Author: Aaron Weber

Dawkins, Faith, Reason, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Salon’s got a nice profile up about Richard Dawkins and his bulldogging for Darwin. He’s not just a defender of science, though– he’s added in attacks on religion in general. I disagree.

Faith is not a bad thing– and that it is, in fact, quite important in the world, even though I’m not a believer myself. A lot of good things get done because of faith. A lot of people are able to endure a lot of hardship because of faith. Faith gives you a reason to exist. Faith in bad things is bad, faith in good things is good, but faith without reason is not always bad.

What I’m arguing is that things don’t have to be true to be good. Same with the belief that children are wonderful. Statistics show us that people are happy before their kids are born, and after they leave the house, and that they look back on their children with fondness– but that for 18 years, children are mostly drudgery and hard work. Nonetheless, it’s important to believe that children really are bundles of joy — otherwise humanity would die out. Faith works the same way: even if it’s not true, it makes the world go round.

I agree with Dawkins that fundamentalism is dangerous to our society, that evolution over millions of years is the only reasonable explanation of the world we see around us, and that God does not in fact exist. Where we differ is his line that religion is always a bad thing. Religious faith — blind faith in anything, religious or not– has done plenty of harm. But it’s also done plenty of good. He reels off examples of terrorism, the crusades, and so forth. But he neglects examples like Stalinism (faith in secular falsehoods that led to evil) and Mother Teresa (religious faith, religious good).

Of course, I am still annoyed that a lot of people think a lack of faith is always a bad thing. Apparently, few Americans think the country would be ready for an atheist president (heck, only sixty percent think a woman could win). That’s foolishness. If you respect faith you must also respect doubt.

Copyright Douchebaggery

From a discussion about copyright and YouTube/Google:

The purpose of fair use was to allow use of works when transactions were impractical. In that spirit we should acknowledge that if you use someone’s song in a basement skit that never leaves your basement, that should be fair use. But if 50 million people see the skit on YouTube and it generates $1 million in advertising revenues, that should not be fair use.

In other words, everyone who posts their version of the Numa Numa dance has to get express written permission from the RIAA on the off chance that it will become their 15 megabytes of fame.

Why not just piss on the my birthday cake while you’re at it?

Attack Ads

Jack and Jill Politics says the latest Kerry Healy ad attacking Deval Patrick is racist. I’m not 100% sure, but it’s definitely sleazy.

What really bugs me, of course, is the vague grammar of the final line: “Lawyers have a right to defend admitted cop-killers, but do we really want one as our governor?”

Is Kerry Healy’s campaign trying to imply that Deval is a cop-killer, or a lawyer? And which is worse in the eyes of the public?

Cold Storage

This weekend, we rode out to Stow and put the motorcycles in our friends’ garage for the winter. We probably could have kept them in town another couple weeks, but we had a ride back this weekend, so yesterday was my last motorcycle day until maybe April ’07.

It makes me sadder than I’d like to admit. I’ve never wanted to be the kind of guy who gets attached to mere consumer goods. I mean, it’s an expensive, dangerous, toy that wastes gasoline and is bad for the environment. How can I be so insistent on wanting to ride it until the weather turns bitterly cold?

But it feels like I have put my manhood into winter storage, and I’m afraid that when I get it back, it’ll be all moth-eaten.

Style Trends: Expensive, Dangerous Toys

Way back in September 2005 I made some predictions about the 2007 motorcycle models. Well, the announcements for the ’07 model year came out last month and I forgot to blog about it.

My usual favorite, Honda, does nothing I care for. Plenty of updates and improvements for their class-leading race-replica sportbike, the ever-faster, ever-lighter CBR600 RR, and little or nothing for the cruisers, the cool scooters (Ruckus series), and the naked bikes (The 599 ‘Hornet’ and 919). Triumph, the other manufacturer I follow, has stuck with small improvements to its existing bikes too.

(You’ll note that while I love the Honda and Triumph brands, I ride a Suzuki. That’s because Suzuki makes a great bike at a great price. I don’t much like the direction that they’ve taken with the SV650 styling since ’02, but that’s neither here nor there: the SV series is still the best value on the market.)

Anyway, I’d hoped that Honda would come out with some screamingly cool stuff this year, and I was totally wrong about that. I was correct about the increasing sales for dual-sports and bumpy road bikes following in the wake of the Scrambler, though. Mostly it came in the form of bikes released later on into the 2006 model year: the BMW HP2, the Buell Ulysses, and I’ve heard Ducati’s coming up with a more-rugged Multistrada, too, but I can’t seem to find it right now. All of that, plus the usual stuff from KTM and the semi-street-legal Motocross bikes from all the Japanese manufacturers, seem to be popping up here and there, although nothing comes close to the popularity of the race replica sportbikes and Harley-imitators.

I’ve learned two things from these predictions. First, my tastes do not predict the markets. Second, because I am willing to admit failure, I can never be a technology analyst.