First, let’s start with the link.  You may or may not have seen it in the news.  I hadn’t until my wife pointed it out to me.

Link: http://www.smh.com.au/world/childtrafficking-accused-claim-innocence-as-trial-awaits-20100202-n97o.html

Where have we seen this before?  Have we learned nothing from history?  Isn’t this pretty much the same thing that happened with the missionaries of the Age of Discovery?  What about the Stolen Generation?

There’s an inherent sense of superiority I see in here that irks me.  I don’t know why.  Could it be a case of simple lack of forethought?  Even if the parents of these children had died in the quake (which is disputed quite strongly, if you read the article), surely they had extended family.  They’d certainly be better off with grandparents, uncles, even cousins than with a random family full of people they don’t know.

So is this sinister, or very very badly misguided?  I don’t know.  Make up your own mind.  Just think very carefully and do your homework before giving money to relief funds.  Doing research on the funds is harder than just giving and hoping for the best, but honestly, if they deserve your money, don’t you think they deserve as much attention as well?

Don’t even look at the video of the swinging baby. You could be prosecuted.

Today’s entry in the “stupid application of the law” books come from Queensland, where a man has been charged with accessing and uploading child abuse material.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/10/1236447185321.html

Now, the best this could turn out to be is a case of good intentions gone horribly wrong. Chris Illingworth took something that was already widely available across the internet, and added it to another site. He didn’t create the video, had absolutely nothing to do with its content, and yet he’s being singled out.

My mind’s rife with speculation about Susan Cadzow, the specialist pediatrician at Royal Brisbane Children’s Hospital whose witness statement is central to the Queensland Police’s brief of evidence. I’d love to know her motivations for this…

Either way, a man’s life is ruined by this, and it seems like its done for no good reason.

This morning, while I had my sleep-in (I get Saturdays, E gets Sundays), E interviewed our three year old, D.

1. What is something Mummy/Daddy always says to you?
   (Mummy) “Let’s go to the pet shop to buy some fish?”
   (Daddy) “D, can you and pick up the toys, because it’s almost bath time.”

   This is fair enough. I get home most days just before bath time, and I’m the only who gives him his bath most of the time. Last night the toys looked like two tornadoes had run through them, but most of the time the boys have gotten home only just before me, so there’s not that much to pick up.

2. What makes Mummy/Daddy happy?
   (Mummy) “Hugs & kisses.”
   (Daddy) “Tickling me.”

3. What makes Mummy/Daddy sad?
   (Mummy) “Hurting.”
   (Daddy) “Not giving him hugs.”

4. What does Mummy/Daddy make you laugh?
   (Mummy) “Tickles.”
   (Daddy) “Tickling.”

5. What was Mummy/Daddy like as a child?
   (Both) “I don’t know.”

6. How old is Mummy/Daddy?
   (Mummy) “15.”
   (Daddy) “I don’t know.”

   Not sure if my wife was happy to hear that one or not…

7. How tall is Mummy/Daddy?
   (Mummy) “This tall.” (He stood up.)
   (Daddy) “This big.” (Standing tall is what E wrote, but when D says he’s standing tall, he’s usually on tip-toes.)

8. What is Mummy/Daddy’s favourite thing to do?
   (Mummy) “Washing clothes.”
   (Daddy) “Play with blocks.”

9. If Mummy/Daddy becomes famous, what will it be for?

   D didn’t really understand this question, so she didn’t push it.

10. What is Mummy/Daddy really good at?
    (Mummy) “Hanging the clothes outside.”
    (Daddy) “Sleeping.”
11. What does Mummy/Daddy do when you’re not here?
    (Mummy) “Come find me.”
    (Daddy) “I don’t know.”

Because I see too few of these sorts of services offered or in the public eye in Australia:

MensLine is a dedicated service for men with relationship and family concerns.

When you feel like it’s all getting too much, help is as close as the phone.

• All men, all relationships
• Counselling, information and referral
• Staffed by trained professionals
• Confidential
• Anonymous
• Australia-wide
• 24/7
• Cost of a local call (excl.mobiles)

I’ve often lamented the lack of visible men’s support services, especially compared with abundance of women’s support services. I’m glad I found this one.

In a slightly related depressing note, MISC.com.au was the first link that popped up on a google search for “men’s support australia”. From the first paragraph on that page:

The Men’s Information and Support Centre (MISC), formerly known as the Men’s Contact and Resource Centre (MCRC), assisted the South Australian community between 1982 and October 2006. Due to a decision by the State Labor Government to stop its funding, the Centre has now closed. This website is the only service that MISC is currently able to provide. Please ignore MISC’s services listed on this website – they are no longer current. The other third party services listed are still in operation. MISC’s former Executive Director, Mr Rodney Stanton, can be contacted on 0405 772 279.

I’ll leave you to draw conclusions about government funding on this one…

Thanks to joe, one of my longtime friends, this blog now has a name: The Man Cave. The name is partly self-deprecating, since I don’t make any claims to be one of the world’s great thinkers — I merely recycle a lot of good ideas and keep them in circulation, but it’s also a reference to the way that a lot of men handle issues.

John Gray first popularised the man cave in his book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. But where Gray envisioned the man cave as a place to which men retreat until they are ready to deal with the problems, I envision my cave as a place I where I can focus on the problem until I work out my position with regard to it.

So this is it. Welcome to The Man Cave. Enjoy your stay. It’s not messy, it’s supposed to look this way.

No earth-shattering revelations tonight, just a father’s pride.

I have two sons, D (who is 3 ½ ), and M (who is 1 ½). D has always been an early talker, and now M is showing signs of being the same. For all that he’s a carbon copy of me in appearance (down to the same birthmarks), D has always been Mummy’s boy. M, on the other hand, bears no strong resemblance to me, but he’s a lot closer to me emotionally. I’m not sure how much of that is because he can’t claim his mum’s attention as much when he has to compete with his brother, and how much of it is a natural inclination, but I don’t care. He’s Daddy’s boy and I’m not going to look that gift horse in the mouth. Usually dads have to wait a lot longer to be looked up to by their sons (or so I hear).

Back to M. For the first year of his life, he rarely said the word “Mummy.” It’s not that he couldn’t or didn’t know how, he just simply refused to say it. He took to “Daddy” right away. I used to get a little smile when E would try to get him to say “Mummy” and he’d just ignore her. Then she’d prompt him to say “Daddy” and he’d say it back and then look at me. It was one of those cute things that made us smile at him and call him a cheeky bugger. We knew he’d come around eventually. And for the record, he has.

But last night, as we were putting the boys to bed, Daddy scored another one. I was in the study. Apparently, that’s when M decided to construct his first sentence. He walked around his room, then looked up at his mum and asked “Where Daddy?”

That’s my boy!

Very quick update: We went out this morning, a bunch of my work mates and I, and shot the hell out of each other with paintballs fired at high velocity.

The back of my calf.

I didn’t come out of it too bad, and I’ve counted least 20 welts on me. That was helped by the fact that I had the best frakking gun money could hire, which gave me an extra 10 metres of range over most of the other players. I mitigated this by volunteering to wear the bright orange flouro vest which designated me as a general. Turns out the generals could only be killed with a direct hit below the knees. Once my team (aka my guards) all died, I did a runner for the opposite end of the field — figuring (a) a moving target is harder to hit, and (b) it’s even harder still to hit a moving target below the knees. I almost made it, too…

My other thigh.

One of my mates brought a video camera with a snake-like telescopic aperture, which he duct-taped to his helmet, giving us a good helmet-cam video. I’m looking forward to seeing the footage.

By the end of the day, I’d been hit so many times that I no longer cared that much. So when the free-for-all happened at the end, I simply walked out like the Terminator and started picking people off. Got a few good head shots, and since my gun (modelled after the Heckler & Koch MP5) could fire off 8 rounds per second, I rarely hit anyone just once. Photos will follow, and video will come once I get a copy of the video.

side view

Arm and shoulder

Bicep

“Take my love. Take my land. Take me where I cannot stand.
Don’t forget, I’m still free. You can’t take the sky from me.
Take me out, into the black. Tell ‘em I ain’t coming back.
Burn the land and boil the sea. You can’t take the sky from me.”

NASA has a poll up to name the new ISS node, and Serenity is one of the options.

You know what to do.

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/name_ISS/index.html

Totally ganked from rightc0ast who posted in food_pill

But with competition like Earthrise¹, Legacy, and Venture, I doubt they expected any result BUT Serenity.

And those top suggestions? Who the hell suggested Endor? I thought the Ewoks were universally reviled — possibly surpassed only by Jar Jar Binks?

We can certainly do better. Here are a few more worthy suggestions:

1. Caprica
2. Hoth
3. Thedus (points if you know where this one comes from without looking it up)
4. Kobol
5. Federation Starbase 12187

Gimme your best.

¹: Okay, I lied. Earthrise is a pretty cool name. I’m totally stealing it for the next time I need to name a spaceship.

Last week my wife (who is a theist) challenged me with this question: Why this sudden obsession with atheism? Okay, she didn’t use those words, but her message was clear, as was the reason she asked. I do have a tendency to “adopt a cause” and do it passionately for a while before it fades into the background — like a favoured t-shirt than eventually gets tucked into the back of the wardrobe to be pulled out when convenient.

Another part of the thrust of her question was “Why do you have to raise this issue? How have you been disadvantaged by being an atheist?” Keep in mind, dear reader, that I live in Australia, which is nowhere nearly so dominated by religion-in-politics (a very deadly combination). Coming from the United States as I do, I argued that even if religion wasn’t front-and-centre in the political scene, it must be one of the silent ever-present factors determining which politicians actually get elected. In this, I was happy to be shown wrong. Bob Hawke, Prime Minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991, was an agnostic. Bill Hayden, Governor-general from 1989 to 1996, was an atheist (although in my defense, the G-G is not popularly elected, but appointed by the PM, meaning that in this case, the atheist was appointed by the agnostic).

So why then, did I feel the need to make such a big deal about atheism? It would be easy to dismiss this as a “shut up, that’s why” argument — designed to do nothing but stop the discussion there — but E- isn’t the kind of person to make those arguments. I think her question was more one of trying to understand where I’m coming from and so it warranted further thought.

The question germinated in the back of my head all week long, and I turned my motivations over in my head, examining them from all angles. I read, and thought, and read some more. Why did I care so much about atheism and religion, when it had so little immediate effect on my life?

I’ve come up with a few answers:

It does have an immediate effect in my life. Particularly when it comes to familial relationships. My family are all devout Southern Baptists (except my brother, who rebelled and became a Presbyterian). They have no knowledge of my atheism (although my brother may have a clue, and has said he’s deeply concerned), and they probably still think of me as Christian. This isn’t a huge deal, since they remain state-side, but it’s a deception, and it means that when we do talk, it has to be about non-religious topics. When you consider the fact that I’m a liberal and my family are conservatives, it doesn’t leave us with much to talk about.

E-’s parents definitely think of me as a Christian, and here the impact is much more immediate. Instead of being 26,112 km (according to google maps, who prefer kayaks to aeroplanes) away, E’s parents live a whole 3 km away. We see them on a regular basis, and this includes a bunch of their religious functions — they are largely social events, but the Christian trappings make me feel uncomfortable. At Easter, the traditional greeting is “Christ is risen,” to which you are expected to respond “Truly he is risen.” I cannot, because that would be an affirmation of something I do not believe.

I know for a fact that if I “came out” to them as an atheist, it would strain relationships all around — between them and me, and E would be caught in the middle as they’d approach her about me. That’s not something I’m willing to do, so my little charade continues for now.

But it’s going to come out one day. I will not lie to my children about my beliefs. And they will probably ask around about the same time that they start going to scripture classes (another post on this for another time). Once they ask, it will almost certainly come out somehow.

It’s late here, so I’ll post some of my other thoughts on the matter tomorrow.

My better half (E) and I were watching an old episode of BattleStar Galactica the other day, when Brother Cavil was counselling Chief Tyrol. We paused the episode and had a long discussion about religion and atheism in the context of our lives.

To make this part brief, I can be described as an atheist — I believe that the only definition of god that fits is “the Universe as god.” If it has a consciousness, it’s so far beyond our comprehension and we are so far beneath its notice as to make the question of religion moot. It’s not going to intercede on your behalf, and you certainly don’t pray to it. Any afterlife (as part of the universe) will not be in any form that we recognise or imagine now. E has described herself to me as a Christian — her faith is personal, while her membership in her church is social.

One of the comments I made was something along the lines of “atheism now is where homosexuals were a few years ago.” E’s reply was “That’s ridiculous; no one’s getting beaten to death because they’re an atheist.” And she’s right. That wasn’t where my main argument meant to go. But I think my comment is also right; it just needed clarification.

And it’s here, in Greta Christina’s article 10 Myths and Truths About Atheists that I found the same argument, only worded much better than I could put it. It neatly sums up what I meant:

6. Atheists are just being trendy.

Yes, atheism is everywhere now. In bookstores, on the news, in the blogosphere. Just like gay people were in the early ’90s. African Americans in the late ’50s. Women in the early ’70s. There’s a point in any major social movement when it reaches critical mass. It gathers adherents and sympathizers, who become more visible and vocal … a process that’s self-perpetuating.

The movement picks up steam. It can no longer be ignored. At which point the mass media has a collective “WTF?” freakout. Who are these atheists (gays, African Americans, women), and where did they come from all of a sudden? Like we haven’t been here all along.

Does that make atheism trivial? A fad, something people do to be cool? Of course not. No more than being queer is. Coming out as atheist is often a big deal. It can mean losing friends, being cut off from family. It can mean getting threatened by neighbors or kicked out of school, losing job opportunities or custody of your kids. And it often means a major upheaval in how you see yourself and your life. People don’t do this to be trendy. People do it to be true to themselves.

The rest of the article can be read here: http://www.alternet.org/story/126118/10_myths_and_truths_about_atheists_/?page=entire
Greta Christina’s blog can be found here: http://gretachristina.typepad.com/