Unique!

So, I googled my name this morning, for kicks. It's amazing the stuff that comes up. For instance, I learned today that there is only one person with my name in all of Canada.

Delicious Treat

This may seem totally weird but once you try it, you won't think so. For kicks I thought I would try Rice Krispies on my vanilla ice cream with blueberries. It is so very good I can't believe I only just thought of it today...

Calais, Zetes and Chione

Last night, in LotRO, my Lore-master character earned her pet eagle. I am allowed to name these pets pretty much whatever I want, but naming pets can be difficult. I like short, easy to pronounce names, and my one attempt at naming a pet with Sindarin nomenclature (befitting Middle-Earth) fell flat, and I ended up renaming that pet. In LotRO, there are also special amulets that change the appearance of your pet, in effect giving you another pet (cosmetically). Each appearance of a pet can be named individually, and it turns out that I had access to two amulets that change my eagle's appearance, so I had to think of 3 names for my new pet(s). Traditionally, my pets that share a species also share the first letter of their names (because I'm dorky that way), but for my eagle, I wanted to do something a little different. I ended up naming them after figures from classical Greek mythology. My eagles' names are Calais, Zetes and Chione.

Calais and Zetes were twin brothers who travelled with Jason and the Argonauts. They rescued Phineas from the harpies and were rewarded with wings. When these brothers met an untimely death, they were transformed into birds. I thought these would be cool names to give my eagles. Then I found out I could make myself another amulet, so I had to think of a third eagle name. After some digging around, I found out Calais and Zetes had two sisters: Cleopatra and Chione. Cleopatra is a name that has been done to death, so I read up on Chione, and it turns out she has a bird-related story also. Chione was beautiful - so beautiful, in fact, that two gods came and, er, canoodled with her in the same night. She ended up giving birth to twins as a result. Anyways, she preferred her beauty to that of the goddess Artemis, and was summarily put to death, at which point she was transformed into a hawk, which, while not an eagle, is still a pretty cool bird.

These stories - especially Chione's story - really make me wonder about the ancient Greeks. On one hand, their civilization was a time of huge breakthroughs in rational thought, but on the other hand, people were making up stories like this and other people were believing them. I sometimes wonder if there were some secret society that had some kind of contest going with prizes for the most ludicrous story that people actually believed.

Games for Girls?

Okay, here is a prime example of meaningless segregation: Ultimate Games for Girls 5. It insinuates that games otherwise are for boys, which is absurd. Further, if any boys wanted to play these games, they'd be emasculated for it - not really a great marketing tactic. Now let's take a good look at the games they think are for girls: Family Restaurant, Let's Ride, Fetch, Miss Popularity, and Pet School. Dig in, everybody; it's a veritable buffet of stereotypes! What kind of message does this send to girls? Games for girls: Fetch. Seriously. Family Restaurant - because if it's about food preparation, it has 'girl' written all over it - especially if 'family' is also involved. Hey girls, 'Let's Ride'! (I can't get over this). I can't believe that people buy this, but they must, because this is the 5th one they've made! I know the gaming market is generally geared towards boys, but this is no way to try and balance things out. I suspect games would be far more popular if they weren't geared toward specific crowds. Look at the popularity, for instance, of the Nintendo Wii - there's nothing divisive about the Wii; in fact, I think that they're trying to be as inclusive as possible. But this 'Games for Girls'? Come on, people, don't stoop to this! The games themselves may or may not be any good, but for goodness' sake, don't package them in such an ridiculous manner. Don't reward this kind of nonsense and maybe they'll stop doing it. That's my hope, anyways.

Division

Last post (earlier today) I had a happy little note to post. Nothing of substance came to mind. Now, however, I have found something (and what has it been, an hour or so?):

Introducing: Blackbird, the web browser made for people of a specific ethnic category. That's gonna fix everything, right? Instead of everybody being equal, here we have yet another instance of one category of people being propped up over everyone else. They do this sort of thing with minorities a lot, in an effort to ... I don't know, validate them? They take a level playing field and add division - this bothers me to no end. For instance, they made a women's television network. What for? All that does is imply that every single other station out there is a man channel, which is certainly not the case. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's hypocrisy, and that's what this sort of thing is - using segregation in an attempt to eliminate segregation is more than just stupidity. This Blackbird thing encourages its users to separate themselves from the internet even as it posits that the idea is to integrate them into the internet (because until then, they just couldn't manage, right? Please). It's almost exactly the same as the regular browser on which it's based, except with the added feature that the name reminds them of the colour people call their skin, and with features that point you to donation options for charities and the like that also focus on people who share their ethnicity of the intended users.

Why do people still, in this day and age, focus on completely superficial attributes when making judgments about other people? Why do we place extra importance on people who are a certain ethnicity when considering making products or founding charities? Why can't we just treat every stranger the same, and every person we know anything about according to his actions and merits?

Global Warming

Apparently, Venus used to be a lot like Earth, but now it's around 480°C - hot enough to melt steel. The atmospheric pressure is 92 times Earth's at sea level. All this is because of a runaway greenhouse effect. Theoretically, the same thing could happen here on Earth. Whether it be caused naturally or by human activity, shouldn't we try to prevent this from happening, if it is within our capacity to do so?

(link 1)
(link 2)

On speaking in tongues

I read the following today:

Some churches refuse to allow speaking in tongues because it causes fights.

This is fascinating. It suggests that the church believes that speaking in tongues isn't a gift from God (because if it were, who would the church be to impose rules on God?), but something which the potential speakers can control, which suggests a deep-rooted belief that speaking in tongues is nothing but an act.

This is a neurological study of what happens in the brain when the person is speaking in tongues. The findings in it suggest that people can learn to lose control of themselves, on command. This explains how it gets easier for people to speak in tongues as a conscious decision, and it even explains how, as the first article says, it is possible for churches to teach their members how. This article mentions that the activity is associated with the frontal lobe of the brain, also coincidentally the part of the brain associated with speech (link).

So, while it looks real, and might even seem real to the person doing it, speaking in tongues involves a conscious order to do so. There is also a social motivation to do so which has nothing to do with God and everything to do with selfishness.

From an atheist's perspective, this is all fascinating, because if you don't believe in God, then you don't believe that speaking in tongues is a gift from God. From that perspective, it's all an act. However, it's an act that takes some skill, which you can learn to do. It's an act that can fool even the actor.

So do these tongue-speakers learn how to do this consciously, or subconsciously? The idea behind speaking in tongues is to surrender control of yourself to God, but if God is all in your head, and control of yourself is all in your head, do you subconsciously learn to lose control of yourself, assuming that God will take the wheel? Or do you do it to fool the masses? Do you fool the masses by acting, or by displaying this skill?