Stuff and things, update...
Went to dinner at Shalimar on Tuesday night. Very good food, nice service, clean restaurant. foolbunny gave it a much more thorough review. On the whole, I definitely recommend it if you enjoy Indian food.
We went and watched Religulous afterward. I had mixed feelings about the movie. I feel like it very much comes from the Michael Moore school of documentary, which is to say "this is a documentary about the message I want to send". On the other hand, Bill Maher was intentionally preaching to the choir - the movie is directed at atheists, agnostics, and secularists. The basic message of the movie is "If you don't associate with a faith or if you are more moderate in your faith, you should stand up and denounce crazy fundamentalists as being crazy. Just because madness falls within the bounds of a religion doesn't make it acceptable."
Overall, I agree with that sentiment - extremist religion is dangerous, be it Christians arguing against teaching evolution or sex education in schools, Muslims murdering 'infidels', Amish abusing their children, or any other flavor of inflexible and unthinking faith. Religion is a holdover from times when humans were desperately struggling to make any sense at all of the world, and it does some things really well, but I believe that it's time for humanity to separate the wheat from the chaff and leave the fairy tales for bed time.
In any case, I found it to be a good movie on the whole, but I think that's largely because I agree with the message strongly and was consequently able to tolerate Maher's smirking arrogance. I don't think that he had a serious chance of convincing anyone of faith to see his viewpoint as a result of his tone, but I don't think that was his goal.
After hovering at the same weight for almost two weeks, I suddenly dropped three pounds today, which is a bit odd, but I weighed myself several times to be sure and that's what the scale says. I'm going to start exercising again tonight.
The diet is going reasonably well. I've been having oatmeal for breakfast and it has been a nice way to start the day. I'm moving more towards the theory of "breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper" - it makes a lot of sense to me in terms of how much energy my body is burning throughout the day. I'm also considering going to more of a high-protein diet - not switching back to Atkins, but making an effort to have more of my calories come from protein. It may mean waking up early to cook, though. :P Still, I should be able to have two scrambled eggs and a couple strips of bacon in the same calorie range that I'm having my oatmeal in. We'll see how motivated I am to wake up 15 minutes early, though.
We went and watched Religulous afterward. I had mixed feelings about the movie. I feel like it very much comes from the Michael Moore school of documentary, which is to say "this is a documentary about the message I want to send". On the other hand, Bill Maher was intentionally preaching to the choir - the movie is directed at atheists, agnostics, and secularists. The basic message of the movie is "If you don't associate with a faith or if you are more moderate in your faith, you should stand up and denounce crazy fundamentalists as being crazy. Just because madness falls within the bounds of a religion doesn't make it acceptable."
Overall, I agree with that sentiment - extremist religion is dangerous, be it Christians arguing against teaching evolution or sex education in schools, Muslims murdering 'infidels', Amish abusing their children, or any other flavor of inflexible and unthinking faith. Religion is a holdover from times when humans were desperately struggling to make any sense at all of the world, and it does some things really well, but I believe that it's time for humanity to separate the wheat from the chaff and leave the fairy tales for bed time.
In any case, I found it to be a good movie on the whole, but I think that's largely because I agree with the message strongly and was consequently able to tolerate Maher's smirking arrogance. I don't think that he had a serious chance of convincing anyone of faith to see his viewpoint as a result of his tone, but I don't think that was his goal.
After hovering at the same weight for almost two weeks, I suddenly dropped three pounds today, which is a bit odd, but I weighed myself several times to be sure and that's what the scale says. I'm going to start exercising again tonight.
The diet is going reasonably well. I've been having oatmeal for breakfast and it has been a nice way to start the day. I'm moving more towards the theory of "breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper" - it makes a lot of sense to me in terms of how much energy my body is burning throughout the day. I'm also considering going to more of a high-protein diet - not switching back to Atkins, but making an effort to have more of my calories come from protein. It may mean waking up early to cook, though. :P Still, I should be able to have two scrambled eggs and a couple strips of bacon in the same calorie range that I'm having my oatmeal in. We'll see how motivated I am to wake up 15 minutes early, though.