There is a heaven!

Some of you know that although I've attended various churches in the past, I've never really believed that there was some kindly man/woman/father/mother/God/spirit watching over me. I strenuously "acted as if" and that worked for me for awhile but always at the back of my mind I knew that things just didn't add up. I didn't even think much of the "new age" metaphysical background of my childhood and had a sneaking suspicion that a therapist in my life was right when she identified my " spirituality" as magical thinking. No..my thoughts do not control anything except myself and my reactions to events in my life. But..that's a subject for a future post! It was particularly freeing for me when it began to dawn on me that my lack of belief was OK! But does mean that I am not spiritual? Why NO..it does not!

I'm not above using other's work to articulate my feeling about this. The following is a comment on a blog I read on Skepchic's " Wednesday's Afternoon Inquisition". The question asked of us was this:


I assume that most of the readers of SkepChick are, like me, atheists and have rejected the concept of heaven and hell and indeed any sort of afterlife. Suppose there were an afterlife. If it were up to *you* what would your afterlife be like?


There are quite a few irreverent and humorous responses, but Zapski's response moved me:


In seriousness, I as an atheist think that there is no soul in the dualistic sense. However, I think that what is essentially us leaves our bodies at all times, every time we interact with others. Like raindrops in a pond, the ripples we make affect all the other drops, and all the ripples that hit us, are changed by our ripples, etc.

Humanity has one giant soul-soup in which we all make bigger or smaller ripples. What I say shapes you, what you say shapes me. When I recall something you said or did, or if some action of yours consciously or unconsciously affects me or my actions or ideas, that is your “soul” having its effect.
Carl Sagan (for example) made a big splash in the soul-soup. Many of us are shaped by his words and actions.
Religion has it backwards: Your soul doesn’t leave your body at the moment of death, it stops leaving your body, and echos in the lives of others.


We are the heaven in which our dead reside."


From my heaven, PapaTim says " Buh!"

A letter and a video from one of the Kiva field partners. This helps explain why you loan money to Kiva interest free, but the people who get the loan pay interest. That money is not making some big maga-bank richer. But it is re-invested in the form of business education, schools, and admin staff. Because the small community bank does not have to pay interest to us, they can use more of the funds they have to help the community.

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Dear Devin Rankin,

Thank you for supporting entrepreneurs in Paraguay.

Dear Kiva Lender,



My name is Nick Cain and I am writing to you from Asunción, Paraguay, where I have been volunteering as a Kiva Fellow for the past four months. At some point since becoming a Kiva lender, you made a loan to a Paraguayan entrepreneur. By doing so, you joined a group of people who have collectively invested over $2.3 million in this country (a figure that astounds me each and every time I write it), and for that, I would like to start by saying thank you. Because of you, bricks are made, dresses are sewn, cell phones are sold, and mounds and mounds of Paraguay’s most popular snack, chipa, are cooked and eaten. Your money moves this economy.

The Field Partner: Fundación Paraguaya



As you may know, all Kiva loans are disbursed and administered by Field Partners—local institutions who vet clients and collect payments. In Paraguay, your capital flows through Fundación Paraguaya, a 24-year-old organization with a remarkable history and a bold social mission. Led by its founder, Martín Burt, Fundación Paraguaya brought microfinance to Paraguay in 1985, at a time when the country was still controlled by Alfredo Stroessner, an iron-fisted, secret police-wielding dictator whose maniacal 35-year rule left his country poor, uneducated, and disastrously bereft of infrastructure. But, with a touch of irony that is familiar to many microfinance practitioners, the same set of circumstances that left so many Paraguayans entrenched in poverty also created an informal economy that was teeming with micro-entrepreneurs and, Martín believed, hungry for credit. A chance meeting with a representative from microfinance pioneer ACCION International inspired Martín to act on his hunch that, for Paraguayans trying to lift themselves out of poverty, access to capital would be the key.

The Leader



After 24 years, three major international awards, and one term as mayor of Asunción, Martín Burt is still at the helm of Fundación Paraguaya, preaching the doctrine of sustainability and innovation to his team (now over 150 people strong) of managers, teachers, and loan officers. Since 1985, Fundación Paraguaya has disbursed over $37.5 million in loans to entrepreneurs across the country. Because it is a non-profit organization, when Fundación Paraguaya earns money on its loan portfolio, the money is re-invested into the operating budgets of its other innovative social ventures: a business education program for young people, two self-sufficient agricultural high schools, and a recently-announced Poverty Eradication Project that is every bit as ambitious as it sounds.



Recently, I sat down with Martín to hear a little more about how
Fundación Paraguaya got started, where he sees it going, and how the
interest-free capital provided by lenders like you helps more than just
a single borrower. Check out the interview in the video below.

Here

Tim Minchin

Here are a couple of videos from Tim Minchin. Mostly not safe for work unless you are wearing head phones. He is a comic song writer and skeptic. These are both great, although the second one may piss off some of our friends. Sorry. Love ya but the poem is still great.

Taboo:





Storm:

So I finished reading “Turn Coat” the new Harry Dresden book by Jim Butcher. It follows the same pattern as the others. Harry takes on a task that he really does not want but must do it because it is the right thing to do. He takes his mid book beating and his end of the book beating. But it is still a good ride with good character development. The world becomes darker and his relationship with his brother is changed. Mouse becomes more human like. Harry gains a new weapon in the fight against evil. Murphy feels useless and you can see the thought process that will someday lead her to take up one of the swords. We meet a new character that may be the right person for the other sword. Molly struggles to find the line between good and evil and how hard it is to not do something you know is wrong, but might lead to a good outcome. A character sacrifices himself for the greater good and peace. Injin Joe takes on a Skinwalker. Good stuff. One mystery solved, but others remain.

Citizen Science

In this high tech world that we live in, it is easy to look at science as something that is not really accessible to the average person. Sure, there are tons of science shows on cable TV. But it’s hard to imagine that there is anything that the average person can do to make a meaningful contribution to science.

Well, it turns out, you CAN do real science. Anyone can.

Galaxy Zoo asks you to look at pictures of galaxies and classify them. Automated telescopes are taking millions of pictures of deep space objects. But computers are poor at analyzing the photos and classifying the objects. A computer can’t tell a spiral galaxy from a globular one. But people are great at it. And even better, it turns out that your average, untrained person is BETTER at it than trained astronomers. Astronomers tend to over think what they are looking at and to project pet theories onto the images. Untrained people just report what they see.

So if you’re looking for something kind of mindless to do while you unwind from work, you can sit there and play a few meaningless hands of solitaire on your computer. Or you could look at a few dozen photos of galaxies and do something that is very valuable to science. Classifying the photos helps answer questions like how many galaxies are spiral, and how many are globular. Of the spiral galaxies, what is the average number of arms they have? How many have a center bar? You can’t answer those basic questions until you look at each and every photo and describe the object you see.

But it can be more than doing the grunt work. Sometimes you get to make your own discovery.

Hanny Van Arkel, a Dutch schoolteacher and Galaxy Zoo volunteer saw something strange on one of the photos she was working on. She posted it up on the forum, asking what the funny blue thing was. Turns out it was something that no one had ever seen before. She discovered a new class of deep space objects, now called a Voorwerp (Dutch for object) and the one she discovered has been named Hanny’s Voorwerp.

Another site that will give you a chance to do real science is BOINC. This site lets you pick from dozens of science projects. Everything from doing research on cancer, to monitoring earthquakes. BOINC lets you down load a screen saver to your computer. You then pick the type, or types, of projects you want to help. When you are not using the computer, the screen saver kicks in and starts using your computer to process data. The idea is that computer time on the real high end research computers is still hard to come by. But, there are millions of desktop computers that are sitting idle at any given moment. So it uses your computer when you are not doing anything. It will do a small part of a complex operation, and return that result to the central database.

The BOINC project I have been doing lately is a bit different.

I have been doing earth quack monitoring for these people. They use the BIONC network to link up thousands of computers that have a motion sensor attached to them.

This gives them a world wide network of earthquake monitors for almost nothing. Many laptops actually have a motion detector built into them. This device helps protect the hard drive if the laptop is moved or dropped while the computer is writing to the disk. So the software is set up to use this device to monitor for earthquakes. Or you can buy motion sensor form them for about $50 to plug into to your home computer. They will send one to a school for free.

I always thought that Arizona didn’t have earthquakes. But it does. I pick up about 10 a week. Some are quakes that are really in California, but the shock waves are still detectable here. Some are local quakes that are really just too small for people to feel or notice.

So you can do meaningful science right there from your computer. Anyone can. Get out there and do some science.

Steve and Bobby

Wow, it’s been a while since we blogged.

We went on a cruise with Barenaked Ladies the first week in February. We saw lots of live music. Shannon got her photo taken with Steve Page. We listened to Gaelic Storm while sitting in a hot tub just after sun set. When it got dark, we saw the space station go by over head. We visited an ancient Mayan city, learned all about Key West, and just had a wonderful time.

But during the cruise, and especially after it, there were lots of rumors that the band just didn’t seem the same. That something was wrong. We didn’t really see anything like that. We went to the first of 3 shows and thought it was great. Steve’s voice was great and the band was kidding around with each other and seemed to be having a good time.

It all kind of started last year when Steve left his wife and had his girlfriend along on the cruise. Lots of people thought she was rude and many people didn’t care for her. But that may have only been jealousy. They wished they were the ones on Steve’s arm.

This is the same girlfriend that Steve got arrested with in his cocaine bust.

She was back this year and again there were people complaining that she was rude to them and stuff. Some people thought they saw some disgusted looks from the band members when the girlfriend showed up at shows. I guess she tried to kick some people out of their front row seats during one of the shows so that she and her friends could sit together. But what ever.

So today I learned that Steve has quit Barenaked Ladies. Not really a shock. But very sad. The band will not be the same without his voice.

Maybe a few years from now they can have a reunion cruise. Or more likely Steve will just come along and sing a few songs with the band the way that Andy Creeggan (former keyboard player) does now.



Last night I was watching the President’s speech. It’s so nice to have a President that seems to really understand things and can talk. Who understands the value of science.

Then it was time for the Republican response. LA Governor Bobby Jindal, the exorcist, was the one they picked to talk. And what did he have to say. Why, he attacked science of course. He thinks there is wasteful spending in the many trillion dollar package. What does he pick on? $140 million for volcano monitoring. Once again the Republican message is that science spending is wasteful. I’ll bet if you live in Washington State or Hawaii or anyplace near Yellowstone you don’t think it is a waste of money to keep an eye on volcanoes. But the Exorcist just can’t see any value in that. I’ll bet he would scream if they cut money to hurricane monitoring. I’ll bet we spend more money monitoring hurricanes than the $140 million volcano project costs. One weather satellite alone costs more than that. But he does not see the larger picture. All he sees is that money is being spent on science. Science that might contradict his view of a 6000 year old God created earth.

Anyway, that is the stuff that is on my mind today.

Sierra's Birthday Bash

Apparently we are the cool parents. You know, the house that everyone wants to come to and hang out. This would work better of course if Sierra's friends actually lived near here. Thankfully ( hee hee) we seem to live on the other side of the world from almost all of them. I'm guessing its the fact that Devin and I are willing to put up with 14 screaming and giggling teenagers has something to do with it. I think Devin is less willing, but he loves Sierra and wanted to help make her birthday special. Of course we did something similar on Halloween. I think we must be gluttons for punishment, but we are done with the huge parties for awhile.

The day started at Saguaro Ranch part around 1pm as the kids gathered to play soccer, run around and generally laugh and goof around. By 5pm, they were done playing and Devin and I took them back to the house in shifts ( we have small cars) to enjoy a gourmet dinner ala Taco Bell, birthday cake, scary movies and more running around outside. We forgot the candles, but a loud chorus of Happy Birthday happened anyway. She looks so mature in this picture! A huge thank you to our friend and fabulous housekeeper Carmen for the gorgeous birthday cake!

There were a few moments of teenager drama, but mostly everyone had a good time I think. The boys were banished by 9:30 and the girls commenced girl talk ( who likes who etc etc). More scary movies after the boys left and managed to polish off the last of the gallon of ice cream.

This morning, I was up making waffles for 10 girls in time for the 10am pick-up. Make that noon.. no..make that 2pm. Well its 3:46 and we still have one straggler. Luckily she and Sierra seem to be bonding over Yahoo Chat. Go Miss Makaiya!