CAG@ICH#48
"Make that a double."
This is the third time in just over a week i've had prepared for me a double shot of espresso when i asked for a single, and i must say i'm enamored. Two of these times (Zazzy'z and the Easy Chair) i suppose i'd been obvious that i was merely underfunded, and the other (She-Sha) was simply a happy accident. This could go unnoticed, but historically i've preferred doubles to singles, and when i brew my own i use the grounds for a single (a cost-inspired choice) but the water for a double. As they were clearly (from historical ads) intended, single shots are good for taking and running, saving one the social segue or relaxation of sitting down for a minute to sip. The doubles don't quite afford us (the lightweights) this option, so when we intend to sit around idly for a while, reading or grading or blogging, the double is something of a bare necessity, a lower bound for the purpose of lounging.
the humility in self-promotion
I can't remember where i read this (apparently it's not an original idea anymore), but i concur: Thoreau may have been one of the original experimental bloggers, someone who turns eir life into a grand experiment - for a time - then capitalizes on (or at least popularizes) eir own subsequent or continual documentation of the experience.
This raises to me the question of whether sincerity in personal lifestyle is reflected in self-promotion. The immediate response one might put forth is that the desire to popularize oneself deflates or negates the value of the experiment, allowing it to be categorized as a simply commercial or self-righteous cry for attention. But i counter: Of what benefit is a change of lifestyle to anyone but oneself if others are not given the opportunity to learn from it? The promotion of one's idea benefits others by (a) making them aware of options and ideas they may never have come across otherwise and (b) demonstrating by example their advantages and disadvantages, so that they may experiment, if they so desire, with less risk.
This comes back, however, to my own predilection against self-promotion, a sort of self-imposed humility of unknown origin that has tightened its grip on me with every ethical adjustment i make. I have striven to set a good example, rather than proselytize, in order to deter fewer potential self-reevaluators. This, however, feels like a moral shadow of the clearly misguided (if not vile) strategy of the main figure (pun intended) of a recent xkcd. If i honestly think that people would benefit themselves and the world by choosing to adjust their habits as i have, why should i not at least exhibit my own? Demonstrating is not proselytizing, and those of any inclination at all to reassess themselves are likely not of the persuasion that "free" movements (atheism, gay rights, open-source, etc.) typically have secret agendas and manifestos.
(I personally hold religions in contempt and hope for their quick dissolution, but i'm far from sufficiently organized to have developed an atheist manifesto.)
To this end, then, i resolve to be more outspoken (i.e. to speak out more) about both the major campaigns and the little habits i've adopted that i find worthy of widespread adoption. We'll see how much this actually matters in the months to come.
skepticism and load-shedding
There's a great rift in the nonreligious community over how to designate someone "atheist" or "agnostic", even when that person is oneself. In my conversations with nonreligious people, almost all express the same basic premise, but they call it by one of the two names above rather arbitrarily: These nonreligious people are nonreligious because they find no evidence, whatsoever, suggesting the existence of supernatural beings, events, or other components of the universe. They also lay claim (or "admit") to having no evidence that such things do not exist. Whether they posit the nonexistence of such things anyway is, i think, a corollary to the following considerations:
Someone asks you, "Are you thinking of dropping another fuel bomb on Zambia?" This is an example of a loaded question: It presupposes a piece of false information (that you previously dropped at least one fuel bomb on Zambia) without stating it explicitly. The question has no correct answer; the correct response is to reject the question. Agnosticism, in the vernacular, differs from atheism in the nonassertion that supernatural components of the universe do not exist. Let's focus on a specific example: a single god, aptly named God. An agnostic answers the question "Does God exist?" with "I don't know.", apparently oblivious to the presuppositions that the notion of "God" is well-defined and that there's any reasonable precedent for the concept in the first place - basically that the possible states of the universe are (1) with God and (2) without God. The question is loaded: The notion of God and that it may exist at all is a complete fabrication, whose origins are documented much farther back than any specific religious text. The correct response is, "That question is absurd." That is to say that there is no reason to suspect that any specific unmeasurable or unfathomable components of the universe exist.
That is not to say that there is no reason to suspect that some (presently) unmeasurable or poorly-understood components of the universe exist; they certainly do (for instance, the source of what we call "dark matter"). Throughout the practice of science, hitherto unsuspected factors are always being hinted at, observed, documented, and named. To deem a figure from pre-scientific literature (or any aspect thereof) as worthy of consideration as objects (like strings) with even the faintest theoretical suggestions of existence is to make a mockery of science and, by implication, reason.
This seems to be (part of?) what determines whether a person admitting no evidence to the existence or nonexistence of things which, by definition, admit no observable trace (unless they "want" to) calls emself "agnostic" or "atheist".