Joel's humanistic blog

One of those blog memes has passed my way due to my getting tagged by MDM . So: Four Jobs I’ve Had Student Math research Data entry Radio show staff (volunteer) Four Movies I can Watch Over and Over The Adventures of Robin Hood American Graffiti Big Trouble in Little China King Kong (original) Four Places I’ve Lived Lifelong NYCer Four TV Shows I Love Star Trek The Prisoner Scientific American Frontiers Mr. Bean Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows I haven't seen (much of) Firefly Cowboy Bebop MST3K Batman Four places I've vacationed Israel Upstate NY Vienna Canada Four of my favorite dishes Spaghetti and meatballs Schnitzel Sushi To quote Woody Woodpecker: "Food! That's my favorite dish!" Four sites I visit daily the agony booth forum Blender nation Cartoon Brew rocket boom Four places I'd rather be right now: somewhere without cold winters a film festival a free school the Studio Ghibli Museum Four new bloggers I'm tagging Nick Sagan Mike Bren...

Last December, Current TV aired a 6 minute documentary on cable and online about the humanist Christmas and Hanukkah ripoff winter holiday Humanlight . It shows a good slice of the New York/New Jersey humanist culture, and portrays sympathetically humanists' attempt to carve out a space for their worldview. Equal Time for Freethought radio host Neil Murphy is shown in action at the studio, being amusingly described as a "talk show host" at a "liberal" network (which I can wish would actually show awareness of classical liberalism ). Other prominent local humanists featured include ETFF staff Tim and Lisa Ridge (with a personal look at their holiday customs) and Humanlight co-creator Joe Fox. The video diverts a good deal to cover the pointless "war on Christmas" pseudo-controversy, with some suitably obnoxious ranting from the Catholic League's William Donohue, who has also recently blustered against The Da Vinci Code and the South Park epi...

Today version 2.41 of the open source 3D software Blender has been released. It follows on the heels of last month's much larger-scale update to version 2.40 , but this post is sorta making up for me missing posting about that ;). In particular that version had an overhaul of the animation tools. Blender is a tool of choice of the subculture of low-budget computer graphics hobbyists. I first came across this culture when I came upon the POV-RAY raytracer and the related online contest, the Internet Raytracing Competition , in early 2002. This is a very "right-brained" program which generates 3D renders directly from a plaintext mathematical description of a scene (so Blender's graphical interface came as a relief even for a math major like me!). POV-RAY certainly has an interesting history behind it on its own, being maintained for over a decade by volunteers on the Net; it has one of the oldest continuosly operating domain names on the Net ; and the program...

The complete two volumes of John Morley's biography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, after spending a very long time in the Distributed Proofreaders rounds, are finally available as an eBook on Project Gutenberg . Of particular interest is the chapter (volume 2, chapter 4) about Rousseau's book on education, Emilius (usually known as Emile ). One notable passage deals with how the Enlightenment's changing conception of human nature away from original sin affected education, as "part of the general revival of naturalism": The rebellion was aimed against the spirit as well as the manner of the established system. The church had not fundamentally modified the significance of the dogma of the fall and depravity of man; education was still conceived as a process of eradication and suppression of the mystical old Adam. The new current flowed in channels far away from that black folly of superstition. Men at length ventured once more to look at one another with free and ge...

In two posts last month, "The Future is Orange" and "Two Flavors of Libertarianism" , Battlepanda revealed that reading the blogs on the Blogosphere of the Libertarian Left and the left-wing "egalitarian, compassionate, bleeding-heart libertarianism" espoused by them, she had changed her mind about libertarianism, realizing that not all of it was warmed-over corporate apologism: I've also come across a lot of fine sites that totally refreshed my concept of what it means to be a libertarian.... The blogs that are championing Cory Maye's case have a decidedly different tenor to them that I also really like. One of them, Brad Spangler, even went as far as to say "Large corporations as they exist today are, in actuality, appendages of the state and not "free enterprise""! He's definitely not the kind pro-corporate market-worshipping libertarians I know and currently link to. and Those of you who read this blog regularly kno...

My friend Daniel DeCastro, talented composer and fellow atheist, finally has a web presence. He has two MySpace pages: his personal page and, most importantly, his music page with samples of his music! I've been hoping that he'd do this for a long time; and the samples include a movement from of his amazing Symphony #1 in progress. He's also writing a string quartet and a set of preludes (one in each key, like those of Bach, Chopin, or Rachmaninov), so when I'm talking to him about his composition I almost feel like I don't know what century I'm in—but his music also draws from the distinctly 21st century inspiration of video games and anime. For another local composer's webpage, see that of Columbia University's Christopher Bailey , who among other things is the composer of dorkbot and artbots theme songs and has music online at his compositions and MP3s pages.

Sagan was, simply speaking, sexy, in a sense that transcends mere sexuality. —Keay Davidson, Carl Sagan: A Life , p. 264 In perusing the Wired News list of "2005's 10 Sexiest Geeks" , I noticed that my friend and dorkbot instigator douglas irving repetto was on the list! Some people say the term "sexy geek" is an oxymoron. Here at Wired News, we say it's redundant. I don't know who nominated doug, but my guess is Xeni Jardin ( herself a pretty sexy geek), who's listed as a suggester for the article, based on the boingboing team's contact with dorkbot (such as David Pescovitz's MAKE article and several bb posts ). See also my previous post about dorkbot's 5th anniversary . The dorkbot map (which I started) is growing at a rapid rate, with 45 members so far.

A much-awaited film series has begun this week: the return of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's series about the wide-ranging intersection of animation and music, Cartoon Musicals ! This is a dream come true for animation buffs: the series features some truly rare and offbeat stuff, and curator Greg Ford shows his excellent taste and vast, insightful knowledge of the medium. The first part of the series, back in August, already set a high bar. A Disney compilation showcased the early Silly Symphonies with their imaginative world-building -- the best one showing the rivalry in a music world between lands of classical and jazz music -- and the wild graphic inventiveness of some of the more experimental segments from compilation pictures like Three Caballeros , Make Mine Music , and Melody Time -- the best being "All the Cats Join In" from Make Mine Music , which I recognized as largely animated by Fred Moore's, since the wild joy of the dancing teens in the cartoo...

Now is an exciting time to be a fan of the maverick media theorist Douglas Rushkoff . He's known for analyzing media and the power of storytelling therein, and has dealt both with how viewers can become empowered by "taking control of the story" and the shadier side of how advertising and other manipulative forms of media control the audience (and has analyzed the potential for new media forms to lead to both cases). Also, he's known for dealing with Judaism from an unconventional, counter-institutional perspective as an "open source religion", such as in his book Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism and articles like " Judging Judaism by the Numbers " and a New York Press article on the "self-imposed death of institutional Judaism" . Freethinking lapsed Jews turn out to be like Paikea in Whale Rider , who was the black sheep of her Maori tribe for flouting the convention of male leadership, only to turn out to be the true heir to ...

This month, New York City's monthly watering hole for techies, artists, and hackers, dorkbot-nyc , had its fifth anniversary meeting. Founded by artist and Columbia University Computer Music Center professor douglas irving repetto , its motto, "People doing strange things with electricity", gives the impression of what to (un)expect. Its dorky arena includes almost anything within the wide bounds of electronics, including both hardware and software, with a square emphasis on low-budget, do-it-yourself, personal projects. The results are geeky, goofy, technical, off-beat, and as wacky as the presenters' personal interests; the three presentations of a typical session will have almost nothing in common. The first meeting I attended, when dorkbot had been around for less that two full years, was in April 2002 , featuring a video by Kyle Lapidus and Tali Hinkis, who together with their children, the musical prodigy Rama (who's already composed a theme song for do...

(inspired by Brian Flemming 's similar antics with the Church Sign Generator ) Last week, the map I created for listeners of the radio show on scientific naturalism and secular humanism Equal Time for Freethought (for which I am on staff as a researcher/consultant), which airs on WBAI in the metro New York City area, finally went live with a link on the official site. The map is made via Frappr , a super cool site that uses Google Maps to allow people in a group to post their locations on the planet. (For more examples of ways people are using Google Maps, see Google Maps Mania .) I've also created a couple of other Frappr groups: for Distributed Proofreaders ( forum thread ) and dorkbotters (that is, people who go to dorkbot , including the local nyc group ). I'm very pleased to see that the first two listeners to add themselves, besides the staff members of the show, are all the way from Grand Rapids, Michigan and Mayer, Arizona! Clearly, the show is being heard via...

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Toy Story , rounding out a decade of feature films from Pixar. I literally grew up alongside computer graphics; Tron was released, on July 9, 1982, just a month before I was born; also, the adolescence and adulthood of the medium parallel my own. I remember missing Toy Story during its original theatrical run (remember how back then, it was promoted as a "Disney" rather than a "Pixar" film?), instead seeing Jumanji (what a load of crapola that was) while Toy Story was playing on a different screen of the same theater. However, I didn't miss the revolution for long: I've looked forward to each new release since Monsters, Inc. 's wickedly clever trailer in which the characters wind up in outer Mongolia instead of outer Magnolia (oh, the pain-of-anticipation of seeing that one a full year before the release of the film itself). Pixar has moved from one artistic triumph to another, barely missing a bea...

Earlier this month, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a study about American teenagers on the Net . This showed that not only are teens sophisticated users of the Net, they're also using it as creators. The most impressive statistic is that over half of teens who used the Net created content; particular forms such as blogging, personal webpages, working on webpages for other people, and even remixing of existing content are all fairly common. The report confirms what I've definitely seen of the existence of a "generation gap" in Net use, especially for leisure as opposed to basic activities, like email for everyday communication, and reference. A lot of older people I know don't appreciate the significance the Net, seeing it as just another unproductive diversion for brats with too much time on their hands. For me it's odd, because I was in the era just before the Net came around; it wasn't a significant factor in my teen/high school yea...

A few days ago, less than a week after reading Keay Davidson's biography of Carl Sagan, I was browsing through the library and randomly came across a science fiction novel by Carl's son Nick Sagan (the third of Sagan's five children). Although I had heard of Nick's career as a TV writer (including, appropriately, for Star Trek series The Next Generation and Voyager ), I had no idea that he wrote science fiction books. In fact he has written two SF novels so far: Idlewild (2003) and Edenborn (2004). I can't opine on the novels, not having read them, but I'm pretty sure that Steven Baxter is right when he says that Nick "has a sense of wonder in his DNA." ;) So I checked his site (see the pictures page for some photos of him with Carl!), and he has a brand-new blog that just debuted earlier this week! In fact, it debuted on Halloween and in his first post he weighs in on his favorite holiday (mine too; in fact, I found my own way to tie it in wi...

Roderick T. Long's recent post about the merits of Jules Verne reminded me of this. I recently was pretty shocked to find out that the most widely available English translations of Jules Verne's books are totally mutilated and inaccurate. As much as 1/4 of entire books are cut, including in particular much of the social and political material, giving the impression that Verne didn't deal with those issues. For example, the most available translation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was done by a clergyman who decided to omit all mentions of Darwin. Much of what is kept doesn't fare much better: in that same translation, Nemo's figure for the density of steel was confused to make it lighter than water. Most of these hack translations were done in the 1800s, but are still widely reprinted today, with little awareness about them. In contrast, the translations into other languages are generally okay, and in the non-English-speaking parts of Europe the sophisticated asp...

Creative Commons Australia has a new animated video that's a must-see. Here's a 13 MB QuickTime file of the movie itself ; the org's post also has the script (which may be more accessible for those without broadband access) and the source files for the animation (done with the software package Moho ). Not only does the movie explain in a clear and accessible way the legal issues involved in the Creative Commons organization 's limited copyright system, but it's flat-out hilarious and an excellent piece of animation in its own right. It takes full advantage of the freedom that the animation medium offers; and the voice acting, dialogue ("you are SOOOOOO busted!") and sound effects are top-notch, convincingly getting the dialogue across without relying on lip-synch (because the characters don't have mouths). These screenshots give some idea of the inventive imagery, but the movie has a funky energy that needs to be seen in motion. What's even cool...

Today's New York Times book review section has a fantastic article , "Heinlein's Female Troubles" by Mary Grace Lord, about feminism in Robert Heinlein's science fiction.

On September 13, I had the chance to see in person one of the leading education writers, one whom I admire while simultanenously having profoundly mixed feelings about. With an incredible amount of energy and raw passion for a 69-year-old—especially considering that this is just one event of a two-month book tour—Jonathan Kozol talked to a packed crowd at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble in Manhattan to promote his new book The Shame of the Nation : The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (there's also an excerpt in this month's issue of Harper's magazine, "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid" ). Dozens of copies of the book (in a deluxe hardcover edition, to boot) were flying off the shelves; such demand is certainly a testament to the huge numbers of people who care about education and want to improve it. I was tipped off to the appearance when I unexpectedly heard Kozol on The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC radio earli...

Following up on my announcements of new electronic versions of classic 19th century works on education by Friedrich Froebel and Herbert Spencer are two examples of the difference between their ideas introduced well over a century ago and the educational practice today. Last Tuesday's health section of the New York Times had an appalling article , "Tough Day for Kindergartners (and Parents)" by Laurie Tarkan, about the unhappiness both children and their parents face when the children begin attending kindergarten; and how this unhappiness is being dealt with only by increasingly elaborate methods of "greasing the wheels" to make a smoother transition into the system. In the blandly matter-of-fact account of such methods, there isn't the ghost of a suggestion that the system itself is the problem, even as it acknowledges that the new environment is less individualized and breaks up the students' previous relationships with their parents and preschool co...

Prometheus Books is the largest and most well-known publisher of books about secular humanism in the United States, but it also has a few books that are a bit more offbeat. Here's a list of random interesting-looking books from them, prepared as part of my research for possible topics and guests for Equal Time For Freethought . In fact, a couple of books on the list (the ones by Litman and Davin) are ones I knew about and was interested in long before I noticed they were from Prometheus. Kropotkin: The Politics of Community by Brian Morris —About one of the greatest anarchist thinkers, Peter Kropotkin, and his current relevance. Morris also has a book (not published by Prometheus) about Bakunin, and Prometheus does publish a book on French anarchist Jean Grave and a collection of Bakunin's writings . Digital Copyright by Jessica Litman —Shows how pathetic copyright is and how modern changes in copyright laws, with an emphasis on the particularly egregious 1998 Digital Mi...