Imagine No Religion 3, Day 1

I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go this year. Last year’s INR was fun, and had some great speakers, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to shell out the bucks again. But then a friend of mine was going, and needed both a ride and a roommate, so I figured what the hell.

I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go this year. Last year’s INR was fun, and had some great speakers, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to shell out the bucks again. But then a friend of mine was going, and needed both a ride and a roommate, so I figured what the hell.

And I’m glad I went! The drive was lovely as always, and the speakers were generally excellent.

Dr. K. Sohail: Secular Ideas, Humanist Ideals

The first talk was by Dr. K. Sohail, an ex-Muslim secular humanist and psychotherapist. He started with the story of his childhood in conservative Pakistan, surrounded by superstition and hardline dogma but also—fortunately—a couple of freethinking older relatives who encouraged his questioning, and how he gradually moved away from religion.

His talk was mainly on the harm caused by organised religion, both to individuals (eg: blind faith, wilfull ignorance, sexual guilt and other problems) and societies (eg: discrimination, violence). He’s seen both, first-hand: in particular, he told of a holy war against India taking place when he was 13, and how he was swept up in the fervor of it all.

But Dr. Sohail’s focus was on compassion, and how important it is if you want to establish a dialog with religious people and form intercultural alliances. Freedom of religion (other spiritual paths) and freedom from religion (secularism) can both challenge organised religion. Having multiple faiths coexisting peacefully is a step in the right direction.

Other people’s journeys had helped me, maybe my journey would help others.

Peter Boghossian: Street Epistemology

Dr. Boghossian used material from his upcoming book A Manual for Creating Atheists to give us some extra tools for talking people out of their faiths. The basic idea is that religious people can be classified on a scale, starting with “pre-contemplative” (not questioning their beliefs at all, being 100% convinced of their truths). The goal is not to immediately create freethinkers, but to nudge people up on the scale of non-belief.

He went over one technique he called “street epistemology:” because it can be used anywhere, even on the street, and it focuses on faith as epistemology. It’s not about debunking particular beliefs; precontemplative people, Boghossian argues, wouldn’t be receptive to facts and education. However, they may respond to being asked why and how they believe the things they believe, turning their focus on themselves without any need for defensiveness.

Thing is, though… that technique may work in his practice, in controlled conditions, but I question whether it’s particularly useful on the street. It’s certainly one more tool in your rhetorical kit, but people can find a lot of rationalisations for the kookiest beliefs.

Another thing that bothered me, and this hit me only after several hours of picking away at it, was that his approach to street evangelism seemed condescending and even manipulative. In my notes, I wrote that it was a more aggressive counterpoint to Dr. Sohail’s talk, with a different tone but with similar goals. But then I realised it really wasn’t. Dr. Boghossian repeated several times the phrase “sitting at the adult table” to mean have a rational discussion about one’s beliefs and epistemology, and if you couldn’t do that there was no point in having a conversation. My problem is that approaching people to evangelise to them, while looking down on them in that way, is not a good attitude to have. This is not the compassion espoused by Dr. Sohail, it feels more like pity.

Plus, it’s inaccurate. As a couple other speakers prove over the weekend, even precontemplative people can be de-converted by facts and education. Even when those facts come from New Atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens.

Aruna Papp: Unworthy Creature

Aruna Papp grew up as the daughter of a church pastor (Seventh Day Adventist) in India. All her life she was despised just for being a girl, and her mother equally despised for giving birth only to daughters. Married against her will, her family relocated to Canada—a good Christian country, she was told, almost paradise. She started taking classes, making friends with other immigrant women who were also abused, and eventually found her independence.

This deeply moving talk got the first standing ovation of the day.

Richard Carrier: Bayes’ Theorem

After a lunch break, we’re back to academia! Here Dr. Richard Carrier looks at the question of the historicity of Jesus using Baye’s Theorem as a starting point to discuss how likely the Jesus story is, versus other dead and resurrected saviours.

Turns out, there are quite a lot of them—including Romulus, which I didn’t know—and they can be ranked according to a checklist.

A fascinating talk, though the mathematical stuff went a bit over my head. But I learned a few neat factoids, a couple new historical terms, so it’s all good.

Christopher DiCarlo: The Future of Ethics

Dr. DiCarlo examined the problem of free will. Namely, how much do we really have? Total free will? Some free will? None at all? Some probably have more than others, being pulled and pushed by faulty brain chemistry… So the question is, what if there is no free will? What if we are nothing more than agents in complex webs of systems?

The goal, then, is to understand and model these systems. This is what he calls the Onion Skin Theory of Knowledge (or OSTOK); like onion skins, knowledge modeled this way would be extremely complex and multilayered.

This is actually not too different from this talk last year. And maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see how this new conceptualisation of human behaviour can really move us further along, since we don’t know how much free will we actually have. So that was a bit disappointing.

Louise Antony: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Friendships are based on common values, not metaphysics. It shouldn’t stand in the way of making common cause.

And that’s mostly what I got from Dr. Antony’s talk. She admitted at the start that she was going off script (I think, to respond to earlier talks), so it ended up kind of rambly and disorganised. Originally it was going to be a double challenge: to theists, it was to speak out against extremists of their own religion as much as we do. To New Atheists, it was to avoid replacing religious extremism with atheist extremism.

Which… is a really problematic equivalence. It’s true that secularism is no guarantee of ethical behavior, but using the Tuskegee Experiments (done “in the name of science”) as an example that science can be just as bad? No. So, I didn’t get a lot out of this talk either

Brian Dalton: Mr. Deity

I guess I’ve been horribly deprived, because I’ve never watched Mr. Deity. Well, I’m remedying that as we speak. I didn’t take any notes during his talk, which largely consisted of clips of his show.

Zoltan the Adequate

After dinner, we had a fun little magic show by a skeptical magician. Educational, too: he repeatedly counseled against looking down on victims of psychics and so on. It’s too easy to say, “well, they deserve it for being stupid/ignorant/gullible”, and easier to say “I’d never fall for such obvious scams.” But we’re all human, and vulnerable people deserve our support, not our scorn. Educate them, sure. But it has to be done from a place of empathy. We the skeptics have to know what it’s like to feel stupid.

International Day Against Homophobia

Today was the International Day Against Homophobia. One way we celebrate it here in Vancouver is with the IDAH breakfast, organised by Qmunity. This event brings together local VIPs, politicians, business owners, as well as ordinary folks who can afford the ticket for a couple hours of eating, schmoozing and inspirational talks. The theme this year was: Homophobia and transphobia in sports. It was my first IDAH breakfast, and I was there with several other members of the VGVA board.

All the talks were wonderful and inspiring. Anita Braha, of the Vancity board of directors, spoke about Vancity’s commitment to inclusion and a healthy sustainable communities. Apparently, it was only in the 70’s that husbandless women could sign for a mortgage in their own name (sorry i dont remember the exact date); Braha and her partner were the first lesbian couple to get a mortgage from Vancity.

Next up was Louise Cowin, Vice-president of Students at UBC. Among other things, she is responsible for student athletics. She spoke of the continuing stigma against queer, trans and gender-variant players, even in places of higher education where you would think the only thing that matters is achievement. And, she shared some anecdotes from her own adolescence in the 70’s, where she was forced to undergo a test to determine is she was really female. Such tests were only discontinued in 1999, and even today female athletes (whatever their sexual orientation) have to go out of their way to “prove” they really are properly female. We still have a long way to go.

But maybe not a very long way, as proved by the next speaker: Olympic gold medalist Ben Rutledge. He started out delivering what felt like nice cliches about when you’re training for the Olympics your teammates’ sexuality doesn’t matter, it’s what you can do together. But then (and I’m sorry I don’t remember in greater detail) he said something about not always making the best decisions about choosing your teammates, and then something about “being on the wrong side”… and choked up. Whoah. That was unexpected! I don’t know what mistakes he made in the past but clearly he still feels terrible about them. Someone handed him a kleenex and I think that was the end of his speech because the next thing I remember was a standing ovation.

And it just goes to show: people mess up. And that’s okay, as long as they learn from their mistakes and their hearts are in the right place. That’s what allies do.

The last speakers were Cory Oskam, a 16-year-old trans hockey player and his mother. She’s absolutely the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet, 100% supportive of Cory. She spoke of his early challenges, not really fitting in with girls or boys (until he proved his athletic talent, and then the boys totally accepted him!), refusing to wear any underwear except Superman boys’ briefs, and a few cutely embarrassing anecdotes which, as the mother of a teenager, she’s contractually required to share.

Cory is amazingly bright and articulate. I was stunned at his determination to make the world a better place for others, and his impressed by his decision to not choose a gender just yet. He said his gender is fluid, though he’s closer to the male end of the scale. But picking a gender is like picking a name, it’s something you have to put some thought into.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: my mind is blown by kids today, how much smarter and freer of prejudice they can be compared to my generation. There’s still a lot of work to do, yes. But the future belongs to young people like Cory.

It’s made me think about VGVA, and the context in which it exists. After 30+ years, it’s an established part of the Vancouver cityscape; but in its early days, it and other queer sports leagues must have been incredibly revolutionary. The idea that gays can play sports? Now that’s just crazy talk!

But to some people, yes, its still crazy. And queers shouldn’t have to choose between their sexual / gender identity and their love of sports, as many still do if they’re surrounded with homophobic players. So there’s still a special role for groups like VGVA, and I need to remember that.

And maybe the timing’s a coincidence, but just this Monday the Vancouver Park Board passed a motion to create a working group to make parks, community centres, etc… inclusive and friendly to trans and gender-variant people. It’s a historic first step, and it couldn’t have happened without (a) activists spearheading the effort and (b) the support of straight and cis allies. I was there at the meeting, and though the list of speakers seemed interminable (it adjourned past 1PM!) I was deeply moved at everyone who came out and suported the motion and shared their stories.

The motion passed unanimously. It wasn’t a happy ending, it was a happy beginning. And on a different note, the whole evening was an interesting look at local politics, which I’ve never paid much attention to. But hey, who knows? This is another way I could make a difference…

Some thoughts on the Calgary skyline

It’s been a month and I’ve kept postponing writing this post. Partly because I still have hundreds of pictures to upload, until I realised I could attach only the required photos to this post, and worry about uploading the rest later.

So, Calgary. I’d flown over it a number of times, connected through its airport a couple times, but I’d never really visited until this Easter weekend. The occasion was Western Cup, an annual volleyball/curling/dodgeball tournament that I heard was tons of fun but never got around to. But a couple months before, I’d been hunting for a team for Queen Vicki, Vancouver’s own queer volleyball tournament, and a friend invited me on his QV team, his Western Cup team, and his Ottawa team (there’s a gay volleyball tourney in Ottawa two weeks before, which I also went to, but that’s another story.)

I had a great time, and met tons of amazing people. But my view of the actual city wasn’t so positive. Downtown Calgary looks pretty ordinary from the air: a cluster of high-rises surrounded by urban sprawl, not too different from Vancouver.

Downtown Calgary

From the ground, though, actually walking through it, it’s a different matter. Downtown Calgary is full of massive, shiny buildings, monuments to the giants of industry, oil and finance. Catch them from the right angle, and they’re attractive enough. But they also easily become dark and oppressive, since they’re far more crowded together than Vancouver and block out much more of the sunlight.

But in the midst of these ultra-shiny highrises there are older buildings, smaller and more modest, showing that Calgary does indeed have a history. Some that were previously commercial space have been converted into condos. I found them comforting, architecture on a much more human scale.

Down side: some of them, like the old City Hall, are utterly dwarfed by the surrounding highrises. Which is not unfamiliar. Christ Church Cathedral, anyone?

And some of these old buildings are just… old and sad. The eastern edge of downtown feels empty and run-down, maybe in the middle of pre-redevelopment, I don’t know. Just empty lots, gravel, and faded commercial façades. In fact, a lot of the eastern and southern edges of downtown feel very haphazard, with apartment buildings, heritage homes and commercial lots arranged seemingly at random. It had the feel of a city that had grown very fast with little actual planning—which, well, I guess is exactly what happened.

In fact, it was while walking back from Fort Calgary towards downtown that I formed my strongest impression of downtown: it felt like a herd of sleeping behemoths, shiny and faceless, as forbidding as the not so far-off the mountain ranges. It was not a pleasant impression.

What would Colonel MacLeod say if he was still alive? I’m sure he’d be happy to see the city prosper, but wouldn’t it look weird and alien to him?

Gut impressions aside, there was a very real downside to Calgary’s highrises: they blocked part of the view from the Calgary Tower. To the north I could see only straight up Centre Street; to the south and east I could see forever; to the west my view was half blocked by downtown. This being so close to the equinox the sunset was pretty much exactly due east, and it was just barely visible by one of the big shiny highrises. Any later in the year, and visitors to the Tower would be minus a sunset.

Shame, isn’t it? Just a few short decades after its construction, the Tower has been passed by the rest of the city. What good will it be as a tourist attraction, if Calgary keeps growing around it?

My nerdiness has grown up: thoughts on the Science and Technology Museum

I’ve been in Ottawa for the last 9 days visiting with my parents. Today we were supposed to drive to Montreal, see a couple of museums and have dinner with my brother, but a major snowstorm was moving in, and we decided to call it off. (Good thing, too, because Montreal was hit really hard and we would have had a horrible time.)

As a consolation, my dad and I decided to go to the Science and Technology Museum. I don’t think I’d been there since my teens, and jumped at the chance rediscover all the cool sciency stuff that had thrilled me as a budding nerd.

I’ve been in Ottawa for the last 9 days visiting with my parents. Yesterday we were supposed to drive to Montreal, see a couple of museums and have dinner with my brother, but a major snowstorm was moving in, and we decided to call it off. (Good thing, too, because Montreal was hit really hard and we would have had a horrible time.)

As a consolation, my dad and I decided to go to the Science and Technology Museum. I don’t think I’d been there since my teens, and jumped at the chance rediscover all the cool sciency stuff that had thrilled me as a budding nerd.

It was kind of disappointing, to be honest. Most of the old hands-on exhibits designed to teach little kids about science were gone. I remember one place where you could measure your hand-eye reaction time, another where you could create an electric arc between two poles, by cranking a handle over and over. And there was another big huge pendulum thing, filled with sand, swinging over a large circular space, and as it swung it traced its arcs on the floor below, back and forth, left and right. (There may have been more than one pendulum, too, though I wouldn’t swear to that). I think that last one was replaced by an interactive exhibit and quiz on Canada’s energy policies. Where the pendulum/pendula used to be, is now a big planet Earth. Where you could fill up swinging buckets with sand, are now four or five monitors where you can answer simple questions about renewable energy sources, your energy consumption, whether or not politicians, corporations or individual people should make the decisions about Canada’s energy future, and so on.

Still around, though: the Archimedes screw. Also still around: the gravity well simulator, where you could roll a little metal ball and watch it circle around the central hole as though it were actually orbiting it. They’ve got a similar device at Science World in Vancouver. But this one, in Ottawa, doesn’t use balls anymore (it used to, right? I think it did), instead using coins. And yes, coins do work pretty much as balls do—except loonies, their corners slow them way down—but that’s just weird. Did they run out of little balls at some point? Were toddlers swallowing the balls or something?

I didn’t actually use money, but I saw a family try it. I hope they were able to collect their money afterwards.

Other familiar stuff: the big locomotives. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing them as absolutely gigantic, five storeys high at least, instead of the 12–15 feet high they really are. We got to climb in the engine rooms and figure out what all the levers and gauges were for, and imagine what life must have been like for these men, zooming along at almost 100 miles an hour, only a couple tiny windows allowing you to see ahead, constantly having to monitor the health of this metal monster you’re riding, and shovelling coal in its maw…

CPR 3100

CPR 3100 engine

Oh, and the Crazy Kitchen is still there. Always popular with the kiddies, even though back then I was too sensitive to motion sickness to really enjoy it. But that’s not so much of a problem these days, and, well… just like the locomotives, the kitchen is way smaller than I remember. I went through it in just a few seconds, and it never occurred to me to stay and enjoy the spatial distortion.

But here’s the thing: what if the museum had remained completely unchanged from the days of yore? And what if I found out the old games and exhibits weren’t quite as awesome as I remember? The Archimedes screw kept me amused for all of 10 seconds and a couple photos. The big locomotives were better, since I could read up on their history and enjoy them on more levels than as a kid.

Likewise, the new exhibits: on the Canadian space program, the cool science that came out of it; on cars, from the very oldest to the newest and coolest electric ones; on Canada’s energy use and resources, kind of didactic but overall very good; on communications, networks and connections, featuring old-timey phones, radios, computers and TVs (plus, interesting history and Canadian milestones); other interesting science instruments. All of that was very, very awesome and educational, and—nerdy and precocious as I was—I don’t think I could have appreciated what they had to offer when I was younger.

Electric eels

Old calculating tools

I realise now I was doing the museum a disservice by seeing it only through my nostalgia goggles, and not giving the new stuff a chance. Things change, and that’s okay. I’ve changed, and that’s more than okay. Nowadays I get to enjoy googling Anik satellites and lovely arithmometres (so deliciously Steampunk!), tagging Flickr photos and of course blogging about it. My nerdiness has grown up, that’s all.

On the way out I donated $5, all the cash I had on me. Though the museum doesn’t have the magic I remember, it has a different magic, and is still just as kick-ass as it ever was. Although, my biggest disappointment? The gift shop didn’t have the cool phrenology head that was on display alongside other 19th-century paraphernalia. Now that would have been a hell of a souvenir!

Phrenology model

Flying from Toronto

On Tuesday I flew out east to spend Xmas with the family. Sadly, for most of the trip I did not have a window seat allowing me to take awesome aerial photos—and they probably wouldn’t have been that awesome anyway, since from what I could tell most of Canada was under cloud cover. However, I got a window seat on my connecting flight from Toronto, and though the weather was still mostly overcast (and snowing in Ottawa) I managed to snap some good pics of the roads around YYZ.

On Tuesday I flew out east to spend Xmas with the family. Sadly, for most of the trip I did not have a window seat allowing me to take awesome aerial photos—and they probably wouldn’t have been that awesome anyway, since from what I could tell most of Canada was under cloud cover. However, I got a window seat on my connecting flight from Toronto, and though the weather was still mostly overcast (and snowing in Ottawa) I managed to snap some good pics of the roads around YYZ.

On the ground at YYZ

Taking off from YYZ

The SW end of YYZ

Dixie Dr & Courtnenaypark Dr E

Courtnenaypark Dr E & Hwy 410

Highways 401, 403, 410

Clouds

Freelance Camp 2012

I attended my second Freelance Camp this weekend. I won’t try to summarise the excellent talks, because I’m still digesting all the nuggets of wisdom and working to put them in practice. I will say that I met some amazing folks who are doing amazing things, and I feel more energised than ever about my freelancing career.

I attended my second Freelance Camp this weekend. I won’t try to summarise the excellent talks, because I’m still digesting all the nuggets of wisdom and pondering all the great tools I learned about and working to put it all in practice. I will say that I met some amazing folks who are doing amazing things, and I feel more energised than ever about my freelancing career.

And of course, since I pretty much never come down to New West except for FLC, I snapped a few photos around the quay.

The world's largest tin soldier

Three Bridges

And a cute photo of a sparrow I took the day before. Such a pretty little thing!

Sparrow in the morning

The Storm Crow

Went to the Storm Crow, a nerd-themed pub on Commercial, for a friend’s birthday. The food was so-so, but cheap, so no complaints there. The real draw is the atmosphere: D&D-style posters, and card/board games to play. Plus, a truly astounding collection of “Choose Your Adventure” books.

Went to the Storm Crow, a nerd-themed pub on Commercial, for a friend’s birthday. The food was so-so, but cheap, so no complaints there. The real draw is the atmosphere: D&D-style posters, and card/board games to play. Plus, a truly astounding collection of “Choose Your Adventure” books. A few photos of the evening:

On the way there:

Leaf turning red

A bench

Playing Building an Elder God:

Building an Elder God

Northern Voice 2012, Part 4: And The Rest

Last but not least, a bunch of talks that didn’t easily fit together:

Last but not least, a bunch of talks that didn’t easily fit together:

On Friday Martha Rans of Artists Legal Outreach gave us a brief overview of copyright law in Canada, the why and the how. I learned a few interesting things, such as that you can copyright lighting techniques in photography. Subjects like the Eiffel Tower can’t be copyrighted, but composition and lighting can—in Martha’s words, copyright is not about ideas, it’s about expression of ideas.

And there’s the basics, which still bear repeating: the Web is not public domain. You don’t get to use stuff without attribution or permission. And money is not the issue. Most artists and creators would be perfectly happy with a “This is great! Can I use it if I attribute to you / link back / whatever?” Likewise, creators need to make it easy for people to do this. A “If you like my work, get in touch with me!” message on your blog may prevent people from just lifting your stuff.

This was followed by Jon Newton talking about the defamation case against his old site, p2pnet.net, about which more here. It wasn’t a long talk; Newton isn’t a public speaker, and the merits of the decision were so blindingly self-evident that there wasn’t much point to a Q&A period.

Next, Photocamp! John Biehler gave a little demonstration of light painting (well, not an actual demonstration, though he did have the gizmo in question with him).

Ariane Colebrander gave us some tips on accessories: not lenses or tripods or such, but the bags and packs that you lug it all around in.

Morten Rand-Hendriksen taught us (1) how to shake hands like the Vikings of old, and (2) a few techniques to efficiently blog your photos and publicize them on social networks. He demoed a cool plugin (whose name I forget) that allows you to post your photos on Facebook at the same time as you’re posting them to your blog. Choose the featured image for your post, and it’ll show in the preview in your timeline. You can tag your friends or other pages. Probably lots of other nifty features. This wasn’t directly useful to me since I post my photos on Flickr. Still, a little more SEO wouldn’t hurt…

Syx Langemann gave us a brief tutorial on portrait photography: how to watch out for visual noise, how to use lighting, and most of all that you should respect your subject. “We owe it to the person in front of the camera to create a beautiful & powerful photo.” The story of his great-uncle was especially moving and memorable.

And I don’t remember if it was Morten or Syx who gave us the addresses of a couple of photography blogs. Nevertheless, here they are:

Vivian Meier, a stupendously talented photographer who never showed her work to anyone and only became famous after her death.

yowayowa camera, the blog of a Japanese girl who does “levitation” photography. It’s strange, a little eerie, and absolutely brilliant.

Kemp Edmonds talked to us about lifelong learning. This is about the point that my laptop died, but fortunately I jotted down a few notes on my phone. Very incomplete, but better than nothing, especially since the link I have to his presentation doesn’t seem to work.

Anyway: the key to self-directed lifelong learning is in 6 steps:

  1. Decide what you wat to learn (it has to be something you’ll be passionate about)
  2. Discover your tools: podcasts, videos, lynda.com, Google Scholar, TED, were some of the ideas thrown out by the audience. I loved that Kemp actively encouraged audience participation; in fact, near the beginning of his talk he said something something about looking forward to learning from us. Great attitude!
  3. Find, filter and evaluate all those tools
  4. Who will you learn from? (My notes here mention “the hierarchy of contagiousness”)
  5. Select your method of experimentation. For example, to be a better photographer, post to Flickr and solicit feedback. For me, that would be blogging to hone my voice, and develop themes and plugins to share
  6. Who will you teach? Everybody knows one of the best ways to learn is to teach!

Quote of the day: “You don’t have to know everything, you just have to know that you don’t know everything.”

So, there you go, that was Northern Voice 2012. The quality of speakers was top-notch, I had a great time and learned a lot! Can’t wait for next year!

Northern Voice 2012, Part 2: In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night

Part 2 of my NV12 recaps: productivity, voice, and comics

Mike Vardy‘s talk on Saturday dealt with Better Blogging Productivity. He offered some commonsense tips such as:

  • Be realistic (or in his words, “get real!”): get clear about what you can and can’t do in the windows of time available to you. If you only have a little bit of time, do simple things like catch up on email or collect ideas. Save the really creative work for when you can focus on it
  • Build a schedule. In Mike’s words, blog proficiently not prolifically. Start small, get used to a blogging routine, and build up from there.
  • Avoid distractions (as opposed to disruptions). Distractions are messages, email notifications, anything nonurgent and avoidable.

Commonsense, sure, but this is stuff I definitely need to work on. I don’t have a blogging routine, and as often as not I’ll check my email when that little red circle appears over the icon. Hey, at least I turned off the sound notifications!

Then Mike offered a number of tools to help with this productivity: tasks managers like 30/30, email filters like AwayFind, forced discipline apps like Freedom (on the Mac).

But the kicker to me was when he said, “discipline is not enough. You need willpower.” Mike told the audience that he wears a Green Lantern ring when blogging as a physical focus. Green Lanterns, as everyone knows, are powered by will. And who is Green Lantern’s arch-nemesis, he asked? “Sinestro,” I replied from the front row. And what does Sinestro run on? “Fear,” I replied again, thus outing myself as a big nerd. Bottom line, then: fear impedes willpower.

And you know what? I totally get it. My take on the discipline vs. willpower dichotomy is that the former is going through the motions, tools and habits that you need to internalise until they’re second nature. Willpower, on the other hand, is the clarity of hearing that little voice pushing you to create and excel. Fears, doubts and insecurities definitely get in the way of hearing that voice.

(Incidentally, Mike and I chatted over lunch for a bit, and I learned about the Green Lantern animated series. I watched the entire first season the day after the conference, and I’m here to tell you it’s awesome. I didn’t think I’d be crazy about the CGI animation, but the technology’s come a long way, and the story, characters and action are all fantastic. Any series that stars Atrocitus, Mogo and Saint Walker is tops in my book.)

After lunch, Shane Birley‘s keynote The Evolution of the Blogger’s Voice took us on a whirlwind sci-fi trip through his blogging history. There was no real plot, just a collection of vignettes from 1998 to the present day: his time in Victoria, meeting Allyson, getting laid off from Cayenta, starting Left Right Minds, and the million other projects he’s currently got going.

Some of his posts (especially the early ones) were about looking for vindication, feeling grumpy, feeling tied down, and looking for his voice. And then his voice came, though sometimes it didn’t feel that way. The moral is: you already have a voice, you just have to find it. It may not be through plain text blogs. Try podcasts, vlogs? Keep digging, and you’ll find it.

And here’s what I’m taking from this talk. I’m not sure if this was really Shane’s point, but here goes, my interpretation:

The thing is, discipline will keep your world ordered, and willpower will keep you putting one foot in front of the other, but you need to see where you’re going, or at least hope that the tied-down-ness and the grumpiness will pass, and you will find your voice one day. All will be well.

My personal view is that Fear has many opposites, not just Willpower. Another is Hope. That’s in the comics too, by the way. Blue Lanterns (powered by hope) by themselves are apparently the weakest of the emotional spectrum (I guess reflecting the fact that hope alone is passive and kind of useless). But team them up with a Green Lantern and they boost each other’s power so as to be nigh-unstoppable. Hope and Willpower together are the greatest force in the universe.

Imagine No Religion 2

It’s been more than a week since the Imagine No Religion 2 conference in Kamloops. I’d never been to Kamloops, and in fact had only ventured into the Interior a couple of times. So hey, this was a little closer to home than TAM, a lot of the local skeptical crowd would be there, why not go too? It’d be like a 2-day long Skeptics in the Pub.

It’s been more than a week since the Imagine No Religion 2 conference in Kamloops. I’d never been to Kamloops, and in fact had only ventured into the Interior a couple of times. So hey, this was a little closer to home than TAM, a lot of the local skeptical crowd would be there, why not go too? It’d be like a 2-day long Skeptics in the Pub.

May 18

Road trip! We left Vancouver in the late morning, and decided to take Highway 1 to Kamloops. Longer, but more scenic. We stopped for lunch in Hope, snapped some pictures, and moved on.

Highway 1

Greenwood Island

After that, it gets a little confusing. I took lots of pictures but for the most part I only have a vague idea of where I actually was. One stretch of Hwy 1 looks pretty much like another, and I had very few landmarks to guide me. Still, it was a great experience. How often do I get to see a semi-arid landscape like this? Don’t think I’d want to live there (I do like the green), especially with nothing but tiny-ass town for miles around, but it’s nice to visit.

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Cows in a field

And then we got to Kamloops. A pretty little town!!

View from the conference centre: North Thompson River

There wasn’t much going on Friday night except a debate (not covered by conference fees, because it was open to the public). You know the drill: two atheists and two theologians debate the age-old question: does God/Gods exist? Actually, they only debated the Judeo-Christian God, with the same lame arguments you’d expect: Prime Mover, the fine-tuning argument, the argument from absolute moral values, atheism requires omniscience, if you consider the evidence with your heart you’ll see it, etc… All of them have been debunked, all of them show these theologians have never debated in front of a mainly skeptical audience. Not surprising, really. The other debaters, Matt Dillahunty and Christopher DiCarlo took them on and demolished their medieval arguments, though of course no minds were changed. Oh well.