Can my musical tastes be any more eclectic?

I'm browsing my favorite artists on Last.fm, which has a feature that tries to match up similar artists based on what people listen to. Most of the time, it's pretty accurate, but when it's not, it's not in ways that strike my funny bone.

Over a year ago, I mentioned in one of my blog posts that my friend Mark introduced me to a young guitarist named Orianthi. She quickly became a favorite, but never so much as this past month, in response to the release of her second album. Her first album was released in her native Australia, whereupon she was quickly noticed by producers in Los Angeles who brought her here to work on another one. And it's just fantastic. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B, which they admitted was based on “cautious” expectation of good things to come. Personally, I think it was too cautious, and they should have given this one an A. This woman is amazing, and is poised to become a superstar just as soon as enough people discover her.

Well, so … I've been listening to her two albums so much in the last month that I've become a “top listener” on Last.fm. Every so often, I'm near the very very top, but then I drop off a little when someone else bumps me off that spot, but then I listen some more and come back near the top again, and so it goes.

Well, so … today I'm off work, just sitting around the house listening to music, and so, motivated by idle curiosity, I went to go find out of what other artists Last.fm believes I'm a top listener.

Time for a bit of a detour. I'll come back to this in a minute.

As you know, I've been a Star Trek fan since I was old enough to know what it was. Literally, since the second grade. I remember well watching Amok Time as a small child, and since it was my first episode, I really didn't understand what I was watching. But I kept with it, and it grew on me, and now here I am decades later still very much a fan of that show.

In the late 1980's, when word came through the grapevine that Gene Roddenberry was bringing Star Trek back to television, I could not have been more thrilled … which is why the disappointment I felt during the first year of Star Trek: The Next Generation was so bitter. That first season sucked was just horribly awful, as I think even those who call themselves fans of that show will agree. “Keep watching,” those fans insisted at the time. “It will get better, once it finds its footing.”

I didn't find that reasoning compelling. After all, Star Trek's original series had its very best episodes in its first year, and had found solid footing pretty much immediately. But, well, this was where Star Trek was headed, I realized, so I really ought to keep watching. Yes, it felt like an obligation, rather than something I wanted to do because I was enjoying it. Gotta keep up with these things when you're a fan. Who knows, I thought, maybe it really will improve. And it did, a little, but not by enough to excite me. I gave it a chance, it didn't do it for me, and to this day, I have very little interest in anything that called itself Star Trek from The Next Generation on (except that I did enjoy this year's Star Trek movie … although I'm not exactly rushing to the store to add it to my collection now that it's available on DVD and Blu-ray Disc).

Except for a small handful of good episodes, I found The Next Generation boring and predictable, and I was about ready to turn away from it for good in about its third year – when I began correspondence with a fan from Germany. He and I were both members of Mensa's Star Trek Special Interest Group back in those days. He told me that the show was delayed there by two years for legal reasons, which meant that as I was watching the third season, Germany was watching the first; the next year, they'd get the second season as I was watching the fourth, and so on. Naturally, he wanted to see them right away, and meanwhile, I was anxious to see the original series translated into German, so he and I struck a deal: I videotaped Next Generation episodes for him, and he sent me German-language recordings of original series episodes.

(The detour takes another detour: Why German, you ask? I guess I haven't mentioned this in my blog before now, but in the mid 1980's I was a Mormon missionary in southern (what was at the time West) Germany. I also studied German for six years in junior high and high school. Put all of that together, and I speak German pretty fluently, although not nearly as well these days as I once did. Once, when I was a missionary, a family invited us into their home, and the Star Trek episode By Any Other Name was playing. In German. Sadly, I only got to watch it for about a minute, since missionaries aren't supposed to be watching television in people's homes. Okay, enough of that side detour; now back to the main part of the original detour.)

That worked well for a few years, until he ran out of original series episodes to copy for me. So instead, he sent me recordings of some German electronic-techno-dance-style music that uses Star Trek's familiar theme as its basis. In his opinion, he told me, that music was good but not great, but it was kind of all he had to offer me. I think he wasn't giving it nearly enough credit; I loved it, and still do. In fact, I went out of my way to find, on eBay, original CDs of the music he had sent me as audiotaped copies.

One of these is a four-track CD called Das Raumschiff Tanzt! (translation: “The Starship Dances!”), by a group called Space Track. That one's probably my favorite of all of the German techno Star Trek music I own – and yes, I do own several of them. There's a track on there called Schweine im Weltraum (translation: “Pigs in Space”) which is great fun, in oh so many ways, and it makes me laugh.

Well, so … it turns out that I'm a Space Track “top listener” on Last.fm. I guess that's not too surprising. How many people even know about this group, after all? Plus, the music is nearly two decades old, so who's even still listening to it after all these years? Me, obvously. Not a lot of others, I'd imagine. Still, even if I'm listening to it a few times, I'm a “top listener”.

But what really strikes me funny is this:

Last.fm is really trying hard to find artists similar to Space Track. In the case of better-known artists, that's pretty easy. John Williams is similar to Jerry Goldsmith. Candy Dulfer is similar to Maceo Parker. Mozart is similar to Haydn. And so on. Last.fm is able to infer those similarities based on who listens to what.

In the case of Space Track, though, they're completely flummoxed. That's because they only really have me and a small handful of other listeners to draw samples from. And because my musical tastes are so eclectic, they're inferring that Space Track is similar to music that just … isn't … remotely … close, including: a couple of re-recordings of Star Trek original series episode scores (which, I admit, does make a certain kind of sense, except that those are orchestral performances, whereas Das Raumshiff Tanzt! is completely computer-techno-beat-dance stuff), as well as the soundtracks to Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (I listen to recordings of both the original stage production and the subsequent 1953 movie); Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony performed under the direction of Herbert von Karajan; a Seattle world music group called The Guarneri Underground (whose Wander This World CD is marvelous and highly recommended, especially their cover of Led Zeppelin's song Kashmir); my copies of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and a collection of Bach organ music (I know they're using my copies of those discs, because they're listing the same performers of those pieces as the ones I listen to); and several others.

Yes, I will happily admit it: Last.fm's desperate grasp for artists similar to Space Track is resulting in a wide range of unrelated music, and it's all my fault!

There is at least one artist which Last.fm lists as similar to Space Track – which is also my fault, I admit – which does fall into at least something of a similar category.

Long story short: a few years ago, Vera brought home a stack of CD's she had gotten from the library, which had been donated but which the library didn't want to keep. Most of them were forgettable, except for one self-titled CD by a group called Lost At Last, with which I fell in love instantly. It's a very cool blending of Indian religious chant and instruments with electronic techno beats, produced back in 2001. Subsequently, they renamed themselves One At Last and released another album called Are You Dreaming? in 2006 which I like just as much.

One At Last has nothing whatsoever to do with Star Trek, but at least it's more or less in the same ballpark with the German techno dance music that is Das Raumschiff Tanzt!, so I'll give Last.fm that one … even if it is more of a lucky guess than anything else, just because, although my musical tastes are eclectic, now and again there is some commonality to it.

Occasionally, anyway.

Starting a fight

“Want to Start a Fight? Just tell someone what you think of Spike Jonze's movie Where the Wild Things Are”
— Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly

I haven't blogged in a month, although that may be because there isn't a whole lot of news to tell.

Well, that's not true. The last of my grandparents – my father's father – passed away in October at the age of 96. Vera and I traveled to Salt Lake City to attend the funeral, where I got to see cousins I haven't seen since we were all a lot younger, and got to see my father's siblings and their families all together in one place for the first time in many, many years. I enjoyed learning a few things about my grandfather that I didn't know, and was touched to have had that opportunity to say good-bye one last time. The memorial service was very moving, and I was glad to be there.

(It was also very Mormon, leaving Vera with some puzzled questions when it was all over – “Why was he buried in those strange clothes?” among others. And I thought I was the stranger in a strange land, an ex-Mormon atheist among a huge crowd of Mormon-believing relatives. That was nothing compared to how Vera must have felt. At least I knew what the strange burial clothes were all about.)

In happier news, it was Vera's birthday recently, and we went to Disneyland to celebrate, just as we did on my birthday earlier this year. As I think about it now, we've been there quite a few times in the past year. I'm not complaining; I love that place. We both do.

And I've been taking Fridays off, just as I reported here a couple of months ago. My work this fall is turning out to be a lot more hectic than I thought it was going to be, but I'm continuing to take the Fridays off anyhow, and I am definitely finding it about as restful as I hoped it would be (just as long as I don't let myself agonize about all the work that needs doing while I'm at home being a lazy bum).

Other than that, there's not a whole lot of new news, at least not that has happened to me. It's been a fairly quiet month, apart from the funeral and Vera's birthday, and a handful of news items that involve my children, which I will not touch on here, since those are their stories to tell.

Instead, I want to muse about movies for a bit.

Mark Harris wrote an interesting opinion piece in Entertainment Weekly recently about the movie Where the Wild Things Are. He wrote, in part:

People disagree about movies all the time. But on those rare occasions when a difference of opinion morphs into an all-out fight, you should get your movie-loving butt to the multiplex fast, because films deep and rich enough to be worth brawling over are uncommon and exciting things. […] We're about to begin the long march through Oscar season, a period that I fear will, this year, provide too few argument-starting films. When they come along, we should count ourselves lucky[.] […] Have the fight, and encourage everybody else to have the fight too, or Hollywood will continue on its dull path of making nothing worth fighting over.

(Read the whole article. You can thank me later.)

I had seen previews. I thought it looked interesting. I thought it had a visual look that was remarkably faithful to the artwork in the book. Most of all I was especially curious to learn first-hand what Harris was talking about. So, this past weekend, when my kids expressed an interest in going to see it, I was happy to take the opportunity.

When the four of us came out of the theater, we all had distinctly different impressions about what the film was about, and what it was supposed to mean. And although we didn't fight about it afterward, we did spend a long time talking about what it meant to each of us, and coming to a more-or-less common understanding of what the filmmaker may have been trying to say.

I have to say, the film was as good as I had hoped, even though it seemed to run a bit longer than I expected; but probably the best part of that experience was the conversation about it with my sons after it ended. It's not often that the four of us all get together as part of a single conversation like that, and I enjoyed that very much. I learned a few things from each of them that evening.

(My daughter wasn't able to join us for the movie. She joined us later for dinner. As I have written here before, she is getting more and more heavily involved in her college studies, which are taking up many hours of each day, although over dinner I got to listen to her talk about it, and there's magic in her eyes as she does so. I can see in her face that she's enjoying what she's doing wholeheartedly. I don't think she minds that it's turning out to be a very time-intensive experience, partly because she knew ahead of time that it would be, but mainly because it's also hugely rewarding for her, intellectually and emotionally.)

Meanwhile, Vera has been anxiously looking forward to Disney's A Christmas Carol. I was surprised when she first started talking about it, since she has stated on several occasions that she's no fan of Jim Carrey. I wasn't really too motivated to go see it – largely because I expected it to be the same kind of lifeless animation that had given us The Polar Express and Beowulf, neither of which impressed me much – until Entertainment Weekly reviewed it and gave it a solid A, and from Owen Gleiberman no less. (Their other main reviewer, Lisa Schwarzbaum, disagrees with me on a regular basis, a fact I began to notice most strongly when she inexplicably gave the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie a C. By contrast, when Gleiberman speaks, especially when he gives a movie an A, I sit up and pay attention.)

Gleiberman's review read in part:

[W]hen it was announced that writer-director Robert Zemeckis would do a new version for Disney, using the same photo-realist, motion-capture animation technique that begot The Polar Express and all its eager rubber-faced children (and starring the reflexively ironic Jim Carrey as Scrooge), all I could think was, “Not for me.” How wonderfully wrong I was!

Armed with that review and Vera's enthusiasm, we went today to see the movie in 3-D. Long story short, Gleiberman was right again. Wow, what a film! What a great piece of work!

Okay, I think there's still a rubber-faced quality to the faces, very reminiscent of The Polar Express and Beowulf, but much less unsettlingly so. That aspect of the animation style is really a minor quibble, however, since the cinematic vision of the Charles Dickens story is, in so many ways, remarkably presented.

Gleiberman is exactly right (including, by the way, his remark about the “rare misstep” near the end). Read his review. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Then go see A Christmas Carol, preferably in 3-D. You can thank me later.

As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls

My son blogged last month about what he called “The greatest piece of music the world has ever seen”. His choice? Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead. I bought a copy of it for myself at his recommendation a little over a year ago. I do like it very much. Am I also going to call it the best music ever written? Well, he's the one who knows music theory. I'm just a schlub who likes what he likes. Whether it's from comparative lack of musical education or just a different set of personal tastes, my nomination in that category is a bit different.

I have an aunt, my mother's youngest sister, who, when I was high-school- and college-aged, gave me record albums of music that she liked as Christmas gifts. She and her brother, my uncle, are together responsible for turning me on to the music of Simon and Garfunkel, but that's another story. During that same period, she also gave me a couple of Pat Metheny's earliest recordings, namely American Garage and especially As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls.

The title track to As Falls Wichita is twenty minutes of pure musical ecstasy. I can't explain why. I can't pull it apart and discuss chord changes and rhythmic meters the way my son can. I just know that it quickly became, and has been ever since, my choice for the single most remarkable piece of music in my collection.

I've kept an open mind. Something else might come along to displace it. But so far, nothing has. Certain music has come very close, of course. I've blogged here in the past about my love for film music, for various classical composers, for pop music, electronic music, specific rock bands and specific jazz artists. My musical tastes come and go; some music I used to love, I never listen to anymore. Others stand the test of time and will be a part of me until I die. But this piece, As Falls Wichita, really is the pinnacle of my musical library – so beautiful, so evocative, so brilliantly constructed and performed – and it has been at the top of my list for so long that it really will take an amazing challenger to supplant it.

Bicycling in September

At the moment, I'm feeling very stressed out. That's because, this morning before work, I think I did about a thousand errands: gotta go shopping, gotta change the oil in my car, Vera needs my help with a repair to her condo, I need to deposit an insurance check (long story), then Vera's mom calls, wanting to know how things are going with the tenant in Vera's condo, then the repair guys who are supposed to come out to Vera's condo can't come out this morning and need to reschedule, and on and on it goes. (Why am I doing all of this scheduling of the repairs to her condo? Because she has to work, and I'm too nice.) It's at times like this that I am ready to barricade myself at home and tell the world that my ideal weekend involves going nowhere and doing nothing, except maybe watching television.

Vera has a much different idea of a relaxing weekend. Her idea of a relaxing weekend involves going outdoors to do as much physical exercise as she can cram into the day. And as much as I gripe about how not-fun it is to be huffing and puffing for miles and miles up and down hills on my bicycle while pedaling into the wind, I have to admit that it's good for me, and if she weren't in my life pushing me to get some exercise, I'm sure I'd be doing a lot less of it than I am.

The ironic thing to me though is that our relative bicycling skills, hers and mine, have reversed this year. This year – largely because I've done a lot less exercising than I did the year before, while she's made a determined effort to work out in one form or another just about every day for the past several weeks – she's outpacing me wherever we go, while last year I was (not always, but more often than not) fairly easily able to do the bike trips that Vera was huffing and puffing through. Now though, what is easy for her is going to positively kill me. Clearly, I've lost whatever physical shape I once had, and need to get it back.

I've done three bike trips with her this month. Before that, I don't think she and I have done any bike trips worth speaking of during any of the previous eight months of 2009. Earlier this month we biked to the L.A. Zoo and back, which is 24 miles round trip. Two weekends ago she led me along the coast in Malibu for another 20 miles (which I positively hated because it involved fighting a headwind the whole time). And yesterday we did the Ventura to Ojai Bike Path, although we didn't take it all the way to Ojai. Instead, near the top, we veered off toward Lake Casitas and spent a couple of hours at the Ojai Pirate Faire. Total round trip: a little over 32 miles.

I have Facebook friends – two in particular, both of whom are my age – who bicycle across whole states for fun, and who think nothing of bicycling 100 miles on a lazy afternoon. I hope they don't read this, because I'm seriously, seriously envious of what they can do, and also seriously embarrassed at my own lack of shape, especially compared to the two of them.

On the other hand, I'm proud of myself for getting all the way to the Pirate Faire and back without collapsing, even though I know I should be able to do better. Vera is doing much better than I am. I should have no excuse.

The last time I blogged about taking that bike trail, over a year ago, I was similarly dismayed about how it kicked my butt. In that blog entry, I suggested that getting my bike tuned probably ought to have made a difference. Unfortunately for that theory, this time I made sure the bike was tuned before I took it on that trip. I had it tuned during the past week, specifically because I knew that Vera was going to want to go somewhere again after the Malibu trip, and I wanted to be prepared. Well, so, the trip was less exhausting than it might have been – and in fact I think I did marginally better this time than I did the last time I blogged about it – but I seriously, seriously need to get more active than I am, just so Vera doesn't keep showing me up like she has been lately.

That bike trip was good for me, even though you'd never have gotten me to admit it at the time. But that doesn't mean I'm feeling all that great today. No matter how much Vera thinks that was “fun”, today my legs are sore and I'm feeling stressed and tired, as if everybody needs me for something … and frankly, all I really want to do right now is sit at home and watch Star Trek.

OMG OMG OMG … this is FREAKING AWESOME!!!

Season Two of Star Trek's original series was released this morning on Blu-ray Disc.

I've been waiting for this for nearly two years. The high-definition season set for the first season came out on HD DVD late in 2007, and I picked up my copy in February of 2008. Moments later, as you know, HD DVD lost the format war to Blu-ray Disc, and thus began the long, long wait for Star Trek in that format.

It seemed to take for-freaking-ever, but Season One finally came out on Blu-ray Disc earlier this year. It's nice and all, except that I had seen it before. (Still, the Blu-ray Disc version has some nifty advantages over the HD DVD set, one of which is that it includes the original special effects in addition to the new, remastered CGI special effects.)

What I was really waiting for was Seasons Two and Three, since I hadn't seen those in high definition before.

I plead guilty to the claim that I have been impatient. Intolerably impatient, in fact. Facebook friends saw me posting my impatience over the last few days. I think even my best and most forgiving friends were starting to get a little tired of it.

The wait was SO worth it. So far I've only had a chance to watch a couple of the episodes on the Season Two set, but they are gorgeous and totally worth the wait. I can hardly wait to watch the rest of them. If I didn't have people depending on me at work, I would so gladly have called in sick today. (As an old coworker of mine used to say: “I can't come in today. I'm having eye trouble. I just can't see working.”)

And then – as if that weren't enough – yesterday and today comes the official word about when to expect the Season Three set (December 15th!), together with a big surprise (to me, at least): the Season Three set not only will include the full-color and uncut version of The Cage (the first of two pilot episodes) – which by itself is not a huge surprise – it will also include the original version of the second pilot (yes, you heard right, the second pilot), Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Most Star Trek fans know the story: The Cage was Gene Roddenberry's first attempt to sell his show to television; the network executives passed on it, but were interested enough to invite him to go again, create a second pilot, changing a number of things, and that pilot is the one which sold Star Trek to NBC. Fans also know that the first pilot wasn't broadcast in its original form in the 1960's, but it was edited to become the basis for a two-part episode called The Menagerie, which was broadcast in 1966. Not until 1988 was the original pilot shown on television in its entirety, and around the same time it first became available for home video purchase, first in black-and-white and later in color.

What is less well-known is that that second pilot was also cut differently between the time it was used to sell the series to the network and the first time it was broadcast on television in 1966. The edited version is the one we've seen all these many years since then, while the original cut has been hiding in a vault somewhere.

Well, that's not quite true. Clearly, somebody has seen the original cut, because the missing bits can be seen on YouTube. But I've never seen it, nor have I ever read that it's been shown in its original form, on television or elsewhere.

This is so exciting! I am positively thrilled to hear that it's going to be available on the Season Three Blu-ray Disc set. I just barely got my Season Two set, and already I'm salivating over the upcoming release of Season Three.

Those of you who have me listed as Facebook friends, get ready for the same kind of salivating impatience when December 15th starts to approach. If you thought I've been unbearable lately … well, brace yourselves for more of the same. :)

Happy commuter

I know I gripe all too often about Los Angeles freeway traffic.

That's why I can't resist expressing my joy at today's commute.

An 18 mile drive from home to work takes 20 minutes on a good day, and 45 minutes to an hour on a bad day.

Today, the door to door drive time was no more than 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes!! I am in a state of delirious, stunned, and joyful amazement.

No slowdowns, no accidents, no congestion – practically nobody on the freeway in fact. Just pure, unimpeded, clear sailing.

AND I got to work to find that the parking space closest to the front office door was open and waiting for me.

AND – as if all of that weren't enough – I've reported my displeasure over the fact that people keep choosing locations to smoke that are right along the path from the parking garage to the office, and it's literally impossible to walk a straight line between the office and the parking garage without passing through a disgusting cloud of smoke – but at least in most cases, you can walk around it if you're willing to walk far enough … all except for the main entrance to the parking garage, where the powers that be decided to place one of those gigantic outdoor ashtrays that doubles as a trash can, and where people are smoking all the damned time (probably because it's the only outdoor location that's both shaded and close to an outdoor ashtray). There's simply no way to walk around this location, because it's the only way to get into or out of the parking garage. Imagine my glee when I found that my plea, my cry of distress has been heard, and that monstrous outdoor ashtray has been removed!

AND nobody but nobody was smoking outside as I arrived at work today – not just was nobody smoking at that one location; nobody was smoking anywhere else either!

The sun was shining, the sky was clear, and the air was clean and cool.

Today is a good day.

Respect for people and their ideas

Everybody needs a little respect.
— Train, “Respect”

Pretty much like I expected, at least one person spoke up in response to my last blog entry to say that she was offended by my view that belief in God, like belief in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, is something that we cling to as children, but as we undergo healthy, normal development, we outgrow as we learn more about how the world really works.

As I said in that blog post, I have been in the place where she is now, and I understand how that can be seen as offensive. I still maintain, however, that once one has passed beyond the emotional need for religion in one's life, one will see that progression as entirely normal and natural.

Now then: that's my opinion. I said before and I will say again that I accept and acknowledge that not everybody shares it. In fact, if I haven't been clear before, I'll say clearly now: yes, I know that some of you reading this will find that offensive. This is perfectly normal and to be expected. Do I demand or insist (or even expect) that you, my reader, must respect my view? Of course not. Frankly, I view that whole concept as silly, so silly that it hardly needs to be said. Admittedly, I'd like to ask you to respect my right to believe my own views, but that's really about as far as my expectations go.

However, the woman who commented on my last blog entry regarded my view as openly disrespectful, not only of her religious beliefs, but in fact of her as a person. I also view this as so self-evidently not the case that I feel that it goes without saying.

However, clearly, what I think goes without saying needs to be said, if for no other reason than to get some of the ground rules out on the table.

And so, for the record, my views on respect follow:

Everybody needs a little respect

All human beings, just because they're human beings, deserve a basic amount of respect and honor. They deserve to be treated fairly in every way, they deserve the raw materials they need to learn and grow, they deserve rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, and they deserve to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but you get the idea.

Respect must be earned and can be lost

Once we start with that basic level of respect for all human beings everywhere, that respect ratchets up or down based on all kinds of factors. I'm not going to try to outline them all here, because there are way too many to even begin to list them, but let it suffice to say, Barack Obama has earned my utmost respect and continues to do so, and George W. Bush has not. I'll let you fill in the rest.

Belonging to a group does not affect your level of respect

I think it goes without saying that skin color, religion, politics, sexual orientation, age, weight, nationality, etc. etc. all have nothing whatsoever to do with how much respect a person deserves.

I don't care what your self-identification might be. You don't deserve to rate any higher than any other group just because you belong to whatever group you belong to.

Respect for people is earned, person by person, based on individual accomplishments. (Similarly, respect for ideas is earned, one at a time, each on its own merits.)

Admittedly, there are a handful of apparent exceptions which might seem like contradictions. I have great respect for individual members of the military, police, fire departments, and any other profession for which a person puts his or her life in jeopardy for the well-being of others. However, this doesn't seem like a contradiction to me, since, as I see it, the members of those professions have individually chosen to take on those very honorable roles of service to society, and so I'm not giving “the military” special status just because it's a group of people, but rather, I'm giving each member of that group an extra measure of respect for making that choice and serving that role.

It amazes me that it isn't plainly self-evident that one's group doesn't earn any special privilege, but it's clearly not. From a young age, Star Trek instilled in me a hope for a future in which none of that matters – as Captain Kirk once said, in his universe, “size, shape, and color make no difference” – and although that's a hope I will not ever let die in my heart, it's clear that that future isn't anywhere in sight. There's still way too much prejudice in the world. I believe that it is dying slowly, but the recent Proposition 8 election in California makes clear that we're nowhere near where we need to be.

All ideas/beliefs/opinions/assertions are open for debate, separate and distinct from who holds them

This is another point that seems completely self-evident to me, while the fact that others don't, won't or can't separate “respect for my beliefs” from “respect for me as a person” absolutely astonishes me.

I claim that every belief, every statement of alleged fact, every scientific theory, every religious or political pronouncement, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g that is a thought or idea is – in every way – subject to debate, dissection, and frankly, even ridicule.

I claim that every idea, large and small, is and should be subject to a fair trial in an open forum, and that nothing is off limits.

And furthermore, I claim that every idea that anyone espouses should be open for discussion separate and apart from the person who espouses it. People can put forward any idea they please, but if it doesn't survive the close examination and scrutiny of an open forum, the people who are proposing it need to suck it up and not walk away with their feelings hurt.

There are plenty of beliefs espoused by people in this world which I find absurd. By that I mean that they are either flagrantly unsupported by observable evidence, or they lead to obvious self-contradictions, or they're simply wishful thinking. Among these:

• the notion that evolution is “just a theory“, but that Intelligent Design is somehow worthy of equal time in school classrooms
• that the 1969 moon landing was a U.S. Government hoax
• that the Holocaust never happened
• that God exists, hears and answers prayers, and has a plan for my life
• that God sends bad things to happen to people, particularly to large groups of people when they ban public prayer in schools, allow gay marriage, or legalize abortion
• that allowing gay marriage somehow “threatens” any other marriage, or that straight marriages somehow need “defending” therefrom
• that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be
• that the Bible is internally self-consistent, let alone infallible (see Richard Packham's list of Biblical contradictions)
• that prayer affects the outcome of physical diseases
• that Sarah Palin's debating skills indicate that she would have made a good Vice President
• that the Republican Party offers a plan that is what's best for this country
• that this is a “Christian nation” in any sense of the word (are people even aware of the Treaty of Tripoli?)

I could go on, but you get the gist.

I claim that any and all of these points are open for a fair trial. As it happens, I regard them all as absurd, and I feel no need to apologize for saying so, because, in saying so, I have not attacked anyone personally (well, I have named Sarah Palin by name, admittedly; but since I'm commenting on her suitability for public office, and as long as I don't stray beyond that boundary, I feel that's fair game), except as they choose to see it as such in their own minds. I am happy to discover that I'm wrong about any of them, and I will happily engage anybody on any of them, right up to, but not including, the point where people are going to take my objections personally, claim to be offended, and act as if I've personally attacked them. Whether they believe I have or not, in my own mind, I have not, will not, and am not. (Well, okay; to be fair, sometimes I have slipped and said things I regret, and if I do, or have, please discuss them with me and let me apologize.) I do feel that all of these ideas are legitimate subjects for debate and even ridicule, but once your ego is at stake, as far as I'm concerned, there's no point in continuing, and the discussion is over before it has begun.

And when that happens, it's really kind of unfortunate, because ideas can and should survive only when they can be demonstrated to have factual basis, or at the very least, to have emotional value without also being blatantly in contradiction to the observable universe. (By that I mean that if it gives you comfort to believe that you'll see your loved ones in an afterlife, by all means, go ahead; I'm in no position to disprove that assertion anyhow; but if you believe that prayer affects the outcome of your disease even though that idea has been studied scientifically and debunked to death, you really need to re-evaluate that position, because it just doesn't stand up on its own.)

If we protect ideas which don't have demonstrable value, we're really just nurturing bad ideas that have outlived their usefulness, and which, in Darwinian terms, really shouldn't continue to survive. To put it another way, if you feel the need to protect those ideas from harm, I think it's self-evident that they don't have what it takes to protect themselves, and it's time to let them go.

Your religious and political beliefs are not, and should not be, tied in your mind to Who You Are. I should be free to pick apart the Book of Mormon (or the Qu'ran, or the Bible, or Dianetics), point out its logical inconsistencies and nonsensical assertions, and above all, I should be able to do so without hurting anyone's feelings or leaving anyone feeling like they personally are being “disrespected”.

When I express beliefs that you consider disrespectful, blasphemous, or hurtful, or when I express disbelief in something you consider sacred, feel free to engage me – tell me why I'm wrong, present your evidence, bring on your witnesses. But whatever you do, don't resort to playing the “I'm offended” card, because the fact is, if that's all you've got, your hand is pretty weak.

That's because respect has to be earned. And if you have to insist on it, the fact is, you haven't earned it.