April 2010 – Nicolas Demers

Old poetry brought to life

Excellent post to cap off National Poetry Month, right? This is a clip of Natalie Merchant singing a selection of songs from her latest album; all the songs in this album are adapted from old poems.

Ghosts, right? They have nothing to say to us… obsolete, gone… Not so! What I really enjoyed about this project was reviving these people’s words, taking them off the dead, flat pages, bringing them to life.

Excellent post to cap off National Poetry Month, right? This is a clip of Natalie Merchant singing a selection of songs from her latest album, Leave Your Sleep; all the songs in this album are adapted from old poems.

My favourites in this video are Charles Edward Carryl’s The Sleepy Giant (00:15) and E.E. Cummings’ maggie and milly and molly and may (8:00). I’ve purchased the whole album from iTunes, and I’m sure I’ll have more favourites before long.

Bloggers… Bloggers Who Need Bloggers…

Last night was my first time with the Vancouver Blogger Meetup. Fun times! Cool geeks, good food, and I even got my first close-up look at an iPad!

Last night was my first time with the Vancouver Blogger Meetup. Fun times! Cool geeks, good food, and I even got my first close-up look at an iPad! It’s a pretty sweet machine, with some awesome-looking software, though I won’t be getting the first version. And I’m still not convinced the onscreen keyboard will be too comfortable, though I’m told the iPad would be mostly used for consuming content, not creating it. Fair enough, I guess… and if a lot of typing is needed, external keyboards are available.

Anyway. Bloggers. This is something I’ve been missing, though it’s only now that I consciously realise it: a community. I’ve been blogging on my own, and having fun with it, but connecting with other bloggers is sure to inspire and energise me.

Plus, I also registered for Northern Voice. Six years and I never heard of it until last night? Well, there you go. Better late than never. Mental note: buy an portable charger for my iPhone, cos the battery will never last the whole day.

Chicken wings and the smell of lilac

Indoor volleyball season ended this weekend. I’ll miss getting up early Sunday morning to try to drop into C1; waiting at the door for Tony to come with the key; I’ll miss playing for over 7 hours all day, with only a 2-hour lunch break. I’ll miss dinner at the Fountainhead afterwards. This Sunday was especially nice, with those yummy honey-garlic chicken wings I haven’t had in a while, the lilac tree blooming next to the patio, and all the West End walking past on such a fine spring evening.

Not sure I’ll be missing Friday night Rec dropin all that much. It’s fun, yes, and I get to hang out with friends who don’t play in the Sunday divisions, but I’m learning bad habits, especially in reffing, and the play level isn’t doing me any favours. And sometimes, there were other things I could have been doing on a Friday night.

So you know what? Next year I won’t be making Rec dropin a priority.

This year I’ve been dropping into C1 a lot more; I decided I needed to be a little more active in developing my skills so that (hopefully, someday) I can register for that division. It’s a hell of a workout and pretty stressful because the regulars are very demanding, way more than I2. Which is okay, right? After all, the “C” stands for “competitive”, not “comfort zone”. It’s been worth it; my play is still inconsistent but I think I’ve improved. Enough to ace the tryouts in the fall? Well, we’ll see.

This is what happens when you mix science and religion

Dr. Hugh Ross is full of shit.

Sure, he’s obviously a smart guy. He knows a lot about science–Astronomy, Mathematics, etc… But he’s also a biblical literalist, and what’s worse, he’s trying to support the one with the other.

Dr. Hugh Ross is full of shit.

Sure, he’s obviously a smart guy. He knows a lot about science—Astronomy, Mathematics, etc… But he’s also a creationist, a biblical literalist, and what’s worse, he’s trying to support the one with the other.

Last night I went to a debate sponsored by CFI and Reasons to Believe: “What’s right and wrong with Christianity?”, taking place at Tenth Avenue Church. Dr. Ross took the “right” side and spoke first, basically blathering on about how modern science fit so well with the biblical creation story, therefore it has to be true. Humans are so unlikely, what with our big brains with no survival value, therefore we must have been designed. Christianity is unique, therefore etc… And so on.

All this delivered at a well-rehearsed breakneck pace, too fast for the audience to do more than go “wait… what?” before moving on to the next bible verse or pretty graph or inspirational urban legend. It was dizzying, frustrating, incredibly condescending, but really not that surprising. I didn’t know Dr. Ross, but I’d read and heard similar “christianity is right and other religions are wrong neener neener” arguments before and, honestly, theists never come up with anything really new.

Which is actually okay, for his usual audience. Because even though last night the people filling the pews were mostly atheists and skeptics, I had the definite impression Dr. Ross was only used to preaching to the choir. Everything he said was designed to appeal to Christians, to reassure them that their beliefs were right. There was nothing there for nonbelievers, or even believers of other faiths. In fact, he kept using loaded terms, like “atheist scientists,” that implied a definite us-vs-them attitude. I’ve seen that before, too, in that creationism vs evolution debate a few years back.

Brian Lynchehaun (who I remember from Skepticamp), addressing the “wrong” side, didn’t go into historical truth or scientific truth, though he easily could have. His speech (much shorter, less rehearsed) dealt with the morality of Christianity; his thrust was that the Bible was not a perfect moral code. In fact, it wasn’t even an especially good one. Its commandments are inconsistent, and its elevation of faith is dangerous because it leaves you open to a whole slew of scams that wouldn’t work on skeptics.

This is what happens when you don’t keep religion and science separate: leave the door open for God or mysticism in your theories and you’re opening a Pandora’s box, because there’s no end to what you can put in. You say Jesus’ body was never found? Maybe the apostles took him. Maybe the Pharisees took him. Maybe he rose from the dead. Maybe he was beamed up by time-traveling Christians out to clone a Messiah 2.0. Mr. Lynchehaun did point out that “God” as an explanation is no less silly than “superpowerful little green men.”

But Dr. Ross isn’t even doing that. He doesn’t respect science, he’s just whoring it out to service his pre-existing beliefs. He’s wrapping the bible in a white lab coat to give it extra prestige for his ignorant flock, thereby twisting and demeaning both spheres. And it’s ironic that he and his audience even want a reason for believing in Christ. What it tells me is that, if they seek (pseudo-)scientific justifications for their faith, then it’s probably a pretty weak faith to begin with, and they’re willing to grab at any straw to hold their house of cards together*. Frankly, I’d have a lot more respect for Christians if they just appealed to simple faith to defend their beliefs. They’d still be wrong, sure, but at least I’d respect the honesty.

(* Apologies for the mixed metaphor)

Movie Review: Clash of the Titans (2010)

Well, now I totally want to play God of War and Dante’s Inferno…

A nice little movie, following in the original’s mix-and-match approach to Greek mythology, though adding the whole “rage against the heavens” plotline. Pretty entertaining, with some nice special effects, though a couple of fight scenes did those annoying rapid-fire cuts that actually hide the action, which action-movie editors seem so fond of these days.

I’m not going to compare this movie with the 1981 original; all I’m going to say is that they’re equally cheesy, both having shallow storylines and an overreliance on fancy effects. Still, they’re both fun, so I’m not complaining.

It’s not easy being a girl

Well, that was kind of fun. I don’t think I’m doing it again in a million years, but still. Fun.

So last night my volleyball league had our end-of-year party at Celebrities. Since the party is also our only fundraising event for the year, we wanted to bring in a big crowd. Something we’d never done before. The answer? The board would put on a drag show. After a bit of discussion we settled on George Michael’s “Too Funky” for music; the only female board member would be dressed as George, and the rest of us would walk around and pose like the models in the video. There was a bit more to the choreography, but that’s about it. Nothing too fancy.

Well, that was kind of fun. I don’t think I’m doing it again in a million years, but still. Fun.

So last night my volleyball league had our end-of-year party at Celebrities. Since the party is also our only fundraising event for the year, we wanted to do something we’d never done before, and bring in a big crowd. The answer? The board would put on a drag show. After a bit of discussion we settled on George Michael’s “Too Funky” for music; the only female board member would be dressed as George, and the rest of us would walk around and pose like the models in the video. There was a bit more to the choreography, but that’s about it. Nothing too fancy.

I wasn’t really keen on doing it, since I’d never done drag before, never felt comfortable performing in front of an audience, and frankly was afraid of looking like a hot mess. Of course, I realised I was totally going to look like a hot mess, but I had to just go with it and have fun, and it would all be over in a few minutes.

Self-consciousness aside, my biggest worry was whether I’d even be able to walk in heels. That part wasn’t so bad, though, since the shoes I ended up using (borrowed from a friend, along with my entire outfit) had fairly modest 2-inch heels. As long as I remembered to step with the toes first, I could get from point A to point B pretty efficiently, though not that gracefully.

And I learned something else, too: being a woman takes a lot of work! Hair, makeup, dresses, bras, shaving various bits as necessary, and the aforementioned shoes. But that’s the price you pay for being beautiful, I guess. Not that I really felt that beautiful, once the initial thrill wore off; with all due respect to my makeup artists (no, seriously), my face in makeup just looked weird, like some alternate-universe Joker-ised version of myself. That’s just me, though. The feedback I got from my performance ranged from “Good job, you were great!” to “scary but nice” to “I’m gonna need therapy.” So… on average, I did okay? Meh, I don’t really care. I did it once, kind of enjoyed it, we raised money, and now it’ll make a good story.