favourite article was the one detailing Canada's top 10 players. Here's the list, since you probably don't want to bother clicking:

1. Sidney Crosby
2. Martin Brodeur
3. Jarome Iginla
4. Marc-Andre Fleury
5. Chris Pronger
6. Ryan Getzlaf
7. Rick Nash
8. Roberto Luongo
9. Joe Thornton
10. Vincent Lecavalier

Allow me to say what the fuck?! There is no way this list is anywhere close to right. Sure, Joe Thornton puts up a pile of points, but that doesn't make him the 9th best Canadian. And sure, Marty Brodeur is the best goalie in the NHL, but a poor playoffs and an injury-laden season should affect that rating.

But the biggest tragedy? Sidney Crosby is not the best Canadian out there today. Yes, he has a lot of points in a young career. Yes, he is probably the most talented Canadian forward when you look at potential. In five years, maybe even three, he'll deserve to top these sorts of lists.

But he, right now, cannot hold a candle to Jarome Iginla.

Sidney's done a lot. Stanley Cup, Art Ross, Pearson, Hart. First All-Star Team, IHWC MVP. It's a lot.

Jarome, however...2 Richards. Art Ross, Pearson, three time First All-Star Team member. 2 50 goal seasons. Four international gold medals - WJHC, World Cup, IHWC, and Olympic. He's only 32 and has 409 goals - 9th on the active list (8th once Roenick retires tomorrow). More than that - Jarome is only 32. He still has 2-3 years, maybe more, at peak play. This guy could easily log 500 goals by the end of his career - maybe even 600. That puts him in very unique territory.

You can count on Jarome to bring it in any game. He's one of the best leaders in the NHL, better than Sidney Crosby by far. As I said previously, he's my choice to lead Canada in 2010, now that Super Joe is Super Retired. The only other leader in his caliber is Scott Niedermayer (I'll be discussing the lack of Scott on this list in a minute). And that's not just Canadians. Let me say this again: the best captain in the NHL is Jarome Iginla.

Jarome scores. He assists. He talks to the press. He's the classiest act there is. Remember the last game of the season 2 years ago when Trevor Linden was obviously retiring? So did Jarome. On top of that, Jarome fights. And fights. And fights. Tyler and I have a rule: when Iginla fights, he's at his best. He's fired up and ready to go.

Let's share one other story about Jarome. Last year when the Flames were playing the Sharks, Jarome ran into a group of fans that had driven down from Calgary to watch. They didn't have any money, so they were sleeping in a car. Iginla bought them all a room in the hotel with his own money, as a way to say thanks for supporting the team. Nothing he had to do - he did it because he is the classiest, greatest Canadian playing hockey today.

So, there you have it. Sidney is a good player, yes. He is probably the second best Canadian there is. But he's no Jarome Iginla. There's noone else like him.

And the other big travesty is Scott Niedermayer. Scott's getting old, but that doesn't stop him from being the best. He's won everything. Triple Gold Club member. World Cup. Norris, Conn Smythe, hell, even a Memorial Cup in the CHL. Four Stanley Cups. The man is a machine, and he's still an elite defenseman at 37. Vincent Lecavalier? Bullshit.

Why it is important that I blog

Why is it important that I blog?

Because over the past two years I have felt my writing skills slip. I have noticed in my recent attempts to post longer, more coherent posts that my ability to put together a good, cohesive flow of language has fallen away, and that scares me more than a little, so I am going to try and make an effort to post something every day. Large or small, fiction or fact, I think it is important to get some thoughts down. I don't want to lose the writing skills I so carefully honed over the first 22 years of my life.

It doesn't have to be long, though I am hoping that over time it will be easier to write longer posts that make sense. We shall see, though.

July 20th, 1969

Welcome to July 20th, 2009. At 11:56 (local time) tonight, it will have been 40 years since man first walked on the moon, since astronaut Neil Armstrong put his boot in the dust coating the lunar surface. And how the world has changed since then - how the world has altered in the wake of that achievement. And how the world has simply passed it by.

Where are we, since that fateful late night, when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon? What have we changed? Sure, countries have fallen and evil empires collapsed; we've built a space station, we've cured disease and we've tried to make the world a better place. But this world of ours, this fragile little blue marble in the deep, vast void of space, was never better served than by the program that sent men to the Moon.

Consider the technology involved. Without Apollo, the microprocessor would not have been born when it was; it may never have been born at all. Without Apollo, we would not have fuel cells that promise endless, pollution-less power. Without Apollo, we wouldn't have valuable insights to the history of the planet Earth, and our solar system. But most important, without Apollo, we wouldn't have hope.

Dr. Stephen Hawking is a far smarter man than I, and pretty much all of us, and he has said that we need to colonize this universe, because we've put all our eggs in one basket for far too long. I humbly agree with him, and the Moon is our closest neighbour, our companion in space, and the first logical destination for colonization. The Moon can give us natural resources, it can give us a valuable base for learning to survive outside of our neat little 80/20 nitrogen and oxygen mix. It can give us a place to go if we manage to kill our world off. It's a foothold in space, a launching pad to Mars, and to the greater universe before.

Imagine the value of a lunar observatory, for instance! No atmosphere, but you could build a mirror a thousand times the size of Hubble. Everyone has seen what Hubble has done, but imagine a fully functional observatory. What secrets of the universe we could get there. Plants and bacteria may grow differently in 1/6th gravity - we could discover new methods of treating illnesses. The potential is endless. The Moon is there, and it is ours. We should use it, instead of looking at it and remarking that it is pretty.

But let us turn from the future, and look to the past.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins set course for the moon because of the work of hundreds of thousands of people, and with the goodwill of the planet Earth on their side. They weren't the first pioneers.

Let us remember those who imagined this concept. Men like Robert Goddard, Herman Oberth, Sergei Koroylev, and Werhner von Braun. Men like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Let us remember the very first who stepped foot into space. Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, Gherman Titov, Gus Grissom, John Glenn.

Let us remember the first who went to the moon. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders. Tom Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan.

Let us remember those who went to the moon after Apollo 11: Conrad, Gordon, Bean, Lovell, Swigert, Haise, Shepard, Roosa, Mitchell, Scott, Worden, Irwin, Young, Mattingly, Duke, Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt.

Let us remember those who have died pursuing the destiny of our species: Bondarenko. Grissom, White, and Chaffee. Komarov. Dobrovolski, Patsayev, and Yolkov. Jarvis, McAuliffe, McNair, Onizuka, Resnik, Smith and Scobee. Husband, McCool, Anderson, Brown, Chawla, Clark, and Ramon.

Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin rode the Saturn V rocket into space, by far the most powerful rocket ever to carry humans. The first stage of the Saturn V rocket produced 7,648,000 million pounds of thrust (34,200,000 N), enough thrust to push forward around 225 Peterbilt 379 tractor-trailers. If the Saturn V blew, the lethal blast radius was three miles. Yet they rode this beautiful machine flawlessly from the earth to the moon...and brought their Apollo Command and Service Module (Columbia) back home. Safely.

The Apollo Command and Service Module was built by North American Aviation, and took about five years to take from concept to the actual manned craft. Unfortunately, poor wiring in one of the capsules claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in 1967. But the Command Module flew flawlessly after that. The Service Module's major malfunction was in April of 1970, when an oxygen tank exploded and put Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise in life-threatening danger. Regardless, the CSM was a gorgeous machine that took twenty-four men (three of them twice) from the Earth to the Moon. Fifteen CSMs flew in space; six had no name. Before the moon landing, those with names carried titles less dignified: Gumdrop and Charlie Brown. The seven Command Modules that bore astronauts destined for the moon were better named: Columbia, Yankee Clipper, Odyssey, Kitty Hawk, Endeavour, Casper, and America.

The Lunar Module, designed by Grumman in Long Island, was the only piece of hardware that never had a serious failure. It had some problems (famously the overload error during the Apollo 11 descent), but never truly failed. Indeed, one LM saved the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts when their CSM was stricken by an explosion. Like the CSM, the names for the first two LMs were almost comic: Spider and Snoopy. But the seven LMs destined for the moon had more appropriate nomenclature: Eagle, Intrepid, Aquarius, Antares, Falcon, Orion, and Challenger.

We can only imagine what appropriate names the next class of ships to take us beyond Earth's gravity will bear, and what men and women will be inside of them. But when we return to the Moon, whoever and whenever that might be, it shall be in peace, and with hope, for all human kind - and we shall be returning to a legacy greater than any of us and the equal of all.

And we should remember what JFK had to say:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too...Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Atheism and me.

I have had the distinct pleasure in the last few days of immersing myself more in the atheist/secular blogging community, primarily over at Friendly Atheist, run by Hemant Mehta. I won a book on his site, so hey, how bad can it be to get involved? Most of the comments there are exactly what I would expect from a group of like-minded individuals: calm, cool, collected, relaxed.

Not too bad, really.

So, I thought I'd start blogging again, with a little topic about how I became an atheist. It's really only in the last couple years I've started identifying as an atheist. I was nominally Christian for the first ten or fifteen years of my life, but I always challenged the core beliefs of that dogma - the concept of an earth created in seven days, the idea that Christ died to protect me from sin. Pretty much everything except for the concept of the afterlife.

And that was comforting to me. In university, I finally began to identify as a deist, someone who believes in a divine source of creation. I've always had an overwhelming belief in the integrity of the scientific method and the results therein, so it was only a logical step. But as I refined my mind through my university years, that phase did not last long, either. I realized what I've read a thousand times since then: if a god created everything, who created a god?

So yeah. What makes my journey particularly fulfilling is that I've made it all on my own (like Li'l Brudder). It's not very outstanding, aside from that I can recall points in my journey that were defining.

1. Sunday school at the Baptist Church just down the road, I asked the teacher about the possibility of God creating the universe from a deist perspective, allowing science to partake on its own. I wasn't welcome back. I was six.

2. In grade 5 or 6, a group of Christians passed out New Testaments to my class. They then came by in recess, asking us to sign the back at them, where you acknowledged that Christ is your Lord and Saviour and all that. I was pressured into signing by these people, and my classmates. I was twelve.

3. In grade 10, I had a confrontation with two girls in my class who were originally from South Carolina. Admittedly, I was extremely attracted to one of the girls, so I think I gave her point of view more credence than I would do today. But we disagreed on the concept of evolution, and I heard my first real intelligent design argument. To be honest, till then I had never even conceived that people existed who believed evolution was false. I was fifteen.

4. In grade 11, the same two girls invited me to meet "Dr." Kent Hovind, the infamous creationist and tax cheat, none of which I was familiar with at the time. Two hours later, I realized that this man was absolutely off his rocker.

5. Grade 12, one of the two girls gave a presentation on intelligent design to the biology class. She was laughed out of the classroom. At the time I felt bad for her, because I still didn't know the sort of damage that ID had done in the USA. I still hadn't broadened my mind.

6. By the end of university, I learned...quite a lot about politics in the rest of the world, and I had a MSN conversation with one of the same ladies. It was 2004, in November, and quite heated - she was volunteering for GWB's campaign in Virginia, and she attacked my pro-Kerry views quite vehemently. She later apologized, but I am quite sure that she views me with incredible distaste...simply for disagreeing with her.

These things each pushed me further and further from religion. Trying to justify why I think abortion is a critical right to someone who screams about God damning us all to Hell....is an experience I never want to engage in again.

So that's me...