Richard Alexander Hall

This was reported almost three months ago, and I haven’t heard a peep about this from the wider press.  How can this be?

“Galactic cosmic rays carry with them radiation from other parts of our galaxy,” said Ed Smith, NASA’s Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system.”

Great, now we’re ruining not only the ozone layer, but we’re putting holes in the heliosphere way out beyond Pluto!  We have to stop polluting our planet – no, our solar system! I demand legislation to stop this now!

This find is delighting and making me chuckle this fine Christmas Eve Day.. Morning.

Book Of Time 3D Screensaver – This screen saver is a philosophic approach to the process of time. The book, which has next moment on each of its pages. On the one page it has the past on the next the future comes. Where is the present then? Maybe somewhere between these two ones. This screen saver makes it possible to behold the enigma while the time is turning over on the shabby old book’s pages. Do you want to look through the book till the end?

Sorry, but my $14.95 can get me better passage of my time.  Thanks for the chuckles though, Chucky!

Also:

Skull and Bones 3D Screensaver – Guard your desktop with this awesome screen saver. Bet you have never seen such lovely skull on your screen. You will see rotating skull and crossbones – the symbol of real threat. Molten metal effects and cool sunglasses combine perfectly with sinister background. Impressive 3D graphics along with tense urban sound effects will really amaze you. Download this screen saver now – it not only saves your screen, but also the entire computer.

Ar!  But can it save me from Engrish?  Never mind.  I need the laughs.

Based on feedback I got from a post I made to the Electric Sheep user’s forum (here – including from the creator of the screen saver himself!) on the.. electric fleece? – I updated them.  Many ready-to-order examples at my zazzle page.

I’ve unintentionally mislead people to thinking I designed the images in that page (linked from the previous post).  No – others have designed them; they are from an “electric sheep” screensaver.  I’ll update the top of the page to clarify (because it credits the electric sheep way down at the bottom.)

People that submit these images to the render farm which the screensaver coordinates – people use a program called Apophysis to design these “sheep”.  Coincidentally though, I have come on that program and used it independently.  I used it as the basis of the following image, which I worked up further in Painter X.  This is a large thumbnail – click it for the original huge size.

My first Apophysis-related image.

It has been horrifying and surreal to read, hear and see the events unfolding around California’s State Ballot Proposition no. 8.

I’ve spent more time reading, listening to and watching the advertisements and arguments of the movement I disagree with (No On 8 ) in order to grasp their point of view.

Items:

1. Disappointed “No on 8″ voters protest outside the walls of the Los Angeles Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or “Mormon”).

One thing at least the protesters aren’t happy about is that, leading up to the Ballot vote, the LDS Church had urged its members to contribute to the cause of the “Yes on 8″ campaign – and it worked.  Wikipedia cites mercurynews.com that about 45 percent of out-of-state donations to “Yes on 8″ came from citizens of the state of Utah (which is mostly populated by Mormons and where the LDS Church is headquartered).

The following YouTube video, about 10 minutes, is footage of the protesters shouting “Go back to Utah!” – “You wanted Armaggedon?” – “SHAME ON YOU!! SHAME ON YOU!!” – and “TAX THE MORMON CHURCH!! TAX THE MORMON CHURCH!” – or that’s everything I picked out.

Slanderous, hate-filled messages on signs (link – Flikr gallery) from protesters condemn Mormons and/or their Church.  The hypocrisy of these signs is well-described at this post at the One Thousand and One Parsecs blog, here.  I would only add that the Flikr gallery evidences vandalism on Temple walls, vandalism of sacred grounds, from people preaching “love” and “tolerance.”

The source of the protesters’ ire?  If, as they believe, they’ve lost a civil right, this is freedom fighting.  What is a slap in the face when you’ve lost your human, your civil rights?  That’s the morality of it, from their vantage.  But this has started to go beyond slaps.  Some apparently felt justified in physically attacking – beating to the ground – an onlooker who, out of pity for the sacred grounds, proceeded to remove the offensive signs – as reported at Meridian (link).

Granting what I think is a radically far stretch, that these beliefs justify such measures (the Democratic process is still very open! – I’m not out slugging Obama supporters because of my disappointment!) – how good are these protesters’ arguments?  Well, I think the aforementioned blog post also dismantles that.

2. There’s contradiction among “No on 8″ supporters in their condemnation of religious reasons for supporting Prop 8.  (There’s contradiction among Mormons, too, which is sad.  Your prophets make their occasional prophetic statement – in this case supporting something – you believe your prophets are prophets, you support it too.  That simple.  Unless you don’t believe they’re prophets.  Which admits complication.)  According to a KUTV report I saw, the “No on 8″ campaign does not support the infamous ad portraying LDS missionaries invading a lesbian couples’ home and shredding their marriage certificate.  However, that campaign has repeatedly singled out the Mormon church as antagonists to their campaign – their news section fairly frequently mentions the Mormon church and Utah, and scarcely mentions the wider religious coalition or other bodies opposed to their campaign.  Clearly the Mormon church is consistently in their sights – and meanwhile, many of thier associates, if not the “No on 8″ campaign itself – these protestors, and the producers of that vile commercial clearly condemn motives for supporting Prop. 8. that originate in religious motivations.  “SEPARATE CHURCH AND HATE!” reads a sign.  “Say NO to a church taking over your government”, says the ad.  Clearly many of these folks are opposed to the LDS church urging a yes vote. Confusing, in light of “No on 8″ often reporting that this or that religious institution urges you to vote no on Prop. 8.  Examples: [link 1]- [link 2] – [link 3, a video, clearly displaying the No on 8 campaign logo]. There was an ad from their campaign with a man clearly stating his church says to vote no – end of ad, final point (wish I remembered the link).  So how would it be not okay for the LDS church to religiously support the Proposition, while it would be okay for any other church to religiously oppose it?

Point to underscore: this is a moral question, often or usually founded in religious feeling. Religion is by definition irrational.  It explains the unexplained and cosmological.  (So does science, more often than we usually admit.)  Opponents to the proposition openly appeal to religion.  So do proponents.  Because, strictly, both are thinking irrationally – that is to say, religiously – they may never agree.  Therefore, appeal to religion has no effective place in discourse over state policy questions, which is what this question is. And we’re mixing those up.  Religion can have appeal to individual citizens’ right of conscience, and how the people collectively vote becomes law. Religion influences the State but is not the State. No religion’s reason dictates the law. That would impinge on the religious right, or right of conscience, of one religious group, while putting forward the other.  Which, as pointed out from my first link, has happened to churches. Won’t put kids up for adoption to gay couples?  Blam – you can’t put up any kids for adoption anymore.  Won’t marry gays?  Blam – out goes your tax-exempt status.  Meanwhile, gays in civil unions in California retain all the same legal rights as heterosexual marrieds.  Who is losing rights?  Whose religiously asserted right is impinging on the rights of others?

A very thought-provoking post at one blog got me, well, thinking:

“One post commented wondering if there was a way for both sides to get what they wanted. There probably is. It would be for the state to acknowledge that homesexuality [sic] is a faith based practice.”

I haven’t even begun to think through the implications of that.  But it made me stop.

Meanwhile, George Lucas.. disappoints me again.  As if the writing in Episodes I-II wasn’t bad enough (if largely redeemed in episodes III, IV and V), now Lucas buys the line that anybody is losing any moral-civil rights, and shells out $100,000 to keep the line going.

When did you not grasp the actual machinations that give rise to an Evil Galactic Empire?

I’ve got to end on a good note.  (That is, unless you disagree with me.) As a Mormon, I’d like to express a thank you to the people who said and created the following.

Read here.

[This entry was temporarily posted at this page, and has been moved here.]

To: President Bush <comments@whitehouse.gov>

Subj: OPPOSED to H.R. 5889 The Orphan Works Act of 2008

Dear President Bush,

I am very alarmed by the so-called “Orphan Works Act” of 2008, which has twice very recently been “hotlined” by Senators and has now passed in the Senate.  It is a basic philosophical reversal of copyright law and could spell economic doom – not an overstatement – to the enterprises of countless artists.  If the bill also passes in the house, I ask you simply to veto the bill.  I suggest that your best source of opposition to the bill may be found in the ample resources and rhetoric of the Illustrators Partnership of America.

Sincerely,

Alex Hall

[My street address]

[My phone number]

I began all the following as a reply to friend and visitor Hydralisk in my last post – but obviously this is so voluminous as to only issue a Warrant for an Entry. By the way I just installed a “commodore 64″-like theme I found – you can try reading this entry under that theme with this link.

Hydralisk, having missed your intended irony in a post at your blog recently (and making a fool of myself – no one will see this; I requested he take down my mislead comment), I’m not sure what tone to read in your comment. But, thinking anyway that I might see some clear arguments and implications, and whether I’m really responding to your comments or not, here are my thoughts:

This is why I personally make a point of believing in everything everyone tells me about anything unless I can produce proof to the contrary.

Surely that’s irony. Everything is true until disproved? If you mean that seriously I’d have to call it a straw man, as nobody argued that.

One of the mormon Articles of Faith is “We believe all things..”; which I don’t believe is literal: rather it is a statement that we believe anything is possible. As Nephi put it: “If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them.” So whatever idea we hear, no matter how outlandish, it never does any harm to think: “That could be true, that could be possible.” (By the way, this is a very effective tactic to deflect criticism. If someone tells you that you are an infantile demagogue bent on world dominion, one appropriate response is “That could be true.”) This is neither belief nor disbelief: it is holding belief in abeyance, pending any further experience that would seem to either validate or invalidate the idea.

And happy not all the time – maybe not even a lot of the time? – I’m sorry if that is so. God knows (and I admit I’m saying this to an avowed atheist) that any person’s life can be that way – for a lot of people there isn’t ever even a glimmer. There have been times I wondered where the glimmer is. And I would never presume to tell anybody who suffers that they simply don’t have enough faith (the all too common, too abstract, trite solution of well-meaning but misguided mormons), or that they should simply throw out anything that seems to them to go contrary to religious belief.

All religions are true? But that’s an extension of the earlier identified ironic straw-man. Of course truth, assuming it were absolute, could not be both absolute and relative: the same absolute question being true for one person and false for another. (Although strictly, there are provisions of mercy in mormon belief that can make that effectively true for individuals who for whatever reason never heard, or were never able to cling to, The Truth, as mormonism preaches it.)

Expressions of certainty in belief could be called arrogant? It could be (you observe here the use of the aforementioned deflective tactic). But I see unfortunate implications there. It would be arrogant to claim a religious belief or experience to be true if that belief could not possibly be true; that would be arrogantly seeking to prove the unprovable. But how could it be arrogant to conclude that something is or could be so, if it is also not arrogant to conclude that something is not so or could not be so? Both positions operate outside of what can be proved or disproved, so they must both be either arrogant or not arrogant together; not one the one and the other the other. So much for that contradiction. If a religious claimant truly did state “Even if this is not provable, I still know it is true”, I might agree that is arrogant. But I’d have to say at the same time it may be arrogant to claim someone cannot know it is true. So how about dropping either question and simply focusing on experience – sensory memory, feeling, apparent cause and effect etc?

The experience I argue for is that certain religious practices will lead one to happiness, and that this experience of happiness can be seen as proof of a loving God allowing us to experience grace and joy in our lives. Such a claim cannot be rhetorically proven true or false.* Such a claim is not an attempt to give proof, rather, it is an invitation for others to run the same experiments which gave the person witnessing their basis of belief – their own feelings, what they have experienced, what they have felt, what it seems to them has been divinely given or communicated to them as a result of their sincere efforts to live in a way that tries out the proposed truths.

Mormonism has doubt built into it. Mormons (ideally) are completely capable of turning everything they believe on their head, pending further revelation. This is in the Article of Faith that “..we believe that He [God] will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” Contrary to what you conclude (and if you mean this as comic irony, I don’t see the utility of the punch line), nobody is about shifting any burden of proof (or disproof) onto anyone – Smith himself said he doesn’t blame anyone for not believing him; that he wouldn’t believe it himself if it hadn’t happened to him. To be rather blunt, it seems to me that atheists may usually be more concerned about proof or disproof than believers. I’ve started reading an article in this month’s Christianity Today claiming that the philosophy of verificationism (the burden of proof or disproof) was quite in vogue one generation ago, but that it died in part because its adherents realized verificationism itself could not be verified. Apparently the philosophy may be an undying favorite, as (CT also claims) it is the basis of a recent spate of best-selling books arguing for atheism.

This talk about being privy to proof that angels pass out golden books to farm boys**, this is rooted in more of the same straw man that anyone should believe anything without proof (or disproof). Of course nobody can prove Joseph Smith had any golden plates. That goes right back to what I began with: of course there isn’t proof. To say (as I have) that experience is the proof of religion, and that I know certain religious ideas to be true, this can only be to say: this is my experience. This is what I feel about this. I’m certain I’ve felt this (what I explain or believe to be the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost), and all the evidence seems to me to show that this religious explanation (the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) is the reason.

There have been times – and still are – where I ask exactly what started this whole discussion, the same question Dutcher reported asking himself in horror: “What if it all isn’t true?” I have only to think on my experiences to dispel that doubt. If everything I believe is wrong, this is still my experience: it all seems to be the foundation of all the genuine happiness I have ever known, and more than that, the foundation of overcoming every unhappiness that I so far have.

Nobody is proving or disproving mormonism. For all I know most or all of what I believe about my religion could be utter malarkey. I don’t care. It’s doing me good, and I’ll keep it, thanks. Amen.

Meanwhile, I still open the discussion on religion, so long as it focuses on experience – so long as nobody tries to steer the dialogue into any nonsense questions of proof or disproof. To be rather blunt, looking for signs – and I would call a quest for disproof a quest for sorts of anti-signs – it’s exactly the kind of nonsense the Bible itself (never mind the Book of Mormon) frequently throws down. Trying the experiments of religion, that is the point – and I’m not out to say the experiment has to work for everyone, either. Obviously, I’d like it to work for you. That’s my religious bias. But I don’t know enough about you yet to know whether I think I’d even suggest any specific experiments supposed to be tailored to your life, and I’d have to first prove, er, that is, substantially provide a basis for a belief in the probability of the truth, that I care enough to take seriously any and every thought you have for and against belief. Or unbelief.

*never mind that mormonism urges its adherents to avoid rhetorical, read contentious religious discussion, and instead focus on attempting to communicate in a way that invites the Spirit of God

**which, by the way, as stupid as the story may sound, is exactly what I love about it – the Lord works through the weak and simple, and by small, humble, and even absurd means brings about good – the God of all creation was born in a stable? Divine truth was given to a fourteen year old, uneducated farmer?

This article at the L.A. times came to my attention.

(No, this film still is from Brigham City.  It’s just a great still of The Sheriff.)

My thoughts:

First, I didn’t find FALLING to be “spiritually disquieting” (or causing unease or anxiety). It opened some very probing questions, which, personally, only led to very assuring answers for me. And the film as a whole moved me.

Second, I don’t buy the line that Mormons are embargoed from seeing R-rated films. Bleh. Can this myth please die?

And thirdly and waxing philosophical, as for this quote of Dutcher wondering “what if it’s not true?” -

That surprises me. I don’t expect religion to leave me doubt-free. It’s clear the Savior had his profound doubts just before enacting the atonement. In my book, doubt and questioning, looking for answers – that’s the soil for faith and belief. It was certainly where Joseph Smith began his journey. Proof isn’t the point. You can no more disprove any point of religion (for example the existence of God) than anyone can prove it.

The results of living your religion are the proof. Meetings, taking the sacrament, service, study, testing the word of God. You try the experiments; and do the results make you unhappy or happy?

If you’re not trying the word of God – if you aren’t going to church, if you isolate yourself from your religious community, for starters – you won’t get results. It’s easy to conjecture there’s no merit to a theory you aren’t testing.

And much of the test is what my service or involvement can contribute. As a Bishop put it to me, he never found any ward (Mormon congregation) he liked until he stopped focusing on what others were (or weren’t) doing for him, and started focusing on what he can give.

I see friends who begin expressing doubt, mere luke-warm feelings, or even disenfranchisement, with the church, the people in their ward and the things they believe and say, and this all happens at the same time they’ve stopped attending church. Guess what? What these misguided people around you need is for you to go to church and present your take on things in a positive, non-threatening way. (And I know these friends have good and enlightening things to say.)

If others may not be seeing the light, how about shedding some of your own? The Mormon church is designed to informally acquaint us with each other’s insights. If there sometimes isn’t much insight, there’s even less if people nonplussed with that fact keep on waiting for the situation to change – without realizing they can change it. Without realizing they can never know how they positively impact others. There are many people in the LDS religious community who have no idea how they’ve positively impacted me.

Did Jesus walk the streets during his ministry visiting the sick, the poor, the social outcasts, the odd ones, the unwanted, all the while asking himself “What am I getting from these weirdos, what’s in this for me?”

Religion may not be thrilling very often, ergo the command to “endure to the end”. I’ve found that any time I give up the endurance test, again, I feel empty.

Never mind I’d tell you like many a Mormon I know it’s all true. Which I do. My doubts are about what this religion can actually do for me (the acknowledged paradox being that I shouldn’t just be in it for me). I’ll always be figuring that out – and those doubts are exactly what lead me to keep trying things out.

Re the previous two gag promos here and here.

I’ve mentioned this electric sheep screen saver. Here’s one mpg from it.

I may find a way to batch convert them and incorporate them into the blog design. That won’t make it impossible for you to read.. Click either “play now” or “play in popup” to see it. If either of those don’t work, click the download link and have a look at it in Windows Media Player.

The screen saver has downloaded a bajillion of these goodies into its cache on my machine. Eye candy. I think this one is morphing between four different “sheep” IDs.

Referring to the previous entry, good luck with the truth anyway if the internets are against you.

Wow.  Bizarre twists on meaning become dominant and obliterate everything else.

(Except for one brilliant article pointed it out, and I’m posting about it, and you’re reading it.  Maybe it is always free or bound to be free.)

Ah ha ha!

“The truth will make us strong.”

I’m waiting for more.  Please.  Feed me another verse.  I’ll start compiling it into a Windows Bible.  Not that there isn’t at least one already.

Here is a script for something I’m going to shoot soon – my son will star.